Evian is the Founder & CEO of Ringcommend – Australia’s leading retailer of high-end engagement rings at wholesale prices. Prior to that, he founded Padlifter—now the world’s largest marketplace of short-term rental service providers.
Before founding both of these companies, Evian was a Management Consultant as well as Head of Digital Marketing for a global business consulting firm, working across North America, Oceania, and the Middle East.
In 2020, Evian published his latest book, Coming Back From COVID, which helps small business owners rapidly recover from the impacts and aftermath of the coronavirus. Since its launch, the book has already sold more than 4,500 copies.
Evian holds Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of International Studies degrees, as well as Graduate Certificates in Public Policy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
Outside of work, Evian is an avid runner and enjoys competing in middle-distance races. He also enjoys scuba-diving in exotic locations, which is supported by his passion for traveling throughout the developing world.
Evian has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur.com and written extensively for leading marketing and sales publications and websites.
Please tell us a little bit about your company – what is Ringcommend all about?
Ringcommend helps hopeless romantics find high-end engagement rings at wholesale prices.
We offer incredible savings, a massive selection and rapid turnaround times.
Our goal is to become the one-stop-shop for helping guys find the perfect engagement ring to impress their special lady without breaking the bank.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
Like many entrepreneurs, my background has little to do with the company that I now operate.
When I finished school, I achieved a matriculation score far better than anything I could ever have dreamt of. This led me to enroll in Law School, where I studied a combined International Relations / Law degree. Upon completing this I had a mini quarter-life crisis, because if law school had taught me one thing… it was that I didn’t actually have any interest in becoming a lawyer!
Fortunately, the degrees were looked upon favorably by a leading consulting firm in Sydney Australia, where I ended up getting a job as a Management Consultant. I did this for a number of years, and because of my strong familiarity with tech, ended up growing into a Head of Digital Marketing role. This ended up taking me to New York for a number of years, where I was responsible for getting the firm’s US presence off the ground.
I’ve had an entrepreneurial itch my entire life, and there came a point where as much as I enjoyed the corporate life, I was keen to get my own hands dirty and build something of my own. Having made a small fortune for myself and friends renting out apartments on Airbnb in New York, I formalized that offering by providing consulting services for short-term rental hosts. Over time, this developed into the company, Padlifter, which is now the world’s largest marketplace of short-term rental service providers.
Before deciding to move back home to Australia, I took a short break and spent a good chunk of time travelling around India. Very shortly after returning to Sydney, I ended up meeting my soon-to-be wife. When we got engaged, I thought the task of finding an engagement ring would be relatively simple and straightforward. I was wrong.
I spent two months looking into my different options. I spoke to fourteen different jewellers. I looked at over fifty different rings. I ended up purchasing a ring that was way out of my budget, and I learnt that I could have got that same ring $2,500 cheaper only a few weeks later.
I knew that there had to be a better way. So, I created Ringcommend.
I wanted to make sure that other hopeless romantics like me were saved from the headaches and hassles that I had just gone through. I was also determined to provide guys in my shoes with a high-end engagement ring, without the high-end price tag.
I ended up teaming-up with a jeweller with nearly half a century of multi-generational jewellery experience to create Ringcommend. We’ve now become one of Australia’s leading suppliers of engagement rings; providing great value, excellent products and unparalleled service.
How do you plan to grow this company?
With my first startup, Padlifter, one lesson I learnt the hard way was the consequence of growing too quickly. Whilst growth perse is not a bad thing, you need to be able to grow in a manageable and sustainable way. In the absence of this, something will inevitably give—be that your offering, your service, your brand, your personal sanity (or all of the above!)
With that being the case, my growth strategy will focus on building regional pockets of excellence that we then scale up when the timing is right: we want to ensure that Ringcommend are consistently recognized as the leading provider of engagement rings in all of the locations that we operate.
With that being the case, we’re starting off with a focus on Australia’s capital cities. Once we’ve established a strong presence on the ground here, we’ll be looking to replicate our model of success overseas too.
Because of the nature of the product that we sell and its higher price points, it’s important that there’s a strong foundation of trust in the brand. We’ve therefore focused on capitalizing on our excellent track record of happy customers, and favorable perceptions of our brand to win new customers. This is actualized through a formal referral program as well as partnerships with other trusted and reputable companies too.
What was the biggest problem you encountered with your business and how did you overcome it?
As touched upon above, one of the challenges in selling engagement rings is that it’s not your run-of-the-mill product purchase. If you compare it to other things you might buy—say groceries, sneakers, even a television—the ramifications of getting this decision wrong is far more consequential than for many other lower-cost items.
Complicating this even further is the knowledge disparity between buyer and seller: customers, through no fault of their own, tend to know very little about diamonds when setting out to buy an engagement ring. This stands in contrast to the jeweller, who has likely spent their entire life learning the ins-and-outs of everything there is to know about diamonds.
It therefore becomes critical that any business attempting to sell engagement rings needs to be recognized as honest, reliable and trustworthy.
It is for this reason that I partnered with a gentleman by the name of Waldo Perez, who has devoted his whole life towards jewellery, and is recognized as a trustworthy patriarch of the Australian jewellery scene.
We also place strong emphasis on word-of-mouth referrals, which we have formalized with a referral program that rewards both the referrer as well as the referee when any purchase is made (more on this shortly…).
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
The biggest mistake I made in starting my business was taking it to market with a naïve build it and they will come mentality.
In my head, the formula seemed straightforward: provide best of class products, at rock-bottom prices, with excellent customer service; and you have yourself a recipe for success.
Unfortunately, what I failed to appreciate, was the necessity of having a detailed omni-channel go-to-market plan that informed prospective customers about all of this.
There is no magical magnet that simply attracts customers to your business, so if you’re doing something right, make sure you’re communicating this to the market and getting the word out on the street.
After struggling at first to share all of the wonderful reasons that customers should consider Ringcommend before making their purchase, we developed a holistic marketing strategy that cut across all dimensions of the marketing mix: owned, earned and paid channels.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
If I’m going to be completely honest, a lot of our competitors actually do a really good job in providing the customer with a product that is very much to their liking and satisfaction. Given the joy associated with the getting engaged, it’s not hard to understand how delivering a product like an engagement ring will put a smile on a customer’s face.
What we wanted to do with Ringcommend however, was deliver that same level of customer satisfaction, but at a much-reduced price point, and without compromising on the standard or quality of the end product.
We do that by eliminating standard retail overheads, and by utilizing our network of wholesalers, to pass on these savings directly to our customers. We also see ourselves as in it for the ‘long-game’, so we’re prepared to operate with lower margins than many of our competitors. We understand that with time, our brand will become synonymous with quality and value, and what we lose in making a couple of extra bucks on each ring, will be recouped many times over via additional sales from lots of happy customers.
What is one thing that you do daily to grow as an entrepreneur?
I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of becoming a ‘one-trick-pony’. Everyone has their strengths, but everyone has their weaknesses too. No entrepreneur will have it all—not even the best ones. It is important therefore to recognize your ‘blind spots’, and seek to plug those knowledge or capability gaps.
This doesn’t always mean becoming an expert yourself (it may). But what it does mean is taking the time to identifying the knowledge or capability gap, and deciding how that’s going to be filled. You can either choose to build this capability within yourself, or surround yourself with others that are able to do this for you. There’s no one right approach, and much of this will depend on the complexity of the task as well as your bandwidth and available resources.
Regardless of the personal build verses buy end decision, I make a point every day of trying to better understand some new topic, or gain some new skill, that helps me become a better business operator. Whether this is reading a book, doing a course or taking the time to speak to experts within a given field—I see it as critical to my professional development to always be learning.
Today, more than any time ever before, the tools and resources for acquiring knowledge have never been more readily available, and at minimal cost. As Donald Miller says, in the age of information, ignorance is a choice.
What are three books or courses you recommend for new entrepreneurs?
There’s no shortage of invaluable books for entrepreneurs to dive into. And listing only three won’t do justice to the hundreds of others that are equally deserving of being on this list. However, three of my personal favorites are:
Who Moved My Cheese (Spencer Johnson) – The pace of change across all aspects of life is unprecedented. Those that learn how to dynamically adapt to change will be those that are most likely to succeed. This book will help internalize that principle.
The E-Myth Revisited (Michael E. Gerber) – There are many misconceptions surrounding starting your own business. It’s easy to fall into the trap of simply going full throttle in neutral. This book will help you focus on doing the things that will actually move the needle.
Purple Cow (Seth Godin) – It’s no longer good enough to just be good: you need to be remarkable, and offer something that helps you stand out from the crowd. This book helps shape your understanding of what being remarkable actually means, and how you can go about doing that within your business.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
Prior to starting my business, the one thing I wish that I was aware of would be The Iceberg Illusion. This is the idea that when it comes to starting a business, all too often, people only ever see the successes. On the surface, it looks like this is a given, and that it all just fell out of the sky and landed straight into your lap.
The reality however, is that there are an infinite number of things happening behind the scene to make that all happen. All too often, the entrepreneur’s persistence, sacrifice, hard work, discipline and dedication happen in the background; and out of sight to the rest of the world.
The world of entrepreneurialism is full of many riches and rewards, both monetary and non-monetary. However, it is not without its challenges and difficulties. For first-time entrepreneurs that choose this life, they should do so with a lucid and unclouded understanding of the world that they are about to walk into; warts and all.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Our most effective marketing strategy has been our Refer-A-Friend program. As discussed earlier, this program rewards the giver of the referral with a $100 gift card, and the receiver of the referral with a $250 discount off any Ringcommend ring purchase.
We make it as easy as possible to take advantage of these discounts by creating a pre-populated email that can be sent with the click of a button from the website to share the discount code and information about the opportunity to both the giver and receiver.
Furthermore, the giver is incentivized to make additional purchases as a consequence of becoming the beneficiary of a gift card that they can use to make a purchase that they likely wouldn’t have made without it.
If you only had $1,000 to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would setup a micro site that utilized high-quality landing page templates (like from Leadpages, Unbounce, or Instapge) to showcase my intended idea in a clear, professional and compelling way. I would make sure that there was a meaningful offering closely aligned to the idea, a specific call-to-action, and lead capture form too.
I would then spend the majority of the money on some PPC advertisements that were specifically targeting my ideal customer profile, to then drive those individuals to specific landing pages.
I would run data-driven experiments to illuminate key insights on the level of interest that I could infer exists around my idea. I would be looking at conversion rates (e.g. SERP click-through rates and on-site form completion rates); as well as ‘soft’ metrics too, like time spent on site, bounce rate and the number (and focus) of pages visited.
All of this should prove instrumental in validating whether my idea ‘has legs’, as well as some macro insights into ways that my idea or its marketing could be improved or optimized beyond my initial hypotheses.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
It’s business 1-0-1, but remain disciplined to a Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.
Start by hypothesizing what you think is going to work and define the steps you’re going to need to take to bring it to life.
Run micro, low-risk experiments to validate your hypotheses, making sure to maintain a data-driven evidence-based approach to measuring your results.
Make sure that you take the time to pause and analyze your successes and failures. This will ensure you don’t burn too much time going down unfruitful paths. It will also allow you to make in-flight adjustments to the plan that better reflect your operating reality and act on any feedback you’re getting from the market.
Finally, activate those changes and fortify your business with improvements that integrate your dynamic learnings and updated hypotheses.
What is your favorite quote?
It’s not great English, but the idea is strong nonetheless:
You regret what you don’t do more than what you do do.
How can we get in touch with you?
Feel free to get in touch via the Ringcommend website, or via our Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn accounts.
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