Manly Bands is a direct-to-consumer vendor of males’s rings. The corporate launched in 2016 after John Ruggiero, the co-founder together with his spouse Michelle, couldn’t discover a appropriate wedding ceremony band.
That is Ruggiero’s second look on the podcast. In April 2021, we mentioned the corporate’s founding, distinctive ring supplies, and extra. Since then, Manly Bands has acquired its producer. The making of rings from, say, Jack Daniel’s whiskey barrels or Fender guitar strings creates compelling video, says Ruggiero, good for storytelling on social media and elsewhere.
All the audio of our dialog is embedded beneath. The transcript is edited for size and readability.
Eric Bandholz: Give us a rundown of what you do.
John Ruggiero: My spouse, Michelle, and I began a web based ring firm referred to as Manly Bands in 2016 to unravel an issue of wedding ceremony bands for males. We had been simply married. I’ve giant fingers and couldn’t discover a ring that I appreciated that was not overpriced. My choices had been ordering from a catalog or having one thing custom-made.
I ended up shopping for from an internet site. The ring arrived in a flat mailer, with no field or customer support. It was a horrible expertise by right this moment’s ecommerce requirements.
We acquired married, moved to Florida, and wanted a job. We advised ourselves, “We’re each entrepreneurs. Why don’t we create our personal enterprise?” We mentioned the sorts of issues we’d seen and remedy them. My ring expertise got here up, and we opted to attempt to remedy it for different guys.
Our objective after we began was to pay hire. We thought making a pair thousand {dollars} a month from this might be incredible. We thought of it a way of life enterprise, not high-growth. It was simply Michelle and me in our storage designing rings and sending them out to prospects. We had hit on one thing. Our message resonated with prospects.
Michelle and I make a superb crew. I give you concepts, and she or he’s the implementer. A variety of our success goes to her artistic thoughts. She names the rings and develops personas. She connects the rings to prospects. Describing a hoop solely as “eight-millimeter black” didn’t reduce it.
We designed rings from distinctive supplies, comparable to Jack Daniel’s barrels or particular metals. The enterprise took off. Since then, we’ve grown dramatically. We now have over 55 folks within the Manly Bands household. About half of these are ring artisans who work in our not too long ago acquired manufacturing store in Utah.
Bandholz: When did you purchase a producer?
Ruggiero: A couple of 12 months and a half in the past. We had been their buyer for years, so we knew them nicely. Most of their enterprise was wholesale, which didn’t curiosity us — going to mom-and-pop jewelers. They retained their wholesale prospects and model title. We acquired a few of their property and introduced over workers.
Bringing on a producing crew has been probably the greatest issues we’ve carried out. It’s been unbelievable to go on the market and watch them make rings out of Fender guitar strings or metallic from an M1 Abrams tank.
Bandholz: How does in-house manufacturing impression advertising?
Ruggiero: It’s been big. Taking a digicam to the opposite aspect of the workplace and filming the crew utilizing lathes to chop the metallic rods or whiskey barrels into rings makes for unbelievable video. We have now our digicam crew on the market on a regular basis. We use that footage on our social media and in our advertisements and newsletters. We attempt to promote that as a result of most corporations within the males’s ring area don’t manufacture. They drop ship or order from abroad after which ship it out. However we would like it to final a lifetime and be one thing folks can take pleasure in.
We’ve had a whole lot of success with our army heritage assortment, the place we supply distinctive army supplies. We have now the M1 Garand rifle inventory, the wooden half, from World Conflict I. Watching our crew put that within the lathe and reduce a chunk out for a hoop is fascinating.
Our advertising for these rings talks concerning the historical past, the troopers, the place the weapon was used, and issues like that. My spouse and I studied filmmaking in faculty. We use our abilities to educate and inform a narrative. For example, I not too long ago acquired an e mail from a buyer who shared that his grandfather used to drive M1 tanks. The client gifted a kind of rings to his grandfather, and so they had fairly an emotional trade. It’s good to assist prospects join with their previous and create one thing significant.
Bandholz: The place can folks purchase a hoop from you?
Ruggiero: ManlyBands.com. We have now photos on Instagram, too. I’m on Twitter and LinkedIn.
