Réia Diamonds, a lab-grown diamond brand, conducted a Red Rose Campaign this year. This initiative looked to transform ordinary days into moments of happiness. Over 10,000 roses were distributed across Bangalore and Coimbatore, creating smiles, surprises, and what it calls instant joy for countless people many of whom had never experienced such a gesture before.
Medianews4u.com caught up with Prapanjj S. K. Kota, Founder, CEO, Réia Diamonds
Q. From the outset Réia Diamonds was clear that it couldn’t be like any other jewellery brand. What tactics were adopted in areas like designs, customisation and pricing to differentiate itself and standout?
We have ensured that we don’t do the conventional stock up and sell, rather we follow the route of listening to our consumers by keeping an in house jewellery designer at each of our outlets and ensure we provide the best design to our customer either through customisation or by giving an in stock product.
In terms of price a different methodology that we had adopted from Costco is to give maximum value to our consumer by keeping a membership called the carat club where they can avail a zero making charges for any diamond jewellery either through customisation or in-stock pickup.
Q. Which are the TGs and key markets that it is focussing on for growth? What trends are being seen in the rising demand for accessible, ethical, and contemporary diamond jewellery?
Our target audience is the corporate women and we focus on engagement rings as we know the milestone is important for every women. The key market we are dominating is in the lab grown diamond engagement rings category as we believe, being able to integrate ourselves in a critical decision like the engagement ring is something that we are proud of.
The trends for accessible luxury has been growing on a quarter on quarter basis as many individuals are conscious about budgets but do not want to compromise as well, thus enabling us to be in the sweet spot of accessible luxury.
Q. This year Réia Diamonds raised Rs. 2 crore in a pre-seed funding round to expand its engagement ring and everyday jewellery collections. What are the investors expectations? What goals have been set in the coming three to five years?
The investor expectations for us is to make Reia diamonds a household name in terms of engagement rings and we are striving to be the pioneers of the space, we have strategically kept a combination of both flagship stores as well as Aisle Stores – Reia Exclusive Engagement Ring stores where people can browse through either a specific engagement ring or if they are looking for everyday wear jewellery they can come to our flagship stores.
The goal for us in the next three years, is to become an engagement ring leader and not shy away from being able to take the commitment of creating the perfect engagement ring in just 7 days irrespective of the complexity of the design.
Q. How the festive season been this year compared with last year?
The festive season has been generous in terms of the acceptance of lab grown diamonds as a gifting opportunity for many people. However due to the spike in gold prices, heavier purchases have slowed down.
Q. The Red Rose Campaign is very novel. Other companies mainly do traditional marketing like an online video campaign. Could you talk about the brainstorming with the creative agency that led to the Red Rose Campaign?
Reia is proudly an in-house creative team where we pride ourselves in the ideation as well as our execution.
The brainstorming behind the Red Rose Campaign was very simple: How do we make everyone smile without any reason since we wanted to promote the concept of “Just Because”. Since sometimes things come with no strings attached and that was the ideation behind our red rose.
Q. Could you talk about the increase in store footfall around activation zones that happened as a result?
We saw significant traction in terms of store footfall as people were happy to have a conversation with us, and this is just the start as we know that every idea has a creative fatigue attached to it, and the creative team at Reia is brainstorming on more ideas on how to make us stand out in a sea of jewellers.
Q. What other marketing innovations can one expect?
The innovations while they are at a novel stage, one can expect a lot more physical activites being endorsed by the brand and we are looking forward to creating a buzz in the market of not just being another jeweller, but a name where people recall it with a smile.
Q. How does the company balance performance marketing with brand building? Is it possible to achieve these goals simultaneously?
It is a fine line to balance as performance marketing has a immediate tangible output that can be expected whereas brand building as the earned media that one cannot really measure until time passes by.
At Reia, we have kept both of them at a equal weightage as we are competing against giants like Caratlane, Bluestone where jewellery is synonomous with them, and just sales will not bring in the desired results we require. Hence our performance marketing is based on two major metrics – The CPM and the ROAS and our brand building is based on the NPS score that we track on an internal basis.
Q. Could you talk about the effort that goes into the in-store experience? Could you shd light on the expansion plans into 12 cities?
The in-store experience is handled by our merchandising team and we get into the details of the smell of the store, the lighting of the store to even the thank you-cards which the consumer receives.
We want to make the engagement ring purchase as intimate as possible and we have our customers to thank as they are also the biggest critics that we are grateful for, they vehemently help us understand how to improve.
We want to expand to cities where lab grown diamonds are not nascent, rather they are accepted along with cities where engagement rings are a concept that people adorn towards.
Q. Is e-commerce a very small part of the business because consumers would want to try on jewellery first?
Yes, currently at Reia, e-commerce is a small part of business, but that does not mean we have ignored it, as we can see that our consumers take screenshots of our designs and come to our store for the design.
Further we did not just build a e-commerce off the shelf as a lot of jewellers just purchase ready made designs, rather at Reia, each page has been carefully created by the Visual team at Reia as every touch point is special for us and we want each consumer to see the thought behind each button placed.
Q. How does the company use advances in AR, VR, MR to build a strong narrative online?
We currently have not explored the angle as we are building on fundamentals before diving into innovativeness such as the AR,VR and MR.
Q. Other brands in the category use celebrities. Will Reia Diamonds also go down that route at some point?
We are exploring opportunites and we are keeping open ears for the same. We are looking for a celebrity who wants to make a difference in the market and not just a celebrity who wants to be a brand ambassador, we want to tie up with someone who understands the business and understands how engagement rings are sentimental and how they can help us reach wider audiences.
Q. Could you shed light on Reia Diamonds’ social media strategy to participate in the consumer conversation online?
We are looking to have more endoresements through the affiliate influencer marketing route as we can see how the word-of-mouth of many consumers are growing in nature and we want to be able to ride the wave accordingly.
Further with our exclusive engagement rings collections being launched in the coming months, we’re looking forward to conversations that can revolve into more of a design nature than a price point nature, since we can see many consumers willing to pay a premium if the design justifies the same.
Q. How does Reia Diamonds approach B2B marketing through things like workshops, seminars?
We currently have not explored the B2B marketing route as we have a single focus – How do we get more eyeballs on Reia and that is something that the team critically thinks about on a daily basis since we want to be the leaders in the market and that is our focus.
