Thank you. We might get extra thirsty.
Well, you know how it is with water hydration.
All right. Should I get started? Well, thank you everyone for joining us today. I have the pleasure of hosting Brilliant Earth management team, Beth Gerstein, the CEO, and Pamela Catlett, Chief Brand Officer. Brilliant Earth is a digitally native jewelry company with a focus on mission to provide ethically sourced, transparent diamonds to customer. With that, I can kick off with a question for both of you, actually. Brilliant Earth aims to be the most loved and trusted jeweler for digitally native and value-driven customer. How has the brand evolved since the founding, and how do you position it today across both accessible luxury and premium? We can start with Beth, maybe.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, obviously, the brand's something we're very passionate about. The first thing that we like to do, Jana, is sort of reject the H2 of that question about values driven only.
Because we really aspire to be a brand that is compelling and resonant with all. I think what's really been exciting about the brand is we really established ourselves as a pioneer in natural diamonds 20 years ago, set a new standard for the industry, really became known as a mission-driven, purpose-driven company, and over time, we've really evolved as a brand and with the preferences of our consumer. What we know is while our mission is deeply valued and respected by our consumer, we know that more and more, it's our artistry, craftsmanship, and experience.
That is what is really hooking them and building lifetime relationships with them.
Yep.
I would just add that we continue to invest in brand. How do we drive awareness? How do we have cultural relevance, resonance? I think performance marketing has always been an area that we have done really well in, very data-driven company, very tech-driven company, and we've been building on the brand foundation more and more over the past few years and have seen tremendous results as customers recognize us more and more for our design, for our experience.
Yeah. Bridal is obviously important part of your business. Can you just speak to the current environment and sort of the outlook for engagement and recovery there, and what is driving strength at the high end, and what would it take to see broader unit recovery overall?
I think bridal, for us, bridal is an important part of the overall category. It's typically the first purchase, and so as we get that bridal customer, we can often retain the customer. We think about how can we be the jeweler for life there. That's why we invest a lot in the bridal-
Category overall, whether it's in our Bridal Collective, which we talked about last quarter, or in our proprietary signature designs that we're increasingly known for. I think the environment is relatively normalized. I think you'll always see a little bit up, a little bit kind of puts and takes quarter by quarter, but this is an enduring category-
Yeah
Where diamond engagement rings as a percent of engagements is just maintained for many, many decades.
We don't see that trend changing at all, and for us, the fact that we have natural, the fact that we have lab, we're really well-positioned with our assortment, and for that customer coming in.
Yeah. Fine jewelry was a highlight last quarter, growing very strongly, 17% of the mix now. Management, you outlined, obviously, the path to $100 million of fine jewelry. How do you define the expansion strategy from here? Where do you see the mix evolving over time? Maybe another question related to that is how should we think about sort of crossover across future engagement purchases and then fine jewelry purchases as well?
Maybe I can start in terms of just mix. We're really happy to see the growth that we have in fine jewelry.
Last quarter grew 33%.
Yeah.
Very strong double-digit growth. 17% of mix is still relatively under-penetrative versus the, typically, in most jewelers, you're going to see more like a 50/50 split or even more than 50%.
Yeah.
We have a ton of headroom there. It's a $300 billion market, and increasingly, customers are coming to us because of our fine jewelry collection.
Yeah, increasingly, we're finding that it's their first experience with the brand as a fine jewelry.
Yeah
Purchaser, and so that just represents tremendous opportunity for us, along with, obviously, continuing to expand bridal.
Yeah.
Maybe we can shift to a little bit on the marketing side. You partner with high-profile talent, celebrities. How do you select your partners, and how has the mix between organic placement versus paid partnership evolved?
Well, one of the remarkable things about Brilliant Earth is that we've really built the brand digitally in the last 10+ years, added in our 42 showrooms, which is the size of our fleet today. As an omnichannel brand, we've enjoyed tremendous growth over our tenure, but what's really interesting is it's been a performance-driven company in that regard. As we've become more and more efficient with our performance marketing, it has unlocked more opportunity for us from a brand investment. We're still a small, scrappy brand, so we have to be very original and unexpected and authentic, which is often an overused word with brands.
For us, the ability to attract partners ranging from Beyoncé to Jane Goodall, from Ring Pop to Selena Gomez, people who've chosen to wear our product, not for fee, but truly organically in some of those examples.
Yeah.
Beyoncé and Selena Gomez, for example. Those are the opportunities we see, along with just continuing to expand our network of creators. Many of those are organic.
Yeah.
Of course, we work with stylists like others, but for us, it's really incumbent upon us to be much more unexpected, because we know that we are not going to have the investment dollars of the luxury houses, and we also believe that the traditional celebrity face of is not always as aspirational for the consumer as some of the old models have been. They really want to believe there's a real relationship, a real lasting relationship. That's what the power of a Jane Goodall partnership.
Yeah
Which became our best-selling fine jewelry collection in history when we did it.
Yeah. Very impressive. Then you mentioned you have 42 showrooms now. Obviously, it was started as a digitally native. What is the place for retail for you? How is the productivity in stores, and how do you improve that, and how does that drive overall engagement in the markets you enter? Would love to hear more about unit economics on the showroom front and how you see that sort of store footprint evolving over time.
I can start that. We see omnichannel as being the winning model.
In this category. Actually, even very early on when we were launching our website, we had a very small San Francisco showroom.
Yeah.
We saw the power of when we would open a new showroom, how the entire metro lifts. We recognize the importance of having that physical footprint, and that's why we've been investing over time.
Yeah.
Do you want to?
Well, remember, the original format was showroom-.
Appointment-only showroom. In the last five years, we've really evolved. We have more and more ground floor locations here in New York. Our Nolita Elizabeth Street location was our first New York ground floor location. It was also where we tested the expansion of fine jewelry presentation there. We just opened a flagship location in Beverly Hills on Beverly Drive right next to Erewhon. Incredible location, incredible foot traffic. So far, really positive early response. It's our largest presentation of fine jewelry, and also, a real statement for us as a brand. How we learn from that and apply those learnings as we continue our expansion, which as you know, is a very surgical and strategic expansion. We have two showrooms planned for later this year. We hold ourselves to a very high ROI standard for all of our expansion plans.
We'll be applying the new concept in our future showrooms in the near term, which will include just more and more balance between bridal and fine jewelry.
I would just add, one of the great parts of the physical footprint is just how it compounds the growth of fine jewelry.
We talked last quarter about a 48% growth in the showrooms.
That just over an 18-month time period, fine jewelry has actually doubled in our showroom location. I think people will increasingly come to us. They browse as part of their experience. They see us more and more as a fine jewelry destination. I continue to think that physical experiences, especially for a younger generation, are just so critical.
Absolutely. All the research that you read, all of you read, about the desire for physical experiences has only grown. We know that retail foot traffic has now returned and surpassed from pre-pandemic levels. We know that 86% of retail dollars are flowing through physical footprints on a macro basis. We see that, and we also know in our category, touch, feel, try on experience is 2/3 of customers tell us that they expect that access and experience.
Right.
Yeah, we just want to make sure that the experience, whether you come to us online.
Yeah
Or in store, is exceptional and seamless.
Right. Just on the fine jewelry, going back a little bit, obviously you could touch a lot of the younger consumer to try your brand. What's the sort of strategy to retain those customers throughout their life and then move them up to engagement? Is there sort of a strategy to retain those customers?
Absolutely. We heavily invest in terms of CRM capability.
Yeah.
We're increasing more and more in terms of personalization capabilities that we have.
As I said, very data and tech driven, and I think that obviously AI unlocks a lot of potential there as it relates to how you communicate with your customer. Our jewelry specialists have very strong relationships with their customers. Typically, the customer comes in, they form these great relationships. Bridal is obviously a really important purchase. Oftentimes the jewelry specialist is invited to their wedding.
That's how close the connection is. We just have to continue to cultivate. I think it's how do you introduce really innovative signature collections?
Yeah.
How do you offer a really curated, personalized experience, and how do you use technology to enable that in the back end? That's what we're really focused on.
Right. You mentioned obviously innovation is a big part, newness to captivate the consumer. What is the right mix of innovation as you think about the entire portfolio, and how long does it usually take for you to launch something and go to market?
I think that you always want to have a balanced approach. What we want to do is introduce curated, beautiful design collections that we can reinforce with innovative marketing campaigns.
Yeah.
If you have too much newness, how do you focus the consumer? We really try and take a balanced approach there. We're also heavily investing in more proprietary styles. Our Sol collection, which we launched several years ago, grew 90%.
Yeah.
We're investing in these collections, building on them over time, but we have a more focused effort with our consumer.
Yeah.
We really think about how we build franchises.
Yeah
In that regard, in both bridal and fine jewelry. In our bridal category specifically, our signature designs are some of our best selling. It's what we're known for.
Right. Then we touched on this a little just in terms of personalization, virtual try-on, those sort of digital capabilities. How do you use that tool to engage more customer, where are the areas that you can continue to invest in in terms of that digital engagement component?
I think it's a mixture of, visualization has always been a really important aspect. Our Design Your Own experience is something that we really pioneered two decades ago.
Yeah.
How people think about designing, whether it is building their own ring-
Yeah
Creating their own ring, or a piece of fine jewelry, I think there's a lot of opportunity overall there. Digital experience, I think, is as much about the tools and tricks as it is about the look and feel.
What does a customer feel as they're navigating? How do you create a very frictionless experience for the customer, whether they want to go into a store showroom or whether they want to shop online?
Right. Moving on to your pricing engine. You have a proprietary pricing engine that has been a key lever in navigating peak metal prices, while maintaining your strong margins. What is the algorithm telling you about the current pricing environment, and how are you balancing margin versus conversion? Which price points are you showing the strongest demand?
Maybe I'll start with the latter part.
Yeah.
We're certainly seeing customers mix into higher value parts of our assortment. The K-shaped economy that others are commenting on.
Yeah
I think we've seen similar types of behavior there. The pricing engine overall is just something that we have created over time and allows us to take a balanced approach.
Between how do we optimize for margin, unit growth, conversion. We're really looking at a number of different signals to optimize ultimately.
We're going to continue to optimize that. Our pricing, I think the advantage that we have is that we can react very fast. As metal prices are changing, we're able to adapt very quickly and kind of optimize based on a variety of different signals that we are measuring across the board.
Yeah. Then in terms of just competitive dynamic, obviously it's a highly fragmented category, but what are you seeing in terms of competition and just overall category growth? How do you think about capturing share from others, in such a dynamic environment?
Do you want to take that or you want me to?
You go first.
Yes, it's a competitive environment. We've been in it for two decades now.
Yeah.
I think it's about how do you break through in a category?
How do you create excitement? How do you have innovation? It's about product, experience, and brand, and those are the three areas that we have invested in, and where we excel.
I think it's also a good example of we think about both market share gains and-
Yeah
Market expansion gains in terms of, again, back to fine jewelry, you look at how nascent our fine jewelry business was just five years ago.
Yeah.
That's a market expansion opportunity for us. We look at it, and of course, we look at the entire landscape from pure play digital players to luxury players. We also like to look outside our category-
Yeah
Just to understand what is most compelling and attractive to consumers to help us be even better.
I would just add, keep in mind that this is a category where 2/3 of the industry are local independents.
Yeah.
We have a lot of advantages based on our scale, our purchasing power, our social media presence, all of the capabilities that we've invested in, the brand overall, over these local independents. I think that that's how we're thinking about competition.
Yeah. Do you have a target demographic for your brand in terms of which age cohort that is best for you? Is there a sort of strategy on specific demographic that you go after? Sort of what is, I guess, untapped opportunity in terms of demographic perspective? Is there an age group that you want to penetrate more with?
I would start with, in terms of bridal, you're always going to target that 25-40 year old.
Yeah.
Over our past 20 years, our customer has-
Yeah
Stayed that demographic. Millennial and Gen Z is the core demographic. Fine jewelry, I think, is more expansive than that.
Certainly, and I think has given us a chance to expand there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In terms of marketing, we touched on it a little bit, but how has your marketing strategy evolved over time? I mean, since the founding, and what is sort of the right level of spend for you in terms of marketing, and how do you optimize efficiency versus organic growth and just the spend ROI?
Maybe I can start with what has stayed the same.
Yeah.
Even from the beginning with social media, we've always been very early there.
We were just talking about how in our early days, we would invest in Facebook ads at $0.35.
Yeah.
We were very early adopters, back when Facebook was called Facebook instead of Meta. We've continued to invest in social media, have a really strong presence there. We've always been full funnel in terms of our marketing efforts. We have always been very efficiency driven.
We have invested in in-house capabilities to ensure that we're driving efficiency overall. Maybe you can talk more about Roosevelt.
Just as a brand, we're increasingly investing in the brand-
Yeah
As we have more efficiency on the other side of the marketing engine, and it's about how we are either triggering and/or participating in cultural events.
Yeah.
I think our Ring Pop collaboration is a great example for those who didn't see it.
If you remember your first ring, it was probably a $0.35 Ring Pop candy ring. We launched a cocktail ring in five colors, that sold out. Then was in such high demand from our community that we brought it back for Valentine's Day. It's been a really, really good example of how two brands that are beloved by many coming together can create something really fun and resonant and unexpected.
That's a really good example of how we think about brand-building opportunities.
Yeah
That money can't buy.
Right. Then just one more financial question for you, Beth. You obviously reiterated the guide of mid-single digit sales growth. What milestones sort of underpin that outlook, and how do you think about the path to mid-single digits for the year and to a more accelerated sort of algorithm? What are some bridges that could get to you in the longer term?
I think we've been very consistent about the growth strategy. Maybe I can just reiterate what those are.
Yeah.
Starting with brand building, and how do we drive awareness overall, so that we are top of mind as customers are entering this purchasing cycle. Second is the omnichannel showroom footprint.
Yeah.
How do we both make sure that we have exceptional digital and physical experience, and we're innovating in terms of the new experiences. For example, with Date Night in our Beverly Hills.
Yeah
We can talk more about that.
The third area is with fine jewelry, and you can see just how the mix has increased year-over-year, and what kind of opportunity that brings, especially going into Q4.
Yeah
Where it's much more heavy fine jewelry loaded as people are buying it for gifting around the holiday season. We've been consistent about the strategy. We continue to invest in those three areas that's what helped drive the 6% growth that we had-
Yeah
In Q1 and what we see for the future as well.
Yeah, and on the supply chain side, obviously, there has been some volatility in terms of the pricing. How are you sort of managing that in the current environment? Then how are you approaching natural versus lab-grown sourcing today? How does the tariff volatility impact any planning? How do you sort of leverage your asset light model, in the current environment to mitigate some of the risks?
I think that the business model gives us inherent advantages. The fact that we're asset light, the fact that we have geographic diversity with our supplier base, we can react very quickly-
Yeah
Based on changing tariffs, and we have a lot of flexibility. We own all of our styles. We have flexibility in terms of where we want to make sure that they're-
Yeah
Manufactured and produced. Obviously there's things out of our control.
Yeah.
I think we have a lot in our control, and we can adapt our prices based on what we're seeing in the metal environment, for example. We also have, I think, a nice amount of buyer power as it relates to our suppliers, and we're in very close relationships with our vendor base. They're really extended parts of our team, and so we're able to mitigate a lot of the changing dynamics within different countries.
Yeah. This question is for both of you. Obviously, you've talked about brand building. What is sort of your goal as you think about over the 5-10 years? What does it look like? What do you want your brand to be, and how do you benchmark your brand? Maybe that aspiration that you have longer term in terms of brand that you want to become.
I think it's how you started off.
Yeah.
We want to be the most loved and trusted jewelry brand. We want to be global in nature.
I think we have a lot of aspirations overall and at the scale we have, we still have a lot of opportunity.
Yeah.
We also, as I said, we aspire to redefine the category, we look outside of the category-
Yeah
For inspiration. My background in consumer, 15 years at Nike, other very prominent consumer brands. We keep our eyes on the horizon in that regard, and we look at brands that have reinvented their categories, whether it be Erewhon, the grocery store that we're next door to, or Restoration Hardware, that retail as hospitality. We really look to those outside to really think about how we can continue to evolve, be disruptive, be innovative, and always be relevant to the consumer.
Yeah. To your point, where else are your core customers shopping elsewhere in terms of apparel or other brands? Is there sort of a crossover between Brilliant Earth customer?
Other specific brands?
Yeah.
We haven't done that level of research.
Yeah
On the consumer.
Okay.
I couldn't speak to that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's interesting you do look at outlets.
We think about Coach, for example.
Yeah. Exactly.
As a good parallel.
Yeah.
That certainly they're brands. We feel like we're in that accessible luxury.
Yeah.
For us, that's still a more premium type of consumer.
Sure.
We're a more premium brand. We are not discount oriented. We don't do discounts.
Yeah
Just kind of philosophically as a company.
Yeah.
That's how we think about our positioning overall.
Yeah. Just on the pricing front, and AOV obviously benefited from the mix going higher into the higher priced items, where do you see your AOV evolving? Especially as your fine jewelry grows, how do you see that being balanced between your engagement side and fine jewelry?
We're happy to see that the average order value has been increasing overall. I think we talked about last quarter for new customers in fine jewelry that we saw 40% new customer growth over $500.
Yeah.
We're investing more over that $500 price point in fine jewelry.
Yeah.
We do invest to provide a variety of different options for our consumer for a variety of different budgets, but I think as we continue to become more and more premium and develop that s election for our customers, we have been successful at migrating our customers up.
Yeah. Just on one point on the financials, so obviously, you have a long-term model. How do you sort of bridge from today's 2026 to your long-term financial goals? Like, what needs to happen? What are your building blocks to get there?
I think it's the three that I mentioned.
Yeah
Where you look at brand awareness. We still have relatively low unaided awareness there.
So tons of opportunity. Fine jewelry, if you just look at the growth that we have seen year- after- year.
As that business becomes more of a scale business as we get over $100 million, you're going to start to see that compound even more.
The showroom, as I said, is I think one of the ways that fine jewelry continues to compound and grows even stronger.
Yeah. Just on the fine jewelry side, do you have data on how often your customers buy fine jewelry with you? Is there room to, I guess, in terms of engagement level, can you up that frequency of purchase with you?
I think so. We've seen nice performance in repeat.
We've also seen nice performance in self-purchase. I think both of those have a lot of opportunity overall.
Yeah.
The way we think about the assortment is gifting, self-purchase, how do we drive repeat? How can we continue to break through to our customers?
As long as you're introducing very innovative, trend forward, design oriented product, you're going to keep that customer engaged.
Right.
I think a lot of opportunity to continue to drive repeat, but we're really happy with the performance that we've seen to date there.
Yeah. For both of you, what do you think is the most underappreciated factor about Brilliant Earth, and what do you want the audience to t ake away about the brand and the company?
I think that just that we have so much opportunity as it relates to our core customer, the brand that we have cultivated for so many years. There's a lot of love and trust in our brand that is going to help us propel forward.
Yeah.
Don't get nervous. She gave a brand answer. I'm going to give a financial answer.
Okay.
The discipline of the company. The model is a very unusual model, and the discipline with which the company executes is, I would say, best in class.
Yeah. What are you most excited about in terms of, out of all those various growth opportunity, what are you most excited about, and what is your favorite collection that you have?
Oh, I can't.
I can't actually choose any.
It's like choosing your favorite child.
Your favorite child. Yeah.
It's difficult. The latest one is always my most favorite. I actually love our Pacific Green collection. That's a recent favorite of mine.
Okay.
We have a color that we have invested in that we've now expanded into other jewelry. It's really beautiful, and I encourage you all to look at it.
Yeah.
I can't answer that.
Yeah.
That's the hard part of, again, I worked in sneakers, so of course, I had a large sneaker supply, but that was at the employee discount of 50% off a $100 shoe or $200 shoe. It's a little different model in this category.
Yeah.
What I'm so proud of about Brilliant Earth is the freshness and the hunger to always be moving forward and innovating, which is not always new, new. It's often better. The fact that we introduced Sol, which was our first sort of iconic collection in October of 2024, for which we have a patent and trademark on the design, and it was a big brand moment for us. We did billboards in Times Square, and it was a really great launch and learning. We have stuck with it consistently in a very disciplined way, and it is just growing at a very impressive and steady rate as we bring more breadth to that particular collection, as breadth from both price as well as design.
I think that's just a really good model of how we approach the business, and that is an easy fine jewelry example. That's true in our signature bridal designs as well, in terms of how we really stick with success.
Yeah
Then expand on it.
I think one more thing to add, which I think I'd be remiss not to, is Jane Goodall, I think-
Yes
Is such a personal connection for me, and being able to work with such a legend and have her really validate all of the work that we've done-
Yeah
Over so many decades was really just personally a moment for me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I really treasure-
Yes
The time that-
For sure.
We were with her in Tanzania.
Oh, wow.
We were with her 10 days before she passed, and so obviously it's a big hole for the world to fill, but we had the benefit of being able to work closely with her, and that was, I think, just incredibly meaningful.
That for a person who dedicated her life to the environment and social equity, and she had spent her life not wearing or believing in jewelry because of the environmental and social ravages-
Yeah
Of mining and other practices, for her to essentially endorse our brand, that's a very unique credential that we're very, very proud of.
Yeah. Well, thank you, both of you, for joining us today.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I hope everyone.
It was nice talking to you.
Yeah, checks out Brilliant Earth.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Check us out. All right. Thank you.