Nikolay Piriankov is the founder and CEO of Taylor & Hart an award-winning London jeweller specialising in custom engagement rings. In truth they are a pseudo eCommerce business who use the web to gather enquiries for consultations with their experts. They launched in 2014 as Rare Pink, rebranded in 2016 and now doing about £2.5 million in revenue.
About the business
- eCommerce Business Structure – Bricks and Clicks
- Product Range Scale – niche
- On a Bespoke platform
- Datawarehouse built around Salesforce
- Located in the UK & Bulgaria
- 6 team members located in Bulgaria, 3 developers and 3 marketers
- 13 team members in London working on production, sales, and content
- Plugins – Zapier and HubSpot
Listen to learn how Taylor & Hart handles insurance for shipping their rings.
Getting Started
Nikolay Piriankov was introduced to the world of eCommerce as a teenager growing up in South Africa. He played around with a couple ideas, built a website for the World Cup in 2010, and enjoyed various small successes.
Ten years ago, he left to study in England, where he continued to learn about eCommerce and digital marketing. Meanwhile, his friend Dave started a traditional diamond company. Dave reached out to Nikolay to take advantage of the beginning of online luxury retail, combining Dave’s diamonds with Nikolay’s eCommerce knowledge.
Representing the Customer Journey
When Nikolay started the business, he began as an eCommerce company. However, 95% of the customers refused to do the entire touchless experience. They wanted to talk at some point in the process. So they adjusted to become a hybrid business, and are now optimizing for the best version of hybrids.
When the customer comes to the site, they may make an inquiry. If they qualify, they will be introduced to a consultant, who will find out more about their requirements. If the customer is in the vicinity of London, they are invited to visit Taylor & Hart.
Listen to learn why London customers are encouraged to make a visit.
Most customers have a ‘don’t make me think’ philosophy towards the purchase, and want to trust Taylor & Hart to advise them. Nikolay gives them the same experience they’d have if they went to a traditional jeweller, but from the comfort of their own home and with a 30-40% lower price.
Listen to learn why the expansion of the company is city-based, not country-based, and why New York would be a good next location.
Remarketing
There is a moment in time when a person is looking for an engagement ring, and then they’re not looking anymore, hopefully ever again. So doing display advertising on Facebook and Instagram is ineffective for Taylor & Hart. What are the chances they’d find the right customer at that one moment in time? Also, many people may click on their ad because it’s interesting, but have no intent to buy.
To more effectively market, Taylor & Hart have recently started using videos to engage customers, and then waiting for a certain level of engagement before going forward. They will show a video that is a minute and a half long. Then they build a remarketing list out of the people that watched for longer than one minute, as they have gauged that those people have some kind of purchasing intent.
Most Awesome Thing Right Now
The most awesome thing right now is bridging the gap between the virtual and the physical using browser-based rendering. Every ring they make is designed in the 3D CAD software. These recent innovations allow browsers like Chrome and Firefox to render the files in 3D, so the customer can zoom in and out, rotate, and change the metal colors. It’s complete customization in the hands of the customer.
Listen to learn what the next step in innovation augmentation is for the future of aesthetic designs.
eCommerce Book Top Tip
- Nudgeby Cass Sunstein and Richard Thalor
eCommerce Traffic Top Tip
- Outreach and content — look for opportunities to speak to journalists, bloggers, and people in your space who are featuring and talking about what you’re doing
You can hear about all this on the podcast, for free – right now…
Tool Top Tip
- Slack
Start Up Top Tip
- Get started through a basic landing page approach and iterate from there. Don’t undervalue the importance of a single page. Test endlessly to see what people want.
Interview Links
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