Liam Whittaker: Heirest founder on what the new online jewellery retailer can offer consumers

New online jewellery startup Heirest aims to reset the market by offering consumers a unique experience.

Customers can customise every detail, from metal and gemstone to cut, carat and engraving - with every choice visualised instantly and pricing updated in real time.

Founder Liam Whittaker says smaller brands can utilise lab-grown diamonds and new technology, but they don't have the same reach as big companies, and his work at Zuru has encouraged him to think big. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now, as I was telling you earlier, former Zuru executive
has launched a new business to shake up the jewelry industry.
Air Rest is an online store where you can design
and you can customize your jewelry before you buy it.
And because the jewels are synthetic, you will save yourself
a fair chunk of change as well. Liam Whitkett is
the founder and the CEO of airst And with us now.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Hi, Lim, hey here there are you going very well?
Thank you?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Now why the move from kids toys to jewelry?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Ah, I actually took about a year off.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
I had some personal health issues that I was dealing with,
and I was in Bali and came across this category
and thought that no one's really given it a good
shake up, and thought I could take a lot of
my operational learnings from a business like Zoro and really
try and challenge the category.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Quote and what is it that you were challenging? Is
it what people were buying these stones form what they
were selling them for.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
A bit of a combination.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
I see the category as divided into the two different
main competitor sets. You've got the legacy brands that obviously
have unlimited resources, and the infrastructure to kind of build
anything they want on a global scale. I'd argue that
they don't really obsess over the customer in a way
that the modern day jeweler does, who's more of an
independent and they're using things like these lab grown diamond
technologies and doing innovative designs at a far more affordable price.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
But they can't really impact scale.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
And change because they are independent and they don't really
have the sophistication to kind of build a global business.
And so I think from my sort of experience and background,
I've kind of been been brought up in a business
where you have to think large, and we've kind of
had a global ambition from day one. So if you
basically take the idea of leaning into a digital experience,
putting customers at the heart of everything, we've got a

(01:36):
two hundred and fifty thousand different designs that people can
do on day one. Every decision you make is completely financialized,
so you know the cost of every single decision you're making.
And I guess because we don't have physical retail stores
on a day to day basis, we can drop about
forty percent out of our P and L and we're
investing a large portion of that back into price points
for customers to make it more accessible, as well as

(01:57):
just really obsessing on a best in class digital experience.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
It's difficult to be online only at the moment the way.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Yeah, I think consumer sentiments probably at an all time low.
I mean that's probably a little bit hyperbolic, but certainly
not far off. And so I think that's why you
see us leaning into things like pop up experiences. So
during fashion Week we're done in Brita Art and so
for a week we're taking over a space people can
come and try products on see things.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Word of mouth's being massive for us.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
So over the past twelve months, just through my own
personal Instagram and I'm by no means of celebrity, we've
done about six hundred thousand dollars in sales, clearly from
friends and family buying product and then telling their friends
and family. So I think the network effects really important,
but I think showing up in physical presence is going
to be really important throughout the calendar year for us.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
It's just not a staple to our business.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Well good on you. Somebody was saying that part of
the problem with being online only at the moment is
there's a real lack of trust in what you're seeing
online because AI has kind of confused people. Are you
experiencing that?

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Probably not to the level I've certainly seen it, And
that's something we've been incredibly diligent on. I think everything
that we're doing is still are centered around emotion and
human and so you look at the quality of the
content that we're posting, it's very premium and very well executed.
And certainly we're not leveraging AI content creation at all.
We're leveraging AI in parts of our operational business model

(03:15):
to make us more efficient, but I think at a
creation level, we've got to keep things pretty authentic.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Now, talk to me about the synthetic stones, right, because
what is the point of a synthetic stone? Is it
going to hold its value? Is it going to be
an airloom?

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, it's a really interesting question.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
And I guess like our brand, being called Erist is
all around creating future airlimbs. And I see, you know,
natural diamonds versus synthetic diamonds or lab gron diamonds is
a really interesting conversation. If you look at America, for example,
in twenty ten zero point three percent of engagement things were.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Made with lab gron diamonds. Last year it was sixty
one percent. Wow, So the adoption rate is huge.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
And these diamonds, like calling them synthetic versus lab or
natural or whatever, it's that they're structurally, chemically and optically
identical their mind counterparts. The only difference is the process
in which they were created. So what you're finding is
an IGI or a GIA certification. If you're finding a
diamond of one spec versus a lab or natural that
is the exact same product, but you're probably paying it

(04:14):
a twentieth of the price, but tend to ten to
twenty percent of the value of a natural stone.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
I think that to.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
Your exact point, though the maid there is an emotional
argument behind natural stones versus lab for sure, and that's
why we're not leading with engagement rings within our business
because I think that's a harder job to be done
versus like you know, airrings, bracelets, necklaces. But the argument around,
I guess economic erosions becoming less and less credible.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
I'd argue because if you look at the.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
Price of lab diamonds, they're now a tenth to the
price of what they were ten years ago. You could
pay two thousand dollars for an equivalent natural stone of
ten thousand dollars, and if you lose one hundred percent
of that value, which you wouldn't, you've.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Lost two grand.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
You walk out of a store of the natural diamond
the exact same spec, you've probably lost forty percent, So
your net loss is now greater. So thinks like an
interesting perspective of how the market's now shifted.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Make good luck with it. I hope you go global
and do all the things you wanted. It sounds like
a really great idea. That's Liam Whitaker, AIREST founder.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
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