November 5, 2025 • 24 mins
Can your brand win by being everywhere?
In this 208th episode of The E-Comm Show, Andrew Maff talks with Monil Kothari, Founder of Haus of Brilliance, about building visibility across Amazon, Target, QVC and more. Learn how Haus of Brilliance sells $10 K earrings on Amazon, manages a 4 000 + SKU catalog, and keeps margins strong while scaling a luxury brand across marketplaces.
What You’ll Learn
- How Haus of Brilliance sells luxury fine jewelry (yes, even $10K earrings) on Amazon.
- Why marketplace visibility beats exclusivity for driving steady growth.
- The secret to maintaining margins while scaling across multiple platforms.
- How a massive catalog creates organic discovery and long-term sales momentum.
- What’s next for Haus of Brilliance’s DTC marketing and brand storytelling.
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CONNECT WITH GUEST:
📸 Instagram:: Haus of Brilliance
📻 LinkedIn: Haus of Brilliance
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Monil Kothari (00:00):
And for us, the whole crux of the business model
is offer as much as possible, asin many spots as possible.
Together, a big part of ourbusinesses that were very multi
channel and have been since dayone.
Narrator (00:14):
Welcome to the E comm Show podcast. I am your host.
Andrew Maff, owner and founderof BlueTusker, from
groundbreaking industry updatesto success stories and
strategies. Get to know the insand outs of the e Commerce
Industry, from top leaders inthe space. Let's get into it.
Andrew Maff (00:29):
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of
the E comm show as usual. I'myour host, Andrew Maff, and
today I'm joined by the amazingMonil Kothari, who is a founder
and President over at Haus ofBrilliance. Monil, how you
doing, buddy? You ready for agood show?
Monil Kothari (00:41):
I am. I'm good.
How are you?
Andrew Maff (00:43):
Doing good! I appreciate you doing this with
us. I am super excited to talkto you about your brand, because
obviously Haus of Brilliancebeing in the jewelry space,
wildly competitive and difficultspace, but once you break
through, it can be fantastic.
Hence why we're having you onthe show right now. So really
appreciate you being here withus. I always like to start these
off kind of stereotypically andjust kind of give you the floor.
Tell us a little bit about yourbackground, like where you got
(01:06):
started, how you got in Haus ofBrilliance, and we'll take it
from there,
Monil Kothari (01:11):
Sure. So if I go really far back, I think it
started when at the age of one,I swallowed a diamond and had to
be rushed to the hospital tohave it pumped out of my
stomach. So, you know,
Andrew Maff (01:21):
Jeez, that is way far back. Yeah!
Monil Kothari (01:24):
Cool story though, you know, wild as it
sounds, but yes, familybusiness, kind of, I'm a third
generation jeweler. Mygrandfather started out in
India, and this was around thetime that India started
producing finished diamonds. Youknow, it was more of that mid
market, commercial goods, andthat labor arbitrage model
(01:45):
basically opened up India fortrade. He started. Then my
father joined. And then in thelate 80s, they moved here. And,
you know, it was the late 80s,early 90s, when the entire
middle class blew up. And sothey built a pretty strong
business here there werewholesalers and manufacturers to
many of the major retailers,although many of their customers
(02:07):
are, unfortunately, no longer inbusiness. But, you know, talking
about the service, merchandise,the Sears, those retailers were
the ones we were working with.
But then post 2007 when the, youknow, when we the financial
crisis hit, you know, we got hitin like a triple whammy. Our big
retailers, a lot of them,started going under, or were
(02:28):
financially very unstable. Thenour business just happened to
shrink here. And then the thirdfactor was, whichever retailer
was still standing around,started going directly to India
for sourcing from themanufacturers. And so eventually
we were squeezed out. And, youknow, for a couple years, it was
(02:48):
just kind of this holdingpattern. And then I joined in
2014 I had one year of startupexperience, not a lot of, you
know, education outside ofschool, otherwise. And I didn't
have much work to do. I hadtrained in India for 18 months,
came back and was like, Well,cool, let's do something big.
And then the business was deadagain. And so my father made an
offhand comment about having allthis sample jewelry, why don't
(03:12):
you sell it online? And I tookthat as a Go ahead. And I think
our first customer wasoverstock.com I even emailed
them from my personal email,because I didn't even have a
company email address at thatpoint. So what started as a
diversion really has blown upinto this sort of multi channel
fine jewelry business. Covid wasa huge accelerant for us, and
(03:36):
the momentum has not actuallyslowed down as much as we
thought it would, and thebusiness continues to grow. And,
yeah, and that brings me here, Iguess, with you!
Andrew Maff (03:48):
You made it. You This is it. This is this is how
you know you made it. I've hadpeople mentioned that before,
and they do the story, andthey're like, and now I'm here
with you, like, this is thepeak. Like this is you shouldn't
tell anyone about this. Tellsome people, otherwise I got to
stop doing it. But interesting,it's crazy that you know that
(04:09):
all that story and it basicallycame from, like, let's just get
rid of some of this stuff. Andnow, now it's turned into this
multi million dollar business,which is crazy. So tell me a
little bit about like, theproduct line and the
differentiator, because jewelryspace is wildly competitive and
standing out is difficult. Sowhat's kind of your
differentiator in your approach?
Monil Kothari (04:28):
Yeah, you're actually, you really hit the
nail on the head aboutcompetitiveness. We're probably
one of the only categories, andI'm excluding, like, you know,
the branded Tiffany and HarryWinston products from this. But
fine jewelry is really a lot ofit is purchased on price. To a
certain extent. That's one ofthe biggest factors that go into
this. But you know, we doprimarily fine jewelry. We don't
(04:53):
do anything cost that's a wholedifferent ball game than you're
competing with everyone fromChina. We are a diamond house at
core, historically. So westarted off with a lot of
diamond jewelry, you know,fashion pieces, a lot of
bracelets. My father was a verybig bracelet manufacturer in the
90s. But once we had gotten pastthe diamond stuff, we wanted to
(05:15):
expand. You know, we can't doeverything. We don't know
everything. But jewelry isn'tjust diamond jewelry, so we
started expanding and lookingfor partners in other
categories. So gemstone, pearl,chain, men's jewelry, super high
end, unique pieces that justhappen to be sitting in
someone's office and trying tobuild a massive assortment where
(05:40):
think we're at like, 4000 5000SKUs. I lose track of this
number very often. My goal is toget to 10,000 by the end of next
year. And it all boils down to,you know, we carry something for
everyone. Fine Jewelry is ahighly considered personal
choice for many people onlineand having even like 10
(06:02):
variations of the same item,which you wouldn't do in any
other category, can actuallydrive more volume. So for us,
the whole crux of the businessmodel is offer as much as
possible, as in many spots aspossible. So the other big part
of our businesses that were verymulti channel and have been
since day one.
Andrew Maff (06:20):
So where else are you selling besides your own
website right now?
Monil Kothari (06:23):
I mean, you name it, we're most likely there, or
we're in talks. Overstock wasthe first one, although now
we're not with them anymore, butAmazon was our biggest, and is
still our biggest, but we are onfirst dibs. Cherish QVC, Kohl's,
drama shop, boscos, I'm like,missing out, like, another five.
We're in TSC, Canada. We're in,oh yeah, we just launched on
(06:48):
Target marketplace last week.
Andrew Maff (06:50):
Congratulations.
Monil Kothari (06:51):
Thank you. That was, that was a big win for us.
We're in more sites than I can,like, think of off the top of my
head. But that's the wholepoint. Is Belk, that's a bit
another big partner this yearthat we've, like, started
working with. So we love ourpartners. I think a big piece of
or a big our success, a lot ofit has been driven by having
(07:11):
strong partnerships at the endof the day.
Andrew Maff (07:13):
Yeah, you mentioned Amazon's your biggest one
Monil Kothari (07:17):
By volume. Yeah.
Andrew Maff (07:19):
Interesting by volume. Naturally. What I When?
When you say Amazon in the samesentence as fine jewelry, it's
always like, what, like, how?
So, how are you because ifsomeone's searching like,
bracelet, diamond bracelet,like, there's billions of things
that could show up. Costumejewelry can show up. Like, it's
it's a nightmare, and Amazon isobviously traditionally a race
(07:41):
to the bottom, for the part, interms of price point. So how are
you, how are you able to kind ofdrive that volume on Amazon?
Monil Kothari (07:51):
I have so many thoughts on Amazon just because
I've been on there for almostnine years. I think when people
started selling jewelry online,there was way less, there were
way less channels to begin with.
First of all, most of theretailers weren't even looking
at drop ship D to C was justemerging, and that wasn't for
high value items. It was, Idon't know, sunglasses like a
Warby Parker. So Amazon reallywas actually Amazon, eBay were
(08:14):
actually, like, the onlychannels to sell jewelry without
having to focus on brandbuilding. It was just a place to
move diamond studs, tennisbracelets, generic stuff. And
that's sort of how we started. Ithink our first listings didn't
even have a brand on it. But inthe first couple years of
Amazon, the business was reallygood. But then once Covid hit,
(08:34):
everyone and their mom wanted tostart selling on Amazon, not
just in our category. I'm sureyou remember, everyone was
trying to be an Amazon seller,and so a lot of people in India,
for example, manufacturers wereDirect Shipping inventory to
FBA. So it became a verychallenging spot. But I think at
this point, Amazon has so muchtrust with its customer base. It
(08:56):
is why they're the biggestmarketplace. People actually
have a lot more confidence thanyou think about buying jewelry
on Amazon. I think last year,our biggest ticket item was
$10,000 like, a pair ofearrings, and it didn't even
come back. And it wasn't fraud,which I thought all of those
things were going to happen.
Yeah, I think people have a lotof trust in Amazon, and it did
(09:19):
bring out a lot of those race tothe bottom vendors. But you know
what this year, one of thesilver linings of the tariff,
one of the very few silver letme really reinforce that use
silver linings is people realizeAmazon is not a profitable
business if you're justcompeting on price between PPC
returns. Ours is a high returncategory, fulfillment cost,
(09:42):
holding costs. This is a verydifficult business to make money
on, if you're just competing onprice, no matter how much
volume. So we've staked out ourplace on Amazon. You know, we're
not the cheapest, but we alsohave high quality product, good
service. We've been around longenough our listings, our top
selling listings. Have hundredsof reviews, which is a lot for
fine jewelry, and I think that'swhy this year, I have actually
(10:06):
seen our Amazon business growmore than the last couple of
years.
Andrew Maff (10:10):
Wow. How about we don't have to get into
specifics, but in terms of yourmargins on Amazon, have they
also grown? Or are you seeingbecause of the increase in
competition, in CPCs and FBAfees and all that fun stuff that
you're it's kind of shrinking alittle bit.
Monil Kothari (10:24):
So I would say the margins were not healthy, or
as healthy as I'd have likedthem to be the last three years,
because I think we were facingan uphill battle. I would have
said the same the first coupleof months of this year, but
we've been checking our numbersthe last three to six months,
we've actually seen marginsslowly, slowly, like go upwards,
(10:45):
not huge leaps by any means, buteven a couple of percent points
on Amazon is a big deal. So weare seeing that we're also being
way more disciplined about thecosts as well. And we're doing
the reverse of what other peopleare doing. We're keeping less in
FBA, except our best sellers andkeeping more in house here. So
also our operational costs andlike storage costs have come
(11:06):
down. So yeah, yeah, things seemto finally be getting better. On
Amazon, after a couple of yearsof stagnation.
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Andrew Maff (11:45):
How are you how are you marketing it? Because
jewelry is, it's such achallenging thing to, you know,
to market, just because, similarto anything really design
related, it's the beauties inthe eye of the beholder, right?
Like you could run the perfectad in front of the perfect
person with the perfectmessaging, but if they just
(12:06):
don't like the way it looks,they're not going to even click,
let alone buy. So how are youkind of getting the messaging
out there and driving thetraffic to these different
channels?
Monil Kothari (12:16):
So I we have two ways of approaching it, you
know, the company, HubSpot?
Andrew Maff (12:21):
Yeah.
Monil Kothari (12:23):
Co founders wrote a book years ago. I think it was
called, like, inbound marketingor something, and nothing to do
with jewelry, but I had read it,and for me, it comes down to
two, inbound marketing andoutbound. The outbound is what
we do on Amazon, which is a lotof that is the PPC stuff, right?
Like just advertising, and ourcatalog is massive, but one of
the very interesting parts ofour business that almost no
other category can touch isbecause we have so much product,
(12:47):
and all these products havekeywords and pictures, and
there's just so much variety, weget this halo effect of people
just finding the productsbecause we're the only one who
happens to be carrying them. Anda great example I have is last
year I sold three fish broochesand two frog brooches. It is the
(13:08):
most absurd product to beselling online, but I think it
really hammers in my example ofthat, like inbound stuff, where,
if someone really wants this,odds are there's only a few
brands who carry it, even ifthere's 1000 fine jewelry
brands, and we're going to getthat business, whether it be
through Amazon, direct toconsumer, or any of our other
partnerships that we have, andthat is like a big part of our
(13:30):
business that I think will onlycontinue to get bigger and keep
our profitability high, becausewe won't have to rely on
advertising as much.
Andrew Maff (13:41):
Yeah, interesting.
So you're basically playing thereal estate game, right? Like
you're like, get in as manyplaces as physically possible,
have as many SKUs as possible.
Eventually someone will comeacross us, then they're our
customer, and obviously we workon retaining them, so probably
heavy and email marketing andthings like that. But from an
operational standpoint, having,you know, the goal of 10,000
(14:03):
SKUs. Are they all custom built?
So it's kind of like, hey, wedesigned one, take some pictures
of it, put it on the site, andthen we just make them as
needed. Or do you have these allin stock, ready to go?
Monil Kothari (14:15):
In stock, ready to go. Our business is built
off, you know, two day handlingSLAs, not just for Amazon, but
for every channel that we sellon. And I think that's one of
our winning sort of competitiveedges that we have.
Andrew Maff (14:30):
Yeah
Monil Kothari (14:31):
Which also means, from a systems and operation
standpoint, we have a verycomplex like stack in house to
manage so many SKUs, making sureinventory is flowing in real
time, and being able to fulfillall orders in like less than two
days.
Andrew Maff (14:48):
Wow. So like the frog brooches. How many of those
do you have locked and loaded tobe shipped out?
Monil Kothari (14:55):
So, those are all one of a kind pieces. So
whatever we. Have two left. Soour catalog, again, very
different from other categories.
We have bread and butter pieces,we have sort of closeouts that
other people want us to move forthem. And then we have unique
one of a kind product that onceit's sold, it will almost never
come back unless someone customcommissions it, and I'm assuming
(15:17):
they'll be also be moreexpensive at that point. So,
yeah, that's sort of the mix ofproduct that we have.
Andrew Maff (15:23):
Interesting. Okay, so one of the things I I've
actually, for all the listenersthat usually listen to show,
it's something I've recentlystarted asking. I used to say,
like, here's something I alwayslove asking, and I never asked
it. Now I'm trying to do a moreregular basis. Every time I have
someone on the show. It's, youknow, we're growing. Things are
going great. We're doing thisnext we're doing that. Here's
(15:45):
what's working for us, blah,blah. One thing I'm always
curious about is the negativeside. What's what currently
isn't working that you'refocused on?
Monil Kothari (15:55):
Oh, that's so easy. I think the biggest
because we've always been multichannel and less just DTC
focused. Our biggest struggle isDTC. We get a good amount of
organic but I think our growthhas plateaued because we are not
mastering the advertising andmarketing side of it. We don't
have a, you know, strong,cohesive playbook, and that's
(16:19):
kind of a fault of mine, in thatI'm so focused on, like the
other channels, plus themerchandise, plus the
operations, I sometimes feellike I'm treating the marketing
playbook for DTC as anafterthought, which is not good.
I will be the first to admitthat. And so actually, one of
our first big projects, once weget past Black Friday Cyber
Monday, is to start puttingtogether a much stronger,
(16:41):
cohesive marketing plan for 2026for DTC.
Andrew Maff (16:45):
Nice, yeah. I mean, I could see that definitely
being a good area to focus on,especially when you're in all
these different marketplaces,right? Like we always preach
omni channel marketing, whichyou know, when you're in a multi
channel seller and you're allthese different sales channels
having a really strong DTCmarketing presence. It's kind of
like, I always forget what thisthis say rising, rising tides,
(17:09):
lift all boats. So you start tolook at like, Okay, you're doing
all these marketing efforts. Andit's a common issue that we see
with a lot of brands, is they doall these DTC marketing efforts,
they drive the traffic to thewebsite, and they're like, it's
just, you know, maybe they'renot seeing the return that they
expected, or they, you know, wethought it would be better and
blah, blah. But then when theystopped doing it, all of a
sudden, they see all thedifferent sales channels start
(17:31):
to come down as well. And soit's kind of that bleed over
where it becomes a difficultkind of thing to manage. So
what's your what's any thoughtson how you're you're thinking
you may approach it. Are youthinking more like, you know,
typically with jewelry,influencers, social media is
usually the stronger way to go,because you're kind of
presenting like the differentesthetic and the different guy
(17:52):
designs to people. Are youthinking because you have all
this real estate, you're goingto lean in more in like SEO and
Google and that type of thing?
Monil Kothari (18:01):
A mix of both, although I do you actually
mentioned a very good pointabout what we're doing. One of
the things I think we're doingmaybe wrong is we do like, a PNL
thing on every channel as astandalone and so, like, when we
look at Shopify on its own, it'slike, oh, man, the margins
aren't that great because we'reover investing in ads and
they're not performing. Butactually, that's a good point
(18:22):
that you have brought up, isthat I think if I just slice and
dice it like that, I'll neversee that spillover effect on the
other channels. And so, yeah,just wanted to give you that
sort of credit, I guess, for Ididn't think of it like that. So
one thing I probably shouldchange is look at it as a more
holistic approach. Yeah, I thinkfor us, what we really want to
(18:43):
do is just build morelegitimacy. I mean, I know we're
legitimate, but to your earlierpoint, fine jewelry is a tough
sell, especially when it's noton a retailer site or a
marketplace, like, who are, whois Haus of Brilliance? Who are
these guys? Are they a fly bynight, like sketch company? I
know those exist. So, you know,I don't blame customers for
having apprehension about, youknow, not being so quick quick
(19:07):
to convert on our on our site.
So I think doing a marketingcampaign, at least for next year
that helps establish us as alegitimate brand that you can
trust and rely on. And we havegreat product, and we have
something for everyone, anddoing that storytelling is going
to go is going to be a bigunlock for us. And I think
again, compounds and what yousaid about that having that
(19:28):
spillover effect on the rest ofour channels. Yeah, we'd love to
see search results on Amazon forHaus of Brilliance spike because
of that. So I think thestorytelling is a big part of
it. We've started to slowly doit these past couple of months.
But I think having a reallygood, structured playbook and,
like, being disciplined aboutit, will be the big, big, like
(19:49):
exercise for next year.
Andrew Maff (19:52):
Yeah, and that omnichannel thing, like, it's,
it's what we preach, it's, it.
Everyone takes it differently,right? Like my thought is always
my thought is always that, ifyou look at everything
holistically first, right? Howmuch are you spending across all
of your channels? How much areyou making across all of your
(20:13):
channels? Because your businessisn't just Amazon, and that
you're not running 18businesses, or however many
different channels you have,you're running one users on
different channels, so it'd beno different than if a franchise
just looked at individual storesales, but they're running ads
across the entire nation. Itmakes no sense, right? But then
you do have to look at it on aper channel basis, and it's the
(20:37):
same thing with your marketing,right? Like Google SEO,
retention marketing, all aregoing to have wildly higher
returns than something that'smore exploratory, like meta or
doing influencer marketing, butgetting that word out there. The
goal is, everyone's alwaysfighting over those keywords on
Amazon, the broad terms and thelong tail terms, and they get
more and more expensive. So ifyou do more D to C marketing,
(20:57):
you start to see your brand nameget searched more, and you don't
have to spend as much. But Ilove it. I think that I could
see how, like, an influencerapproach would be really cool
for you guys, especially ifyou're doing, like, custom
commission stuff, if that's notobnoxiously expensive, I know
there's a ton of influencers outthere they Yeah, I'll take one
of those for free and post abunch of times. I know, but if
it's if it's really expensive,then ignore me. What's okay? So
(21:20):
that's obviously your goal goinginto 2026, anything else? What's
the growth plan? Just kind ofextension of the product line.
Monil Kothari (21:31):
I think compounding on building a
stronger brand also means thatthere are other retailer
channels that we can startopening up. I don't think we're
ever going to be a brand you'regoing to see in store, at least
in the next year or two. I'mactually somewhat opposed to
having brick and mortarbusiness. I'd rather have like
drop ship relationships withretailers so I can keep all the
(21:53):
inventory here. So opening, youknow, new channels in 2026 that
are more of the well establishedplatforms. You know, I'd love to
open Macy's actually theirmarketplace, and then I want to
just see, I think theinteresting thing for us is,
unlike every other brand, we'venot we've not hit the ceiling on
(22:14):
how much business we can dodirect to consumer, since it's
not our biggest channel. So I'dlove to pump out more growth
there in sales as well. Yeah,because we've I think the whole
gist of this is I started theexact opposite of everyone else.
Everyone started Shopify. FirstI did marketplaces. So now we're
hitting that convergence pointwhere we're all looking at the
(22:35):
exact opposite thing to focuson.
Andrew Maff (22:38):
Yeah, grass is always greener.
Monil Kothari (22:39):
Yeah, exactly. A lot of those people have a lot
more of that awareness of thesedifferent marketing strategies
and tools, like you'vementioned, and I'm just getting
into that side of the businessyears into the game, at least
from when House of Brilliancecame out.
Andrew Maff (22:55):
Yeah, awesome.
Sounds like you got a lot ofplans 2026 it's going to be a
good time. I wish you the bestof luck. It was a great having
on the show. I really appreciateit. I love to give the
opportunity let everyone knowwhat they can find out more
about you, and, of course, moreabout Haus of Brilliance.
Monil Kothari (23:09):
No, I appreciate it. Thank you for reaching out
and giving me the opportunity totalk about Haus of Brilliance.
Normally, I never talk about it.
So this is this has been goodfor me.
Andrew Maff (23:18):
Happy to have you on. Appreciate it. Obviously,
everyone that tuned in. Thankyou as well. Please make sure
you do the usual. You do theusual thing, rate review,
subscribe all that fun stuff andwhichever podcast platform you
prefer, or head over to theEcomm show.com to check out all
of our previous episodes. But asusual, thank you for joining us.
See you next time. H
Narrator (23:36):
Thank you for tuning in to the E comm show. Head over
to Ecom show.com to subscribe onyour favorite podcast platform
or on the bluetuskr YouTubechannel. The E comm show is
brought to you by BlueTuskr, afull service digital marketing
company specifically for Ecommerce sellers looking to
accelerate their growth. Go tobluetuskr.com now for more
(23:58):
information, make sure to tunein next week for another amazing
episode of the E comm show.
And for us, the whole crux of the business model
is offer as much as possible, asin many spots as possible.
Together, a big part of ourbusinesses that were very multi
channel and have been since dayone.
Narrator (00:14):
Welcome to the E comm Show podcast. I am your host.
Andrew Maff, owner and founderof BlueTusker, from
groundbreaking industry updatesto success stories and
strategies. Get to know the insand outs of the e Commerce
Industry, from top leaders inthe space. Let's get into it.
Andrew Maff (00:29):
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of
the E comm show as usual. I'myour host, Andrew Maff, and
today I'm joined by the amazingMonil Kothari, who is a founder
and President over at Haus ofBrilliance. Monil, how you
doing, buddy? You ready for agood show?
Monil Kothari (00:41):
I am. I'm good.
How are you?
Andrew Maff (00:43):
Doing good! I appreciate you doing this with
us. I am super excited to talkto you about your brand, because
obviously Haus of Brilliancebeing in the jewelry space,
wildly competitive and difficultspace, but once you break
through, it can be fantastic.
Hence why we're having you onthe show right now. So really
appreciate you being here withus. I always like to start these
off kind of stereotypically andjust kind of give you the floor.
Tell us a little bit about yourbackground, like where you got
(01:06):
started, how you got in Haus ofBrilliance, and we'll take it
from there,
Monil Kothari (01:11):
Sure. So if I go really far back, I think it
started when at the age of one,I swallowed a diamond and had to
be rushed to the hospital tohave it pumped out of my
stomach. So, you know,
Andrew Maff (01:21):
Jeez, that is way far back. Yeah!
Monil Kothari (01:24):
Cool story though, you know, wild as it
sounds, but yes, familybusiness, kind of, I'm a third
generation jeweler. Mygrandfather started out in
India, and this was around thetime that India started
producing finished diamonds. Youknow, it was more of that mid
market, commercial goods, andthat labor arbitrage model
(01:45):
basically opened up India fortrade. He started. Then my
father joined. And then in thelate 80s, they moved here. And,
you know, it was the late 80s,early 90s, when the entire
middle class blew up. And sothey built a pretty strong
business here there werewholesalers and manufacturers to
many of the major retailers,although many of their customers
(02:07):
are, unfortunately, no longer inbusiness. But, you know, talking
about the service, merchandise,the Sears, those retailers were
the ones we were working with.
But then post 2007 when the, youknow, when we the financial
crisis hit, you know, we got hitin like a triple whammy. Our big
retailers, a lot of them,started going under, or were
(02:28):
financially very unstable. Thenour business just happened to
shrink here. And then the thirdfactor was, whichever retailer
was still standing around,started going directly to India
for sourcing from themanufacturers. And so eventually
we were squeezed out. And, youknow, for a couple years, it was
(02:48):
just kind of this holdingpattern. And then I joined in
2014 I had one year of startupexperience, not a lot of, you
know, education outside ofschool, otherwise. And I didn't
have much work to do. I hadtrained in India for 18 months,
came back and was like, Well,cool, let's do something big.
And then the business was deadagain. And so my father made an
offhand comment about having allthis sample jewelry, why don't
(03:12):
you sell it online? And I tookthat as a Go ahead. And I think
our first customer wasoverstock.com I even emailed
them from my personal email,because I didn't even have a
company email address at thatpoint. So what started as a
diversion really has blown upinto this sort of multi channel
fine jewelry business. Covid wasa huge accelerant for us, and
(03:36):
the momentum has not actuallyslowed down as much as we
thought it would, and thebusiness continues to grow. And,
yeah, and that brings me here, Iguess, with you!
Andrew Maff (03:48):
You made it. You This is it. This is this is how
you know you made it. I've hadpeople mentioned that before,
and they do the story, andthey're like, and now I'm here
with you, like, this is thepeak. Like this is you shouldn't
tell anyone about this. Tellsome people, otherwise I got to
stop doing it. But interesting,it's crazy that you know that
(04:09):
all that story and it basicallycame from, like, let's just get
rid of some of this stuff. Andnow, now it's turned into this
multi million dollar business,which is crazy. So tell me a
little bit about like, theproduct line and the
differentiator, because jewelryspace is wildly competitive and
standing out is difficult. Sowhat's kind of your
differentiator in your approach?
Monil Kothari (04:28):
Yeah, you're actually, you really hit the
nail on the head aboutcompetitiveness. We're probably
one of the only categories, andI'm excluding, like, you know,
the branded Tiffany and HarryWinston products from this. But
fine jewelry is really a lot ofit is purchased on price. To a
certain extent. That's one ofthe biggest factors that go into
this. But you know, we doprimarily fine jewelry. We don't
(04:53):
do anything cost that's a wholedifferent ball game than you're
competing with everyone fromChina. We are a diamond house at
core, historically. So westarted off with a lot of
diamond jewelry, you know,fashion pieces, a lot of
bracelets. My father was a verybig bracelet manufacturer in the
90s. But once we had gotten pastthe diamond stuff, we wanted to
(05:15):
expand. You know, we can't doeverything. We don't know
everything. But jewelry isn'tjust diamond jewelry, so we
started expanding and lookingfor partners in other
categories. So gemstone, pearl,chain, men's jewelry, super high
end, unique pieces that justhappen to be sitting in
someone's office and trying tobuild a massive assortment where
(05:40):
think we're at like, 4000 5000SKUs. I lose track of this
number very often. My goal is toget to 10,000 by the end of next
year. And it all boils down to,you know, we carry something for
everyone. Fine Jewelry is ahighly considered personal
choice for many people onlineand having even like 10
(06:02):
variations of the same item,which you wouldn't do in any
other category, can actuallydrive more volume. So for us,
the whole crux of the businessmodel is offer as much as
possible, as in many spots aspossible. So the other big part
of our businesses that were verymulti channel and have been
since day one.
Andrew Maff (06:20):
So where else are you selling besides your own
website right now?
Monil Kothari (06:23):
I mean, you name it, we're most likely there, or
we're in talks. Overstock wasthe first one, although now
we're not with them anymore, butAmazon was our biggest, and is
still our biggest, but we are onfirst dibs. Cherish QVC, Kohl's,
drama shop, boscos, I'm like,missing out, like, another five.
We're in TSC, Canada. We're in,oh yeah, we just launched on
(06:48):
Target marketplace last week.
Andrew Maff (06:50):
Congratulations.
Monil Kothari (06:51):
Thank you. That was, that was a big win for us.
We're in more sites than I can,like, think of off the top of my
head. But that's the wholepoint. Is Belk, that's a bit
another big partner this yearthat we've, like, started
working with. So we love ourpartners. I think a big piece of
or a big our success, a lot ofit has been driven by having
(07:11):
strong partnerships at the endof the day.
Andrew Maff (07:13):
Yeah, you mentioned Amazon's your biggest one
Monil Kothari (07:17):
By volume. Yeah.
Andrew Maff (07:19):
Interesting by volume. Naturally. What I When?
When you say Amazon in the samesentence as fine jewelry, it's
always like, what, like, how?
So, how are you because ifsomeone's searching like,
bracelet, diamond bracelet,like, there's billions of things
that could show up. Costumejewelry can show up. Like, it's
it's a nightmare, and Amazon isobviously traditionally a race
(07:41):
to the bottom, for the part, interms of price point. So how are
you, how are you able to kind ofdrive that volume on Amazon?
Monil Kothari (07:51):
I have so many thoughts on Amazon just because
I've been on there for almostnine years. I think when people
started selling jewelry online,there was way less, there were
way less channels to begin with.
First of all, most of theretailers weren't even looking
at drop ship D to C was justemerging, and that wasn't for
high value items. It was, Idon't know, sunglasses like a
Warby Parker. So Amazon reallywas actually Amazon, eBay were
(08:14):
actually, like, the onlychannels to sell jewelry without
having to focus on brandbuilding. It was just a place to
move diamond studs, tennisbracelets, generic stuff. And
that's sort of how we started. Ithink our first listings didn't
even have a brand on it. But inthe first couple years of
Amazon, the business was reallygood. But then once Covid hit,
(08:34):
everyone and their mom wanted tostart selling on Amazon, not
just in our category. I'm sureyou remember, everyone was
trying to be an Amazon seller,and so a lot of people in India,
for example, manufacturers wereDirect Shipping inventory to
FBA. So it became a verychallenging spot. But I think at
this point, Amazon has so muchtrust with its customer base. It
(08:56):
is why they're the biggestmarketplace. People actually
have a lot more confidence thanyou think about buying jewelry
on Amazon. I think last year,our biggest ticket item was
$10,000 like, a pair ofearrings, and it didn't even
come back. And it wasn't fraud,which I thought all of those
things were going to happen.
Yeah, I think people have a lotof trust in Amazon, and it did
(09:19):
bring out a lot of those race tothe bottom vendors. But you know
what this year, one of thesilver linings of the tariff,
one of the very few silver letme really reinforce that use
silver linings is people realizeAmazon is not a profitable
business if you're justcompeting on price between PPC
returns. Ours is a high returncategory, fulfillment cost,
(09:42):
holding costs. This is a verydifficult business to make money
on, if you're just competing onprice, no matter how much
volume. So we've staked out ourplace on Amazon. You know, we're
not the cheapest, but we alsohave high quality product, good
service. We've been around longenough our listings, our top
selling listings. Have hundredsof reviews, which is a lot for
fine jewelry, and I think that'swhy this year, I have actually
(10:06):
seen our Amazon business growmore than the last couple of
years.
Andrew Maff (10:10):
Wow. How about we don't have to get into
specifics, but in terms of yourmargins on Amazon, have they
also grown? Or are you seeingbecause of the increase in
competition, in CPCs and FBAfees and all that fun stuff that
you're it's kind of shrinking alittle bit.
Monil Kothari (10:24):
So I would say the margins were not healthy, or
as healthy as I'd have likedthem to be the last three years,
because I think we were facingan uphill battle. I would have
said the same the first coupleof months of this year, but
we've been checking our numbersthe last three to six months,
we've actually seen marginsslowly, slowly, like go upwards,
(10:45):
not huge leaps by any means, buteven a couple of percent points
on Amazon is a big deal. So weare seeing that we're also being
way more disciplined about thecosts as well. And we're doing
the reverse of what other peopleare doing. We're keeping less in
FBA, except our best sellers andkeeping more in house here. So
also our operational costs andlike storage costs have come
(11:06):
down. So yeah, yeah, things seemto finally be getting better. On
Amazon, after a couple of yearsof stagnation.
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Andrew Maff (11:45):
How are you how are you marketing it? Because
jewelry is, it's such achallenging thing to, you know,
to market, just because, similarto anything really design
related, it's the beauties inthe eye of the beholder, right?
Like you could run the perfectad in front of the perfect
person with the perfectmessaging, but if they just
(12:06):
don't like the way it looks,they're not going to even click,
let alone buy. So how are youkind of getting the messaging
out there and driving thetraffic to these different
channels?
Monil Kothari (12:16):
So I we have two ways of approaching it, you
know, the company, HubSpot?
Andrew Maff (12:21):
Yeah.
Monil Kothari (12:23):
Co founders wrote a book years ago. I think it was
called, like, inbound marketingor something, and nothing to do
with jewelry, but I had read it,and for me, it comes down to
two, inbound marketing andoutbound. The outbound is what
we do on Amazon, which is a lotof that is the PPC stuff, right?
Like just advertising, and ourcatalog is massive, but one of
the very interesting parts ofour business that almost no
other category can touch isbecause we have so much product,
(12:47):
and all these products havekeywords and pictures, and
there's just so much variety, weget this halo effect of people
just finding the productsbecause we're the only one who
happens to be carrying them. Anda great example I have is last
year I sold three fish broochesand two frog brooches. It is the
(13:08):
most absurd product to beselling online, but I think it
really hammers in my example ofthat, like inbound stuff, where,
if someone really wants this,odds are there's only a few
brands who carry it, even ifthere's 1000 fine jewelry
brands, and we're going to getthat business, whether it be
through Amazon, direct toconsumer, or any of our other
partnerships that we have, andthat is like a big part of our
(13:30):
business that I think will onlycontinue to get bigger and keep
our profitability high, becausewe won't have to rely on
advertising as much.
Andrew Maff (13:41):
Yeah, interesting.
So you're basically playing thereal estate game, right? Like
you're like, get in as manyplaces as physically possible,
have as many SKUs as possible.
Eventually someone will comeacross us, then they're our
customer, and obviously we workon retaining them, so probably
heavy and email marketing andthings like that. But from an
operational standpoint, having,you know, the goal of 10,000
(14:03):
SKUs. Are they all custom built?
So it's kind of like, hey, wedesigned one, take some pictures
of it, put it on the site, andthen we just make them as
needed. Or do you have these allin stock, ready to go?
Monil Kothari (14:15):
In stock, ready to go. Our business is built
off, you know, two day handlingSLAs, not just for Amazon, but
for every channel that we sellon. And I think that's one of
our winning sort of competitiveedges that we have.
Andrew Maff (14:30):
Yeah
Monil Kothari (14:31):
Which also means, from a systems and operation
standpoint, we have a verycomplex like stack in house to
manage so many SKUs, making sureinventory is flowing in real
time, and being able to fulfillall orders in like less than two
days.
Andrew Maff (14:48):
Wow. So like the frog brooches. How many of those
do you have locked and loaded tobe shipped out?
Monil Kothari (14:55):
So, those are all one of a kind pieces. So
whatever we. Have two left. Soour catalog, again, very
different from other categories.
We have bread and butter pieces,we have sort of closeouts that
other people want us to move forthem. And then we have unique
one of a kind product that onceit's sold, it will almost never
come back unless someone customcommissions it, and I'm assuming
(15:17):
they'll be also be moreexpensive at that point. So,
yeah, that's sort of the mix ofproduct that we have.
Andrew Maff (15:23):
Interesting. Okay, so one of the things I I've
actually, for all the listenersthat usually listen to show,
it's something I've recentlystarted asking. I used to say,
like, here's something I alwayslove asking, and I never asked
it. Now I'm trying to do a moreregular basis. Every time I have
someone on the show. It's, youknow, we're growing. Things are
going great. We're doing thisnext we're doing that. Here's
(15:45):
what's working for us, blah,blah. One thing I'm always
curious about is the negativeside. What's what currently
isn't working that you'refocused on?
Monil Kothari (15:55):
Oh, that's so easy. I think the biggest
because we've always been multichannel and less just DTC
focused. Our biggest struggle isDTC. We get a good amount of
organic but I think our growthhas plateaued because we are not
mastering the advertising andmarketing side of it. We don't
have a, you know, strong,cohesive playbook, and that's
(16:19):
kind of a fault of mine, in thatI'm so focused on, like the
other channels, plus themerchandise, plus the
operations, I sometimes feellike I'm treating the marketing
playbook for DTC as anafterthought, which is not good.
I will be the first to admitthat. And so actually, one of
our first big projects, once weget past Black Friday Cyber
Monday, is to start puttingtogether a much stronger,
(16:41):
cohesive marketing plan for 2026for DTC.
Andrew Maff (16:45):
Nice, yeah. I mean, I could see that definitely
being a good area to focus on,especially when you're in all
these different marketplaces,right? Like we always preach
omni channel marketing, whichyou know, when you're in a multi
channel seller and you're allthese different sales channels
having a really strong DTCmarketing presence. It's kind of
like, I always forget what thisthis say rising, rising tides,
(17:09):
lift all boats. So you start tolook at like, Okay, you're doing
all these marketing efforts. Andit's a common issue that we see
with a lot of brands, is they doall these DTC marketing efforts,
they drive the traffic to thewebsite, and they're like, it's
just, you know, maybe they'renot seeing the return that they
expected, or they, you know, wethought it would be better and
blah, blah. But then when theystopped doing it, all of a
sudden, they see all thedifferent sales channels start
(17:31):
to come down as well. And soit's kind of that bleed over
where it becomes a difficultkind of thing to manage. So
what's your what's any thoughtson how you're you're thinking
you may approach it. Are youthinking more like, you know,
typically with jewelry,influencers, social media is
usually the stronger way to go,because you're kind of
presenting like the differentesthetic and the different guy
(17:52):
designs to people. Are youthinking because you have all
this real estate, you're goingto lean in more in like SEO and
Google and that type of thing?
Monil Kothari (18:01):
A mix of both, although I do you actually
mentioned a very good pointabout what we're doing. One of
the things I think we're doingmaybe wrong is we do like, a PNL
thing on every channel as astandalone and so, like, when we
look at Shopify on its own, it'slike, oh, man, the margins
aren't that great because we'reover investing in ads and
they're not performing. Butactually, that's a good point
(18:22):
that you have brought up, isthat I think if I just slice and
dice it like that, I'll neversee that spillover effect on the
other channels. And so, yeah,just wanted to give you that
sort of credit, I guess, for Ididn't think of it like that. So
one thing I probably shouldchange is look at it as a more
holistic approach. Yeah, I thinkfor us, what we really want to
(18:43):
do is just build morelegitimacy. I mean, I know we're
legitimate, but to your earlierpoint, fine jewelry is a tough
sell, especially when it's noton a retailer site or a
marketplace, like, who are, whois Haus of Brilliance? Who are
these guys? Are they a fly bynight, like sketch company? I
know those exist. So, you know,I don't blame customers for
having apprehension about, youknow, not being so quick quick
(19:07):
to convert on our on our site.
So I think doing a marketingcampaign, at least for next year
that helps establish us as alegitimate brand that you can
trust and rely on. And we havegreat product, and we have
something for everyone, anddoing that storytelling is going
to go is going to be a bigunlock for us. And I think
again, compounds and what yousaid about that having that
(19:28):
spillover effect on the rest ofour channels. Yeah, we'd love to
see search results on Amazon forHaus of Brilliance spike because
of that. So I think thestorytelling is a big part of
it. We've started to slowly doit these past couple of months.
But I think having a reallygood, structured playbook and,
like, being disciplined aboutit, will be the big, big, like
(19:49):
exercise for next year.
Andrew Maff (19:52):
Yeah, and that omnichannel thing, like, it's,
it's what we preach, it's, it.
Everyone takes it differently,right? Like my thought is always
my thought is always that, ifyou look at everything
holistically first, right? Howmuch are you spending across all
of your channels? How much areyou making across all of your
(20:13):
channels? Because your businessisn't just Amazon, and that
you're not running 18businesses, or however many
different channels you have,you're running one users on
different channels, so it'd beno different than if a franchise
just looked at individual storesales, but they're running ads
across the entire nation. Itmakes no sense, right? But then
you do have to look at it on aper channel basis, and it's the
(20:37):
same thing with your marketing,right? Like Google SEO,
retention marketing, all aregoing to have wildly higher
returns than something that'smore exploratory, like meta or
doing influencer marketing, butgetting that word out there. The
goal is, everyone's alwaysfighting over those keywords on
Amazon, the broad terms and thelong tail terms, and they get
more and more expensive. So ifyou do more D to C marketing,
(20:57):
you start to see your brand nameget searched more, and you don't
have to spend as much. But Ilove it. I think that I could
see how, like, an influencerapproach would be really cool
for you guys, especially ifyou're doing, like, custom
commission stuff, if that's notobnoxiously expensive, I know
there's a ton of influencers outthere they Yeah, I'll take one
of those for free and post abunch of times. I know, but if
it's if it's really expensive,then ignore me. What's okay? So
(21:20):
that's obviously your goal goinginto 2026, anything else? What's
the growth plan? Just kind ofextension of the product line.
Monil Kothari (21:31):
I think compounding on building a
stronger brand also means thatthere are other retailer
channels that we can startopening up. I don't think we're
ever going to be a brand you'regoing to see in store, at least
in the next year or two. I'mactually somewhat opposed to
having brick and mortarbusiness. I'd rather have like
drop ship relationships withretailers so I can keep all the
(21:53):
inventory here. So opening, youknow, new channels in 2026 that
are more of the well establishedplatforms. You know, I'd love to
open Macy's actually theirmarketplace, and then I want to
just see, I think theinteresting thing for us is,
unlike every other brand, we'venot we've not hit the ceiling on
(22:14):
how much business we can dodirect to consumer, since it's
not our biggest channel. So I'dlove to pump out more growth
there in sales as well. Yeah,because we've I think the whole
gist of this is I started theexact opposite of everyone else.
Everyone started Shopify. FirstI did marketplaces. So now we're
hitting that convergence pointwhere we're all looking at the
(22:35):
exact opposite thing to focuson.
Andrew Maff (22:38):
Yeah, grass is always greener.
Monil Kothari (22:39):
Yeah, exactly. A lot of those people have a lot
more of that awareness of thesedifferent marketing strategies
and tools, like you'vementioned, and I'm just getting
into that side of the businessyears into the game, at least
from when House of Brilliancecame out.
Andrew Maff (22:55):
Yeah, awesome.
Sounds like you got a lot ofplans 2026 it's going to be a
good time. I wish you the bestof luck. It was a great having
on the show. I really appreciateit. I love to give the
opportunity let everyone knowwhat they can find out more
about you, and, of course, moreabout Haus of Brilliance.
Monil Kothari (23:09):
No, I appreciate it. Thank you for reaching out
and giving me the opportunity totalk about Haus of Brilliance.
Normally, I never talk about it.
So this is this has been goodfor me.
Andrew Maff (23:18):
Happy to have you on. Appreciate it. Obviously,
everyone that tuned in. Thankyou as well. Please make sure
you do the usual. You do theusual thing, rate review,
subscribe all that fun stuff andwhichever podcast platform you
prefer, or head over to theEcomm show.com to check out all
of our previous episodes. But asusual, thank you for joining us.
See you next time. H
Narrator (23:36):
Thank you for tuning in to the E comm show. Head over
to Ecom show.com to subscribe onyour favorite podcast platform
or on the bluetuskr YouTubechannel. The E comm show is
brought to you by BlueTuskr, afull service digital marketing
company specifically for Ecommerce sellers looking to
accelerate their growth. Go tobluetuskr.com now for more
(23:58):
information, make sure to tunein next week for another amazing
episode of the E comm show.
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