261 | Growing A Niche Business Through Exclusive Insights | with Michael Nguyen

Michael Nguyen

Treat your customers how you want to be treated because at the end of the day, they will come back. And then on top of that, if you treat them right, the reviews matter a lot. 

Chase Clymer

Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. 

On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating  real results. 

I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.

Let's get on with the show.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. 

And today I'm welcoming the show Michael Nguyen. He's the founder and visionary behind Fire and Brilliance. He also serves as the enthusiastic host of Geminar where he imparts his knowledge on all aspects of jewelry. 

Michael, welcome to the show. 

Michael Nguyen

Thank you. Thank you. Obviously, you mentioned you are the founder of Fire & Brilliance, but didn't really talk about the brand too much. 

What are the products you guys are currently selling on your website? 

Michael Nguyen

Well, Fire & Brilliance, what we do is we focus on fine jewelry, but with the emphasis of lab-grown gemstones. 

So lab-created moissanite, lab-grown diamonds, lab-grown rubies, sapphires, you name it, we have it.

That said, we also work with natural diamonds and we do focus on creating unique custom pieces as well. 

So the way we started was really primarily focusing on moissanite, which is a lab-created gemstone. I'm not sure you're too familiar with that, but it was originally targeted or marketed as a diamond alternative because of the physical attributes and how beautiful it is without breaking the bank. 

And then after that, what we did was we introduced way more different lab-grown gemstones to the mix, as well as lab-grown diamonds and custom jewelry. 

So when people reach out to us and they buy from us and they don't like something from the website, they typically just fill out a form. We have in-house designers, we have people that we work with, manufacturers and vendors that we've worked with over the years to make their own unique piece. 

And that's what many people do these days. They don't typically just like a picture anymore. They like three or four different pictures and they try to create something that's on their own. 

And we can make that happen. Yeah. 

Chase Clymer

Well, take me back in time. Where did the idea to start this business come from? 

Michael Nguyen

I would say, I mean, at least for most people that I do follow online, people that typically take an entrepreneurial path, they have this internal instinct of wanting to do something on their own. 

Myself, I started my career just like anyone else doing a nine to five. I was actually in the financial services sector and then I eventually worked in the corporate finance field. 

I took the typical route, got my bachelor's degree, master's degree and thought, hey, I'm just going to work for somebody for the rest of my life. 

But in all honesty, I was quite miserable. I woke up, didn't want to wake up, didn't want to really go to work. I was kind of miserable.

And the one thing that really just made the change for me is when I was able to take a look at some of the faces in the corporate office, and I know it's not for everybody, but this is my story, the lifeless faces… and I just did not want that for myself. 

And the one thing that did stand out too was eventually, I got to see some of the senior guys and the wrinkles on their faces and I knew one day I'm gonna get old and I didn't see that for myself. 

So I wanted to go out and do something on my own. 

Now that said, the way I started was I've always admired my parents. 

So my parents, they are immigrants to this country and by being an immigrant, escaping the Vietnam War, didn't have many opportunities. 

So one of the one things that they actually had to do, if you've ever been to a nail store, you probably know they're Vietnamese. 

The opportunities for the Vietnamese people for some reason during that time was that they worked in a salon, they did cut hair and stuff like that. 

So eventually my parents, I saw them working really hard growing up and eventually were able to scrap a few pennies together and open their own store. And then eventually they had a few more and a few more and a few more. 

So they built things from the ground up and I saw that growing up and I wanted to do that something on my own. 

Now, fast forward to many years later, my parents eventually didn't work out. They got a divorce. So my dad started his own jewelry business and this is many years later. 

So when I finally had the courage to leave that corporate job that I had mentioned earlier, I reached out to him and said, “Hey, it sounds like it's a fun thing to do in terms of jewelry. How do I… can you kind of show me the ropes?” 

So I worked under his wing for about three months. He kind of showed me the ins and outs, what to do, how to run a store, those types of things. 

So my sister and I eventually had a partnership to open our own brick and mortar jewelry store together. 

And for many people that are listening out there that's starting their entrepreneurs setup or journey, you may want to consider your partnerships because sometimes family partnerships don't work out. 

So long story short, my sister and I eventually decided, “Hey, we're just going to... We have different business philosophies.” 

So I ended up leaving the store to her and I left with a bag of some inventory that we accumulated together. And that's how I was on my own again, basically. 

And then at that point, I was talking to my wife, my girlfriend at the time, my wife now, and I was like, “Okay, well, what are we going to do? We have some jewelry. I've been in this business now for a couple of years. I've accumulated a lot of knowledge, but do I really want to open another brick and mortar, stand there all day, have customers come in, window shop, and then maybe buy and maybe not buy? Or, let's just try to list these online and see what happens.” 

I had an iPhone. I took a few pictures of the inventory, listed it on different platforms. eBay, Etsy, whatever at the time. 

At the time, we were only able to sell maybe one or two pieces per month. Matter of fact, it was such a struggle that I actually had a hookup for video games, right? So I would actually list some video games on Craigslist and meet some strangers on the site to make some extra cash. 

But over time, my eBay and Etsy stores actually became more and more popular. I get better reviews. 

If you know anything about selling online, reviews matter. Reviews, feedbacks, star ratings. Eventually, I got that going. 

We were able to start selling way more items, anywhere between 10 to 20, 30 to 50 items per month. And that's when I talked to my wife and I was like, “Hey, I think we've got something going on here. I think what we can do is maybe start our own real Ecommerce business.” 

But before doing that, I wanted to make sure that I didn't only know about jewelry through experience but actually know about jewelry through education. 

So I went to, I'm not sure if you ever heard of the school called the Gemmellage Institute of America, which is short for GIA. It's kind of like the top jewelry school where they teach you everything under the sun about jewelry. 

And so I went to GIA for about...What was it? Four months, I took a CAD course, which is design, and then I took another course to learn about diamonds. 

And that's when I came back and I told my wife, “Okay, I think what we need to do is go all in.” 

So, what I meant by going all in, I told my wife, who was really kind of supporting me at the time, to quit her job and to go in with me. And then we also decided to sell our house. Okay. 

We sold our house to buy…because I did not want to get a lease and start hiring people and then be stuck with the lease. And we had these two units that were eyeballing in the city we're living in at the time to basically, if all fails, then at least we're not stuck with a five to 10 year lease. 

So we bought those two units with equity from our home. 

And then that's when we started hiring our first employee, second employee, third, and then we built a team to do sales marketing, ddesign, as well as a bench jeweler for any services. 

Because it got to the point where it became busy enough where the customers that purchased from you now are coming back. 

They're coming back, they're saying, hey, I need this repaired. I would like to upgrade in the works that you need that kind of a team in the background. 

So long story short, to circle back to what, to your original question, how did it start and where did it end? That's pretty much how I got everything going.

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Chase Clymer

How long were you selling on these marketplaces and building up those reviews and learning from your customers and getting that feedback? 

How long were you doing that before you decided to build your own .com? 

Michael Nguyen

That's a great question. I was doing that for about 2 years. 2 years. 

And that was a great learning journey for me because when you sell online, it's a different animal than selling in person. When you sell in person, people are less likely to tell you how they feel and when you're selling online, they're just typing away. 

When you're selling with a person, there's some kind of a common courtesy, right? So that they won't… if they're upset with something, at least they'll still give you common courtesy since you're in front of them. 

But when someone is upset about something and they will just kind of spill the beans at you, and you're like, when you're reading that message, you don't know how they really feel. You have to kind of decipher it.

And say, hey, do they really feel this way? Are they just really direct with their words or whatnot? 

So you have to have many forms of communication. You have to have a phone. You have to have an email. You have to have a way of communicating. 

So I think that learning curve was extremely important in the first two years. 

The other thing too, that I would say is extremely critical is to understand that treat your customers how you want to be treated because at the end of the day, they will come back and then on top of that, if you treat them right, the reviews matter a lot. 

The reviews are your permanent reputation online as a business owner. So a positive review that is left today may make maybe hundreds of sales that you'll never know about because that person or the multiple people that eventually buy from you, they may have read that one review, that's the one left five years ago. 

So to answer your question, it took me two years and I finally realized, hey, these platforms do take quite a bit of commissions. And I feel like I am developed enough now in my journey of all this experience to open my own Shopify store. 

And that's when I kind of went over with my wife and was like, “Hey, let's just do this and figure this thing out.” 

And that's when we launched our own Shopify store and… I love Shopify. I was preaching it to so many people. 

It was just so user-friendly because prior to Shopify, just to let you know, I did try to hire someone to build my own website, but oh man, it just did not have that same look, the same feel. It wasn't as user-friendly. 

And to be honest with you, I'm not very technical on that side of things. I don't know the code, I don't know the HTML. I don't know any of that.

So when I learned about Shopify, everything was already pre-made, pre-done for you. You just need to know the basics. You have to maybe hire someone to take nice pictures and maybe you have to learn about advertising. 

But other than that, Shopify was just so user-friendly that, matter of fact, I was able to recruit a lot of people to use Shopify as well. 

And one of my vendors was working on other platforms where they create some very specific jewelry products. I was able to... I want to believe I was one of the reasons why they actually jumped on programming for Shopify as well for the jewelry business. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. We're definitely Shopify fanboys and girls over here. 

I actually am... Depending on when this comes out, Shopify might be sponsoring this episode, to be honest. They were a sponsor during Q4. 

But Michael, so you talked about how the marketplaces were taking a commission. But it's because they're bringing the customer to you. Right? 

So now you're building this new thing on Shopify. But unfortunately, it's not bringing you any customers. 

So how did you guys tackle the issue of getting eyes on this new platform and build your sales where there's no traffic? 

Michael Nguyen

That's a great question. So I break it into two different sections. One is organic and one is advertising. 

I remember I was going through a pivotal crossroads where we were getting customers, but we weren't getting enough to where I was feeling comfortable hiring more people. 

So my brother-in-law, my wife's brother, he's actually really into electronics. I'm not sure if you're familiar with this YouTuber, his name is Marques Brownlee and he has a big following and all he does is reviews. He does reviews of electronics, the latest gadgets and all that. 

And then I was just talking to my brother-in-law. He's like, “Oh yeah, I followed this one guy.” That gave me an idea. I'm like, wait a minute. I sell jewelry. I went to GIA, I understand jewelry. 

Why won't I create my own channel? I called it the Geminar and all I did was talk about jewelry. 

So from that moment, I didn't realize how great of a decision that was because this was back in 2017 when YouTube didn't have as much competition just yet. 

So there were a lot of eyeballs, especially for the product that I am selling and I was selling that many people were looking for, but there just was not enough information about it. 

Because lab-created, and I'm not sure if you're too familiar with lab-created jewelry, which is very popular now, but about even five to 10 years ago, it was not that popular and there wasn't much information about it at all. 

So I would say I was one of the first pioneers on YouTube to talk about it. And it brought a lot of eyeballs in and that's when we started generating some revenue. 

And I thought to myself, well, “How do I increase it some more?” 

So I started going to Google Ads. 2016 was way in the beginning of Facebook Ads. I dabbled in that and oh my God, I mean compared to where it is now, Facebook Ads are way more expensive now. 

But during that time, although it was a headache to try to get it to work, because I'm not too sure if you're familiar with it, it was very glitchy in the beginning. 

You'll spend an hour trying to set up an ad and then it'll just crash on you. Then you have to do it again. Then you have to do it again. 

But the ROI on Facebook ads back in 2016 and 17 was phenomenal. I wish those days were still here. But you know, everyone knows about it now, so everyone still works on Facebook Ads and just has to pay a premium now. 

So, I did that. We're on all the platforms, you know, Pinterest, now TikTok.

So we're on many different platforms to get the eyeballs from an organic standpoint, as well as advertising standpoint. 

We do have a few people on our team that creates the content and the ads, as well as the pictures and videos for our ad campaigns. 

So to answer your question, we try to get eyeballs organically, as well as through the ad route, because as well as I do on social media now, the reach, unless something goes viral, you almost have to pay for an ad to actually get that attention. 

Chase Clymer

Obviously, it's a completely different world, 2023 versus when you started your YouTube channel.

But how long were you working on your channel before you started to see results? Not very long. 

Michael Nguyen

Not very long, actually. And I think it was because the riches are in the niches and what I was selling was so niche and what people really wanted to learn more about, and there wasn't anyone talking about it. 

So my channel really, I mean, I wouldn't say there are many subscribers and we have about 30,000 subscribers but for a small YouTube channel, sometimes the riches are in the niches because I was talking about something that people wanted to know about, and they could not find the information anywhere else. 

There was definitely information, but during that time, people were just blogging, right? There might be an article here or there on a specific website that you might be able to find, but no one was vocally talking about it because if you know anything about the jewelry business, the issue with it is that there were so many people that were doubting lab-created gemstones. 

They're just saying, oh, that's fake, so why would I talk about it? 

And even for the jewelers that actually wanted to talk about it, they might have been embarrassed to talk about it because they don't want to be that black sheep or that person that's willing to step out to talk about something that the jewelry industry might have been, you know, they might have frowned upon it. 

So because I was able to actually step out and talk about it, I was able to get many eyeballs. 

And that wasn't something that wasn't not an intention that I wanted to do. I just wanted to talk about it. It was just, it was really by pure accident.

And that's how I got many eyeballs to know more about Fire & Brilliance. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. 

I think that if you can, if your business and brand has an educational component to it, YouTube or a blog or a podcast as educational content is the number one way to get that top of the funnel awareness built. 

Some people just don't want to put in the work.

Michael Nguyen

That's true. Well, that might be true. 

I don't know. I don't know what other people are thinking. That's pretty much what I was doing. 

And when I found out that it was working, I spent a lot more time on it. I eventually hired two media people to help me out. So, two to three times a week, I was filming. 

We eventually bought some equipment off of Amazon, setting up lights, cameras and all that. And it was very abnormal for me anyway. I'm not, I wasn't a type that was very comfortable talking in front of a camera. 

But over time, it got easier. Writing a script, remembering this script. And on top of that, when you do it every day, it becomes very natural. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. I can feel that. It'll be 5 years in January. I've been doing the podcast and talking in front of a camera. 

At this point, it is second nature, but I won't even listen to the first couple of episodes. It's... I'm a different host now. 

So you're getting all these organic views from YouTube and you're bringing them into the funnel. Then you're retargeting them with paid ads. And I'm assuming that you're also capturing their emails and reaching out that way as well. 

Michael Nguyen

That's right. Yeah. We also have an email marketing campaign. We have tens of thousands of emails over the years. So we target that way. 

We also do... Again, with the ads, it just retargets back to the people that have already visited our websites. 

We also work by phone quite a bit, so it is still very traditional as well. We use many different avenues. 

So the way we try to capture our audience and our clients is by allowing them to have multiple communication channels. Everyone is comfortable with communicating differently, right? 

So if you're from a different age group, you may be more comfortable with the phones. If you're from a different age group, you might be more comfortable with social media. Some people just like to get on the chat and send about two messages to see what you have on your website and that's it. They kind of disappear. You never hear from them again. 

But we do capture the information quite a bit and we retarget that way. We've been very successful at it. 

I would say the one thing that is maybe a little more challenging these days is that the jewelry industry has caught on, and now, I would say, everyone sells lab-created gemstones. It's no longer a taboo, right? 

So there's a lot more competition now. Not only in the jewelry business, but competition just to get more attention. I mean, everyone is making content now. 

And many people are willing to go above and beyond, if you know what I mean, to grab, to make something viral. So that attention is a lot harder to grab these days. 

But then what we do here at Fine & Brilliance is that we stick to our core beliefs. We work with lab created gemstones, we work with lab grown gemstones on fine jewelry. 

We're talking about real gold, platinum, palladium, sometimes silver, also natural diamonds, custom jewelry with professionals, and we work with only the best, right? 

So when our customers receive their jewelry, they're just blown away, especially with the prices that they could get it for. 

So they love us, they come back all the time. We have some customers and we're talking about pieces that range anywhere between... I mean, it's very rare when we sell for anything less than $1,000. So our range will go anywhere between $1,000 to $10,000. 

And we've had customers that bought multiple pieces from us. 

And I've always preached this. I mean, if someone is willing to spend that much money with you, that means there's a level of trust that you must have created in the community for them to actually be some random stranger. 

I mean, we're talking about selling online. So people from Australia are buying from us, right? And they've never seen us, but they might have seen one of my YouTube videos, or they might have seen one of the reviews that someone left three years ago, or they might have seen one of the social media posts of a beautiful ring that we made, right? 

So you just never know where they're coming from, so you kind of just cast your net. 

And then the other thing too that I love about this business is I've always told my staff that we are in the business of celebration. I mean, it doesn't get any better than that. People buy jewelry not because they're sad. People buy jewelry because they're trying to celebrate a birthday, an engagement, a proposal, an anniversary. And we're just happy to be a part of that. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing, Michael. You've talked so much about how much you care about the product and how much education that you have about it and how much you're putting out there to help people learn. 

If someone out there wants to learn more about the jewelry, where should they go? 

Michael Nguyen

They should go to fireandbrilliance.com. And if they want to learn about anything jewelry, just to learn, then they go to my YouTube channel. It's under Fire & Brilliance under segments called The Geminar. 

Chase Clymer

Awesome, Michael. 

Michael Nguyen

Just like a seminar, but the Geminar. 

Chase Clymer

Oh no, I love it. Trust me, I love it. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. 

Michael Nguyen

Of course. Thanks for having me, Chase. 

Chase Clymer

We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes. 

You can subscribe to the newsletter at honestecommerce.co to get each episode delivered right to your inbox. 

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Lastly, if you're a store owner looking for an amazing partner to help get your Shopify store to the next level, reach out to Electric Eye at electriceye.io/connect.

Until next time!