Million Dollar Grind

How do you profit from the 55 million single women in America? Easy, you sell them a ring.  Married women have wedding bands and engaged women have engagement rings, so why can’t a single woman have a ring too? Ruta Fox markets the first known diamond ring for single women. Worn on the pinkie, the Ah ring stands for available and happy. If you’re taken you can still wear an Ah ring, which would stand for attached and happy. The ring features 11 diamonds, totaling .21 points, set in a 14k white gold band and retails for $330 and is engraved Ah.

Before starting Divine Diamonds in 2001, Ruta Fox was an advertising copywriter in New York. In the fall of 2000 she bought herself a diamond ring that she wore on her pinkie. Her friends noticed the ring and asked her to get rings for them too. Fox cashed in $3,000 in savings to build an inventory of rings to sell to her friends. When the first 20 rings sold quickly she knew she had found a business opportunity. Fox started to package the rings in red velvet bags and created press kits to share with her editor friends at fashion magazines, who invited her to their offices to sell the ring to their staff.

One of the offices was the office of Oprah Winfrey’s magazine “O” . She not only sold some rings, but created enough hype for an editor to send the ring idea to Oprah. Oprah not only liked the jewelry, she also like the idea behind the Ah ring and wanted to add it to “The O List” in next months’ magazine (March 2001). Fox had six weeks to get a full business running before the issue of “O” hit the newstands. She started a website, hired a fulfilment house to maintain phone lines and take orders and opened a UPS shipping account. She also had to borrow $30,000 from her mother to get her inventory of rings and red velvet pouches.

During its first year of business, Divine Diamonds had $1 million in sales. By early 2005, 5,100 Ah rings were sold, ringing up to $1.5 million. Today, inventory at Divine Diamonds now includes The Snowflake Necklace, The Loves Me…Earrings, and The Tranquility Cross.

How can you profit from the 55 million single women in America?