Lean Green Gems - The pitch

There are three ethical downsides to buying jewelry: mining is one of the worst things you can do to the environment, many gems are involved with conflict, and jewelry (even high-end) is usually made in poor working conditions in developing countries. Wouldn't you rather wear something that aligns with your values? Lean Green Gems jewelry is beautiful, sustainable, made in America, and completely custom-made for you.

Lean Green Gems - The fun part

The metallurgy and chemistry makes this project fun. What sort of materials make for the best stones? Prettiest stones? Most durable stones? Also this project would include advantages of lean manufacturing to reduce costs, which is also cool.

Lean Green Gems - The growth potential

Jewelry is a $30 billion a year business in the US. If this idea caught on, it could take a 10% market share and be a $3 billion dollar business.

Lean Green Gems - The monetization

I think the cost of the jewelry would be somewhere between the cost of cheap jewelry you see in shops and high-end jewelry. I expect the price to be between $50 - $200 for a pair of earrings. I expect the cost of manufacturing to be in the $30 - $150 range, evenly split between labor and materials. With intelligent use of machinery, there could be limited need for human labor, mostly assembly.  I expect the average price of a piece to be $100. The profit per piece would be roughly $30. Keep in mind that the quality would be of the same as most jewelry stores but 50% cheaper (because of the use of glass and other materials instead of stone).  

Because of the extensive use of kiosks, there would be very limited need for store employees. In fact, this could be done exclusively online.

Lean Green Gems - The idea

Gemstones always come with an environmental cost and sometimes a human one. For people who care about the environment and don’t like supporting 3rd world conflicts, buying synthetic gems is the best choice. With glass (and other materials with a higher index of refraction) it’s possible to make beautiful gems in almost any color and clarity. Also, if you are picky at all, it’s possible go through a store and see hundreds of different rings, earrings, and necklaces without seeing anything you like. There are far more jewelry design possibilities than can be reasonably stored in a brick-and-mortar store.

The best solution is jewerly-on-demand. A consumer goes into the shop and goes to one of the kiosks to start browsing for jewelry.  Selecting a type of jewelry or a stone color gives the user a set of options to pick from. Selecting the best few and getting similar items is the next step. After repeatedly pruning for several rounds, a fairly small range of jewelry is shown. The last step is to fine tune any properties of the jewelry: cut, color, index of refraction and translucency of the stones, the material used, and any other details or small flourishes. Once the selection has been made, the customer will get to see a detailed rendering of what the piece will look like and how it will look in different lighting. If they are happy with how it looks, they checkout at the kiosk and get an estimate for how long the piece will take to make. The order then goes to the manufacturing facility.

At the manufacturing facility, the workers heat up the glass or other base material into their liquid state, add chemicals to change the color and translucency then pour the glass into the gem mold. After cooling, the ‘gem’ is then cut into the perfect shape and set into the setting (which was made while the gem was cooling. This entire process should take only a few hours. If there is no backlog, then customers could get their jewelry delivered the same or next day.

Lean Green Gems - The motivation

There are few things worse for the environment than mining. Coal is frequently singled out is being dirty and bad for the environment, but gem mining is no better. That’s not even bringing up the conflict stones like diamonds or emeralds. On the consumer side there are also downsides. Stores frequently have tens of thousands of dollars in inventory and on display that move extremely slowly. Slow-moving inventory is a hidden cost of these businesses, i.e., if it takes six months for a ring to sell, then the profit you make is less than it would seem because of the effect of inflation over the last six months. Both the environmental damage from mining and the economic waste of maintaining inventory can be eliminated.