How This Successful Entrepreneur Went From Coffee Pods To Diamonds

Toby Bensimon

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Published: July 14th, 2022

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Toby Bensimon

Founder, Luminesce Diamonds

Founders

Employees

Luminesce Diamonds

luminescediamonds.com.au

from Adelaide SA, Australia

started November 2021

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools Toby recommends to grow your business!

Discover what books Toby recommends to grow your business!

The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive ... Jeff Olson

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Wor... Michael E. Gerber

Want more updates on Luminesce Diamonds? Check out these stories:

My name is Toby Bensimon and I am the face behind Luminesce Lab Grown Diamonds, an online store specializing in the sale of lab-grown diamond jewellery. Based in Adelaide, South Australia, our digital space offers a huge selection of eco-friendly and affordable lab-created diamonds that have been produced through a technique known as Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD), but more on that later!

Luminesce launched in late 2021 ahead of the busy Christmas period, as part of an expansion of Shiels Jewellers, our highly-successful retail brand with stores right across Australia. Luminesce was built on the foundation that everyone should have access to high-quality diamonds and jewellery without it costing an arm, a leg, or the world around us. The site has since become an ever-growing passion project for our group and we are very excited to see where this venture takes us.

Our range features some of the most exquisite lab-grown diamonds that money can buy, with everything from timeless diamond engagement rings, diamond tennis bracelets, and earrings to glamourous diamond pendants, dress rings, and necklaces on offer. We even offer something for the guys with our huge range of men’s lab grown diamond jewellery that offers everything from sleek signet rings to stunning men’s engagement rings.

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

I have been immersed in the business world from a very young age, having worked alongside my father Albert Bensimon at Shiels and Grahams Jewellers for quite some time. I am also the co-founder of a compostable coffee pod company, Podpac which I started with one of my good friends nearly a decade ago. So by the time I stepped in as Managing Director for Shiels and Grahams in 2013 I had a great deal of experience under my belt and an even better mentor than my dad, Albert.

Nine years later I have learned so many valuable business and life lessons that have enabled me to look for ways that we can grow as a company, particularly in the digital age. When I took over the reins of these Australian jewellers, we had 15 stores in South Australia, 16 in Western Australia, and a further eight in Queensland. We also had an online store that we launched in 2011 that accounted for 3% of our sales at the time.

Now, almost a decade on, we have over 40 stores around Australia with plans to open many more and two bustling companion websites that account for over 20% of our sales. Not including Luminesce, have also launched two solely e-commerce brands, the watch website Watch Depot and the silver jewellery marketplace Silver Chic. Both sites have seen considerate growth since their launch with no shortage of stopping anytime soon.

With our desire to continue expanding, the Luminesce brand was born almost out of necessity due to the increasing demand for high-quality lab-created diamonds. With more and more people becoming conscious about the products they consume and their impact on the world around us, there has never been a greater demand for man-made diamonds. Produced in a controlled laboratory setting that mimics the conditions in which a mined diamond is formed deep within the earth’s crust, lab-grown diamonds leave less of a carbon footprint and provide people with a bigger, brighter, and somewhat better sparkle for a more affordable price point.

In the late-2010s we noticed that more and more of our customers were becoming interested in lab-grown diamonds, even to the point that they would ask members of our team about them in-store and online. They were not just interested in them for their sustainability factor, but also their promise of clarity and quality for a lower price. People were very intrigued by the fact that you could get a 1-carat lab-grown diamond with fewer inclusions and a very little color for around 25% less than what you would pay for a mined diamond of the same quality.

Every single time that you put in work, you get a proportional amount of results and successes from that work.

This interest peaked when other prominent jewellery brands began marketing their lab-grown diamonds. So, in 2018 we rolled out our first range of lab-created jewellery at Shiels and Grahams in-store and online. We started with a handful of lab-grown diamond solitaire engagement rings and then expanded into a full range in 2020, launching Luminaire Lab Grown Diamonds, which then became the more fitting-Luminesce Lab Grown Diamonds.

Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.

While many of my other startups and businesses have been about selling the widest ranges at really competitive prices, Luminesce is all about the one product: our lab grown diamonds. Yes, they do come in various forms of jewellery like diamond rings, engagement rings, necklaces and more — but the sparkling centerpiece is always there.

There were a few keys to successfully growing lab grown diamonds that were important when we began manufacturing. First, was that they were eco-friendly and we were making them efficiently, and second was that they were more beautiful than a natural diamond at the same price. I’m happy to say we accomplished both, and that our product does hold excellent value in both an environmental and joy-giving sense.

Luminesce Lab Grown Diamonds are grown using the CVD method, which essentially requires our expert scientists to remove carbon from gases and attach the atoms in layers to the diamonds. This all goes on in an air-tight box that is heated to separate the atoms.

Once we have the diamonds, designing perfect lab grown diamond engagement rings is an important focus for us. We wanted to provide lab grown diamond rings for everyone, which meant carefully selecting the size, cut, styling like halos and clusters, and classic looks to fit perfectly onto your fiancée's finger. We also picked up on the rising popularity of the pink diamond, after the closing of the Argyle mine in Western Australia. Using heat treatment and special techniques, we have been able to craft our very own lab grown pink diamonds which fill that space in the market brilliantly.

Describe the process of launching the business.

As mentioned, I worked hard with my team to pick the perfect products to have on our new online store. That was truly important, but the full launching of the business needed a lot more hands-on deck. My marketing team has done a great job in developing an acquisition strategy with me and creating a brand that fits with our new eco-friendly diamonds.

There are three things that you can count on: death, taxes, and having to deal with failure.

We chose a nice natural green color for a lot of the site, including our logo: a fern emerging from the facets of a diamond. The imagery fits well, given that lab diamonds are grown from a seed of pure diamond. It also allows us to convey that our site is very much an eco-friendly, conflict-free source of diamonds.

Our web team made sure that our website ran smoothly, and that customers could easily find what they were looking for. A series of blog and information pages were written to assist in our SEO ranking and to help our customers learn a little more about what they’re buying. As our Luminesce stones are also sold on our Shiels webstore, we also released a short, but high-quality video explaining exactly what a lab grown diamond is. Check it out below.

Along with a functioning store with its unique content, the Luminesce team followed with social media pages, and I got to work on allocating a budget for our advertisement. Rather than educational like our initial content, our Google and social media ads were very much product-driven so that we could see the payoff of our hard work.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

Since launch, we have focused on building our brand through Google ads and in-store signage. Luminesce is stocked in Shiels and Grahams Jewellers stores across the nation so our process has been about brand recognition.

Building trust isn’t a one-size-fits-all tactic that any business can implement overnight. Reliability is a key factor in building trust, so we have made sure that we are consistent in delivering value to customers. We have also ensured that staff across Shiels and Grahams stores are trained to know everything about lab grown diamond jewellery.

In addition to this, we have implemented a customer retention program to encourage feedback. We encourage our customers to share feedback that can influence potential new customers, and start to build a community of like-minded customers or users that everyone can connect with. We’ve done all of this will implementing an organic SEO strategy and a brand-based Google Ads campaign.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

We are very much in the infant stages of Luminesce but we have seen great success in our Shiels and Grahams stores so we are hoping the website will help to influence in-store and online purchases. Our traffic has been steadily growing since launch so we will continue to monitor this and recommend any user experience changes that may aid our quest.

In the future, we will be shifting our site to Shopify and focusing on marketplaces. While some users are reluctant to buy diamond jewellery online, we want to get our products in front of as many eyes as possible.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

One of the main lessons that I have learned not just from Luminesce but from all of my businesses, is that success comes to those who work. I’ve also made sure that my staff possesses this same work ethic because every single time that you put in work, you get a proportional amount of results and success from that work. If everyone has the same mindset then we can achieve success together.

Another thing that most entrepreneurs need to learn is to take risks. You don't know what's going to happen or what will succeed, but you need to be able to keep going forward when things look bleak. That might mean quitting your job and starting your own company or it might just mean taking a different approach to problem-solving, but I think it's the willingness to take risks that fuel the growth of your business.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

Like our other e-commerce sites such as Silver Chic and Watch Depot, Luminesce runs on Magento, which has supported our online business for several years now. Although we are happy with the results from this website, we are looking to move our sites to Shopify in the near future. This should help us make on-the-go changes to our website much more smoothly, thanks to the intuitive design of the platform.

We use several analytical tools (as everyone should!) to measure our progress from our avenues of acquisition and identify what’s affecting our conversion and retention. These include Google and in-built social media tools, and some external services, too. My team and I use Klaviyo to organize our email campaigning, which has proven to work well for us in the past.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

Influential books, podcasts, and other resources have been the most inspirational for me. The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson has had a greater impact on my life than any other book I have ever read. I highly recommend it!

If you want to read a less inspirational book that has had a big impact on my business, check out The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. It will help you build the right kind of business.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

There are three things that you can count on: death, taxes, and having to deal with failure. And that’s the best advice I can give anyone who wants to start his or her own business. You will get rejected, ignored, and told "no" more times than you can imagine. But if this is something you want to do, then do it anyway!

This goes for any entrepreneur, but I think in particular for those who want to start a business or want to take their first steps: it’s not going to be easy. Creating a new venture is hard and growing one is even harder. If you can persevere through the challenges, you will get there in the end, and it will be worth it.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

We have an ever-expanding office, and big plans for new stores to open up. If you are passionate about jewellery, sales, or marketing, we may very well have new positions opening up. For our stores, customer service skills and a love for fashion is a must. If you are interested in applying for a role, you can do so at our Shiels careers page.

Where can we go to learn more?

If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!