The incredible story of how founder David Sutton and his B2B diamond platform Nivoda tripled both revenue and workforce in 2021, and how he plans to repeat this most unbelievable of feats in 2022.
What exactly does Nivoda offer to its customer base?
Nivoda offers the ability to search for and purchase natural, lab-grown and melee diamonds at the best possible prices from anywhere in the world. In addition to this, the company has a vast international team tending to all of the quality control, delivery and payment processes end to end.
We therefore provide retailers with the very best priced diamonds with zero inventory risk. After years of working in the jewellery industry, I had come to the conclusion that this was clearly one of the most prevalent issues for retailers, and Nivoda has now provided the solution.
Our long-term goal is to provide the industry with a trusted, convenient marketplace for all jewellery products – not just diamonds.
David, you last appeared on the PJ cover back in late 2020. It wasn’t quite pre-Covid but it was relatively early on in the pandemic. Generally speaking, how has business been for Nivoda since?
We have managed to triple our revenue and also grow our team from 35 to over 100. It has been an exciting phase of business growth. We have opened and started selling into new territories in addition to expanding our core offering.
Today the number of stones on our platform is in excess of 1.2 million natural and lab-grown diamonds, offering our wonderful customers a wide and readily available selection from across the globe.
Not only have we experienced exceptional growth, but more importantly our customers are growing faster than the market itself. Our ultimate goal is to continue to grow the profit margins of our customers, reduce their risk and save them time when sourcing globally. They can then use the additional profits to invest in marketing, customer service and other important aspects of their businesses.
We have seen that the retailers who provide a ‘connected journey’ for their customers through both online and in-store experience are outpacing the growth of those focused only on an exclusive journey.
In what timeframe has the business tripled its revenue and workforce and how did you achieve this feat?
Both our workforce and revenue has tripled in the year of 2021, and we plan to triple that again this year. The reasons for the growth have been both internal and external – it was the perfect storm. We’ve been lucky to attract an exceptional sales team. They’ve been the driving force behind the growth in users of the platform.
Externally, though, the need to sell virtually – driven, of course, by the pandemic – meant Nivoda’s virtual selling solutions were ideally placed for the new way of business.
We’ve had many new customers coming on board looking to facilitate these changes which have also led to their own success and growth coming out of the pandemic. Our product and tech teams continue to innovate and deliver new ways for retailers to win sales and drive revenue growth and profit margins.
You founded Nivoda nearly five years ago. Did 2021 mark its fastest growth to date?
We did start the business in 2017, however we opened the platform to the industry at the beginning of 2019. The company has had a steady 10-15% month-on-month growth since then and an average of three or even four times growth each year.
Whether they are buying from Nivoda or elsewhere, what can a small jewellery designer or retailer do to ensure the diamonds that they use are definitely from an ethical source?
The way that miners, manufacturers, dealers and retailers can all participate in guaranteeing ethically sourced diamonds is to participate in mine-to-market tracking initiatives. This gives end-consumers the ability to see each step of the diamond’s journey.
As the trusted platform for the industry, we understand that it is our responsibility to gather provenance reports and get them into the hands of the retailers and end-consumers. Nivoda is uniquely positioned to provide this data in standardised formats, and make it easily accessible to companies throughout the industry.
We are now working to integrate traceability with both Everledger mine-to-market tracking and De Beers Group to provide provenance and origin via the De Beers Code of Origin trusted-source programme.
Is there anything else exciting going on at the company you can talk about right now?
2022 has kicked off with a bang for us. We’re ending Q1 on a high with an upcoming brand refresh and new website. This will showcase Nivoda, its functionality and benefits in a much clearer light with lots of valuable content to help support not only our customers but jewellery businesses in general.
Nivoda now has an inventory catalogue of over 1.2 million diamonds with more products coming through 2022, including gemstones. This year we are also opening offices in Belgium, Dubai and Australia with plans to open in China in the second half of 2022. These strategic logistical moves will significantly enhance our ability to serve customers more effectively in different regions around the world.
We’ve also upgraded our Customer Facing Mode, a virtual in-store sales tool on the iPad, designed for retailers to showcase Nivoda’s entire inventory to their customers with their own branding and markups displayed. Coupled with Nivoda’s sales kit to provide that tangible element when choosing a diamond, retailers are able to convert visitors into customers, while making the highest margins possible and without holding any inventory.
How do you plan to continue your recent impressive growth?
The plan comes in several parts. First, new offices. We will continue our expansion across the EU and US while establishing our APAC footprint further. Unsurprisingly this will necessitate doubling our current workforce.
There will also be further investment in quick delivery of stones to our international customer base. We will release FBN (Fulfilment By Nivoda), where we will hold goods in our offices around the world for same-day delivery city-wide and overnight delivery countrywide.
On top of that we will be adding appro which will be an excellent support when end-consumers wish to physically see the diamond of their choice. The final piece to the puzzle will be the addition of new product lines such as gemstones, mounts, wedding rings, studs, tennis bracelets and more.
David Sutton’s top 3 lessons learnt from five years at Nivoda
1. Teams
The founder tells PJ: “I have always wanted to have what I referred to as a ‘magic wand’ in business. When I could see something being done in a way which could clearly be better, I could wave this magic wand and it would be fixed. The closest thing in real life that I have come across are cross-functional teams or single-threaded teams.”
These teams, he explains, have all the necessary skills required to understand a problem, and can then design, build and deploy technical as well as non-technical solutions to solve them for the company’s customers. “It’s a system of product development pioneered by Amazon,” Sutton adds in explanation, “and setting up single-threaded teams across the company has significantly accelerated our ability to solve problems for our customers.”
2. Strategy
“Another important one that I’ve learnt is that goals are not strategy,” he emphasises. “A strategy must include actionable steps that lead to the accomplishment of these goals, rather than just saying ‘we’re going to double revenue this year, and increase profit margins by X’.”
Too much focus on the end result and not enough on the method is a big problem in business, the Nivoda founder believes. He adds: “We need action plans to achieve goals, and many people and businesses don’t spend the time required to create the strategy that is really going to deliver the vision, and would rather just cross their fingers and hope for it.
“One thing for sure,” he adds, “is that when people depend only on positive thinking to guide them, it displaces critical thinking and good strategy.”
3. Hiring
Sutton wraps up his list by referencing a favourite book. He says: “Another one which I’ve mentioned before and is really important is the hiring process: we have taken on a hiring process which is best described in a book called Who: The A Method for Hiring [by Geoff Smart and Randy Street].
The people in a business are what make it – they are everything. Successfully growing your business requires you to get this process right, and having the right people in the right seats. It has been invaluable in terms of building the right culture from day one and scaling effectively.”
What do customers think of Nivoda?
Richard Fish, MD, Fish Brothers: “A fluid site with a big enough proportion of the world’s inventory of diamonds on one platform. Once I considered it a daunting thought buying diamonds from abroad but Nivoda offices across the world handle the whole process for me. They really have your back with specific quality requests. The platform can integrate into your platform with your chosen margins applied. For me, it has become a one-stop shop.”
Emelie Tyler, MD, Purely Diamonds: “What sets Nivoda apart is being able to instantly purchase any stone in the platform in seconds and having a fantastic customer support team behind it who are always available to help. “In the past, I might have needed just one diamond from one particular supplier at any given time but it would still mean spending time discussing the diamond with the supplier, arranging the international payment transfer and then paying $150 shipping each time. Using Nivoda, I can choose any diamond from any supplier and they deal with the payment side, they liaise with the suppliers and I can save on my shipping costs too. They even quality control the stones for you before they’re sent, which is a game changer for me.”
Nick Carter, head of retail, Diamond Heaven: “The Nivoda platform has simplified the process of viewing and purchasing stones online. Further information and media can be requested at the click of a button as opposed to exchanging multiple emails with suppliers to achieve the same goal. It saves our company a lot of time and allows us to focus on sourcing stones efficiently for our customer base.”
