Small Business: Kiwi jewellery brand Guys Gold's sparkly sustainability goals

Guy Thompson says he has sold about 50 of his rings so far.

Mount Maunganui local Guy Thompson talks swapping his career in graphic design to go after his passion and how starting a venture - no matter how small - is better than waiting for everything to be perfect before taking the plunge.

What does your business do?

Guys Gold specialises in men's wedding rings. We have four rings in our range - two bands and two signets - we keep our offering small and work predominantly with white and yellow gold, and some platinum when requested.

What was the motivation for starting the business?

When I was looking for a wedding ring in 2020, I was scouring the internet and every shop possible looking for something to my taste, and I felt like men's rings also seemed to feel like a bit of an after thought. My wife and I would go to a shop and the salesperson or whoever was behind the desk would be happy to talk to her and try and sell her diamond rings but we'd tell them we're actually here for me for a men's ring and the sales people wouldn't be that interested, they'd be "Like oh yeah, there's a couple over there" in the corner of the shop. The overall experience wasn't the best and secondly, I had a pretty clear idea in my head of what I wanted and just couldn't find it, so I started talking to a manufacturing jeweller toying with the idea of an apprenticeship and he was like "Nah I don't really have time, but here's what you should do".

He told me to buy a block of wax and these tools, he even gave me a few tools, and I'd set up a bit of a desk at my dinner table every night and I'd chip away at these blocks of wax making ring after ring - I'd get a few parts and figure out what was wrong with them and go back to the wax and carrying on. When I finally found one I was happy with - and that ended up being my wedding ring - randomly a couple weeks later that jeweller called me and offered me a job so that was amazing to get a job with him and learn the process start to finish. Everything I did was under his watch, which was a great way to learn.

I'm a graphic designer so I was doing the apprenticeship part-time, and then my wife and I found out we were pregnant last year I wrapped things up with the jeweller.

Guys Gold is very much a side hustle at the moment as I currently work full-time. I launched the business at the end of 2020 - back then it was just a landing page that directed you to my email or my Instagram and I had an Instagram where I would post photos of my own ring; that's all I had at that time.

Now the business is definitely picking up. We're about to get to the pointy end of the year, the busy season where people start to order. Last month we sold 10 rings and we expect the momentum to continue if not increase. I sold my first ring in last August after the first six months in business.

How was the business funded?

To get the business off the ground I started with photos of my wedding ring. The first couple of sales were of the exact same ring as my wedding ring, but to make those first five to 10 sales I didn't actually make any investment, I just sold the first one, took a heap of photos of that, sold the second one. Once I sold one ring I was able to make another. To get to the point to where it is at now, though, I would have spent about $10,000.

What's your main focus for now?

A big thing that has taken up a lot of time recently is packaging. To start the business I didn't want to invest in packaging because I hadn't sold a ring, and I wasn't going to drop thousands of dollars on packaging when it might sit in my room forever, so I only invested like $300 into matchbox style ring boxes, but I recently had a friend design me a really nice iPhone style box that houses a nice ring box.

The next thing I want to tackle is definitely sustainability; which is tricky in the gold industry - it is a mineral from the Earth and pretty intense on the Earth. I'm not exactly sure what that will look like for us but it is definitely something important for me that I want to start chipping away at - looking at ways we can be better and what we can improve on. I would love it if all the gold in my rings was all alluvial gold and all from New Zealand - that would be the dream.

Guy Thompson made his own wedding ring and went on to sell replicates to start his business.

What are your long term plans for the business?

In three to five years time I definitely want to be working on the business full-time, even before that. In three years I want to have someone helping out, contracting and maybe have the rings a little bit more accessible for people. At the moment the only way you can see the rings is if we organise to meet up, which is possibly a barrier to purchase, so if people can view them a little easier that would be quite nice. I don't need a physical store, but maybe I could share a space with someone or have them in an existing store.

What advice do you give others thinking about starting their own business?

Just start now without a website, without an Instagram, without any photos - start today and who cares if it is just your flatmates liking your Instagram and your Mum commenting on it, work on it and you can reinvent and improve as you go. If I waited until the business was perfect I still wouldn't have launched yet.