--- title: "Joel Klein of Ritani: How Price Transparency and Radical Honesty Revolutionized the Diamond Industry" url: "https://authoritymag.co/articles/joel-klein-of-ritani-how-price-transparency-and-radical-honesty-revolutionized-the-diamond-indus" publisher: "Authority Magazine" author: "Eric Netsch, CEO of Tapcart" authorUrl: "https://authoritymag.co/authors/eric-netsch-ceo-of-tapcart" interviewee: "Joel Klein" company: "Ritani" category: "Business" datePublished: "2022-05-19T09:26:52.011Z" dateModified: "2026-11-12T17:07:52.060Z" tags: "Business" --- # Joel Klein of Ritani: How Price Transparency and Radical Honesty Revolutionized the Diamond Industry *The CEO of Ritani discusses how family legacy, radical pricing transparency, and prioritizing mobile optimization built a modern diamond brand focused on customer empowerment.* > We launched price transparency to tackle the stigma this business has about being overpriced. This allows customers to know exactly how much we paid for a diamond, what it cost us to bring it over and what our markup is, that way they know exactly what they are paying for. --- As*a part of our series called “The Top 5 Ways To Market, Advertise & Promote An Ecommerce Business Today”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Joel Klein.* *Joel Klein is the CEO of Ritani, an e-commerce brand based in New York specializing in diamonds and fine jewelry. With over 20 years in the diamond industry, he has changed the way people shop for diamonds for the better by making the experience more transparent and accessible — learn more at*[Ritani.com](http://Ritani.com)*.* --- **Thank you so much for your time! I know that you’re super busy. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?** My family has worked with diamonds for decades — my grandfather came here to the U.S. after the Holocaust and became a diamond dealer. He had a knack for manufacturing and became world-renowned. My father joined him and is still known as the world’s expert in diamond manufacturing. Growing up in the industry, watching people shop for engagement rings, trying to understand diamonds. They always looked slightly confused and intimidated. I knew there had to be a better way to do this, a way that made sense for the customer and allowed them to feel more at ease and most importantly empowered to make the best decision for themselves and their budget. **Can you share the most exciting story that has happened to you since you began at your company?** Where do I even begin. Over the years we have tons of great experiences and memorable customers who have really become a part of our little Ritani family. One that comes to mind is when one of our customers had planned a proposal and then his future fiancé had to leave on a last-minute work trip. We tried rerouting the ring to his new location, but it wasn’t possible, he was determined to propose no matter what. So… we did the obvious thing… flew out a member of our team with the ring to his new location. He met us at the airport, and we hopped on the next flight back. These are the moments we live for. People will always forget that there are people running these businesses and that we all have been where they are. We like to show our customers the humanity behind the company. **What’s the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson did you learn from that?** I’m sure there are a few, but the funniest and biggest was when I was starting off in the ecommerce business, I kept telling myself I all I needed was a website and the rest is history. That could have been farther from the truth. From a merchandise and operational perspective, the business was nailed, I had all that in place. The website on the other hand… well let’s just say I learned very fast that having a functional, user friendly and conversion driving website was not as easy as I thought. It’s been such a fun ride and we’ve come such a long way since. It’s been a lot of fun learning about ecommerce, websites etc. and we still learn today as technology continues to evolve. **What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?** We’re constantly working on new features, new technology to bring to our website. When brainstorming we always think through the customer lens. We’re constantly learning from `them, and we always appreciate their feedback whether it be good or bad. We launched price transparency to tackle the stigma this business has about being overpriced. This allows customers to know exactly how much we paid for a diamond, what it cost us to bring it over and what our markup is, that way they know exactly what they are paying for. Our intent is to always be honest. We also worked hard on offering smart recommendations, this was to eliminate for a lack of better words, FOMO. How do you know you are getting the best diamond? You research, you come on site you filter, and you’re still left with 100’s to view. The recommendation logic basically scrubs through our inventory and compares it to the market. It then gives you the top 3 based on the balance of the 4C’s and most importantly pricing. **You’re a successful business leader. What are three traits about yourself that you feel helped fuel your success? Can you share a story or example for each?** **Humility:**As a leader, I had to remain humble. I was able to understand that hiring the right people and trusting them was the only way to succeed. It would be impossible for my company to thrive if I was not that way. Being as passionate as I was it would have been easy control everything. Humility allowed me to be honest with myself and allow the teams in place do exactly what they were hired for. **Empathy:**At the end of the day, regardless of your role or title, we’re all people. As a leader you need to acknowledge that daily and you need to let your teams know they are seen and heard. Great ideas can come from anywhere and anyone, not just from the top. In order to have a company comfortable enough to speak up you need to show empathy. We have an open-door policy, where anyone can walk in comfortably at any time and talk with leadership and each other and I don’t plan on changing that any time soon. **Honesty:**Most are scared to tell the truth, scared to let their employees know that there may be a month where the company is struggling. I’m my experience it has been a great thing. Speaking to the company openly about our hardships has been beneficial for us. It brings us closer together, it has allowed us to think outside the box and work together to come out of the other side. We’ve seen great success by being openly communicative and inclusive. Awesome, thanks so much for sharing that. I want to shift gears and talk about eCommerce. In my work, I focus on improving shopper engagement, so I’m very passionate about this topic. As you know, mobile has taken center stage in terms of how people are engaging and transacting with eCommerce stores — leading a lot of stores to lean into mobile-first shopping experiences like mobile apps. **Can you help articulate a few reasons why an eCommerce business should consider creating their own mobile app?** Everyone is on their phones all day. Done. Just kidding! The importance of an app to any given company depends on how necessary your product is to your customers life. If you have a site that people visit daily and/or purchase items weekly or monthly. Then an app is for you. For us at Ritani, we’ve thought about it, developed into one but an app is just not right for our business. For us, the focus is making sure our mobile site is optimized, user friendly, easy to navigate and browse. We spent our efforts into optimizing and building out a seamless mobile experience that we are always refining. **The death of the cookie is going to happen. By 2023 marketers will no longer be able to track consumers online using third-party cookies. How do you think that will impact how businesses acquire and re-target customers? What can they do to pivot?** I think a lot of us have lived through a time where third party cookies didn’t exist. I believe that maybe “older” strategies will be “new” again. First-party cookies will become the forefront and that data will be what we live by for a while, until I’m sure someone will find a new way to collect more info that follow the privacy laws. The natural thing to do today is to start focusing on Organic traffic and Affiliate Marketing all while really spending time understanding the customer you are currently acquiring, building personas and really focusing on lifetime value. **The cost of paid ads is at an all-time high. What are some alternative strategies to reach your target consumers that don’t involve paying a third party like Facebook and Instagram?** We emphasize and value organic traffic. We put a lot of time, effort and resources to work on that daily to ensure we continue to grow there. Paid ads will continue to get more expensive, and the ROI will just start to get smaller and smaller. At some point it stops being worth it. **Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience and success, what are your “Top 5 Ways to Market, Advertise & Promote An Ecommerce Business Today?” Please share a story or an example for each.** **Organic…Organic… Organic**… I cannot say that enough for anyone who is starting out today. Focus on what you are selling and do the research into how people are shopping for your product. What are they searching for? What do they need help with? Once you have that, you start addressing it throughout your site, through blogs, educational articles and seamlessly weave it through your key pages and product pages. Organic is not a one and done situation, you need to put time into it daily as keywords change and algorithms change. **Social Media** but don’t just chase the dream of going viral, yes you might get your name out there and yes you may gain followers, but it probably won’t affect your bottom line. Stay true to your brand and if you do go viral, go viral for something that clearly relates to your brand, your product and your service. This way you are gaining a new audience that is truly interested that may become a consumer in the future and engage with your content today. **Affiliate marketing.** Whether it be influencers, bloggers, or just educational sites — depending on your brand and your product. A fantastic way to get your product into the eyes of your target audience. You need to understand who you are having promote your product, does it fit into their lifestyle brand etc.? Content is King here as well. Ensuring you have links to your products on sites that either educate people on your industry or have expertise in your industry. They have direct access to your future consumers. We love affiliate marketing. **Word of mouth.** Your customers are your biggest ambassadors. If they enjoy working with your team, had a wonderful experience and received an amazing product, they will tell their family and friends. You always want to be honest and open with your customers and they will always appreciate that. **Leads. Growing your lead lists** — we all spend so much time and money driving traffic to our businesses/websites only to watch them leave. The most important thing to do is capture an email, phone number, or even why they are interested in your products. **You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.** I think I’m a little too humble to start a movement, but what I would like to see is transparency brought to the forefront of companies. Customers are educated today; they have everything at their fingertips. It’s easy for them to know when they are being taken advantage of. The key is to be transparent, throughout your entire buying process. Being there for your customers and listening to them. **How can our readers further follow your work online?** Follow us on Instagram @Ritani and visit our website at [www.ritani.com](http://www.ritani.com) **I want to thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise with us. I wish you continued success!** --- A*bout The Interviewer. Eric Netsch is the co-founder and CEO of Tapcart, a codeless mobile app builder that helps Shopify’s fastest-growing brands to create an owned marketing channel so that they can reach, engage, convert, and retain their audience without ever relying on another entity for access. Eric has been featured in TechCrunch, Business Insider, The Verge, etc. To launch your mobile app, visit*[Tapcart.com](http://tapcart.com/)*.* --- Source: https://authoritymag.co/articles/joel-klein-of-ritani-how-price-transparency-and-radical-honesty-revolutionized-the-diamond-indus (Authority Magazine, Business). Interviewee answers are first-person statements of the guest. Index of all pages: https://authoritymag.co/llms.txt