By Lauren Giella
When Nicole Wegman was looking at engagement rings with her now-husband 12 years ago, she didn’t know what to expect. At only 26, she said this was a big deal, both emotionally and financially.”We’d never bought anything that expensive before,” she told Newsweek in an interview. “I was completely and totally overwhelmed.”The couple visited New York’s Diamond District in Midtown Manhattan—an experience she described as “off-putting.””You don’t know if you’re getting ripped off; it’s a bunch of older men kind of haggling you and telling you what to buy, and you certainly don’t trust their design aesthetic,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe that this was the way couples buy engagement rings.”That’s when she had the idea to create her own engagement ring company—by women, for women.Wegman has a background in fashion and retail. She worked in product development and buying for Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s. But she admits she didn’t know anything about jewelry when she started Ring Concierge.”I never even considered it as a career path because I didn’t know anybody working in jewelry,” she said.In the fashion industry, Wegman said, there are a lot of women working at all levels and departments. But in the diamond world, she said, it’s all men.”The diamond industry are basically sons taking companies over from their fathers, who took the company over from their grandfather, and it’s all men,” Wegman said. “There’s no innovation, and there’s nothing happening that really disrupts it.”Wegman launched Ring Concierge in 2017 with $2,000, offering bridal jewelry online.”The business was bootstrapped up until this past year,” she said. “I worked out of my apartment, and the business was profitable from year one because I operated in a really scrappy capacity.”Without funding from venture capital firms, Wegman was on her own. But that’s how she liked it.”I’m really glad that that’s what I did because it forced me to build a healthy business, as opposed to a business that was just growth above profits,” she said. “It allowed me to make fast gut reactions to things that did help the business grow, as opposed to needing to have conversations with a room full of men from private equity.”Now, her company offers engagement rings, wedding bands and fine jewelry online and in stores in New York City, Boca Raton, Houston and Los Angeles.The company offers private sessions with diamond consultants to create the perfect ring—in person or virtually—as well as a 30–minute try-on experience to discover the ideal size and style.She said the company focuses on what millennial women actually want, how they want to be approached, how they want to shop and the styles that resonate with them, all while being “extremely transparent in an otherwise completely opaque industry.”The company grew through word of mouth via social media marketing that communicated directly to women.Despite being a naturally confident and assertive leader, Wegman said, she had to navigate situations that she wasn’t very experienced in as a CEO. But instead of shying away from those areas, she forced herself out of her comfort zone through trial and error.”I’m not a believer that you should figure out how to get really strong in your weakest areas, but it doesn’t mean you can ignore the areas you’re not strong in if they’re important for the business,” she said. “So identifying those and forcing yourself to gain knowledge and get comfortable talking about those areas and/or surrounding yourself with a team that can make up for those weaknesses … is how you grow a business successfully.”She noted that it is often harder for women to feel confident when talking about money or the financial side of the business. Even if those are not areas of interest or expertise, Wegman said, women need to understand them and be comfortable talking about them.”You have to ask questions and put your ego aside—the only way you can get comfortable in these areas you don’t know about is to admit you don’t know about them,” she said. “I think people have a perception that it makes them look like they’re not good at their job if they’re admitting the areas they’re unclear about. But I think it’s the exact opposite—it shows that you have an eagerness to grow and learn and you want to be doing more and better.”Looking ahead, Wegman hopes to grow in the physical retail space—an area with massive opportunity as well as very high risk.”Eighty-five percent of fine jewelry transactions in the U.S. happen in stores, which is very unlike most other industries; it just hasn’t quite shifted to online,” she said.For Ring Concierge, however, most of the business comes from online purchases. Sales from the five physical stores account for less than 10 percent of total revenue, Wegman said.As her business has grown and more people have come on board with their own experiences and opinions, Wegman said, a piece of advice she always comes back to is to trust her gut.”If you are leading a company or founded a company, you’re doing it for a reason: You had a great idea, you have a clear vision or you have an aesthetic that nobody else has,” she said. “And as you grow, you should surround yourself with people who are experts, [and] their opinions are going to start to trickle in, and it is very difficult, especially for women, to not want to lean on others’ opinions. But at the end of the day, you need to think about why you started it in the first place and never lose that clear vision and focus because that is how you should be making 90 percent of your decisions.”Wegman is one of the panelists at Newsweek’s Women’s Global Impact Forum that will take place at Newsweek’s headquarters at One World Trade Center in New York City, on August 5, 2025.The forum aims to connect senior female executives across all industries and job functions with rising stars on the path to C-suite positions to discuss leadership, innovations and how they are inspiring all women to succeed in the business world.