The diamond ring necessary for marriage is not only expensive, but also not suitable for daily life.
Can we find a material that makes it more comfortable to wear 24 hours a day?
Two American entrepreneurs, KC Holiday and Ted Baker, observed this phenomenon and founded QALO, a silicone ring company, which in just a few years has turned into a company with annual revenues of $100m.
KC Holiday and Ted Baker attended acting school in Los Angeles in 2012 and wanted to become entertainers. When there is no performance, they work together in the restaurant to earn living expenses.
They both get married in 2012 and shared a common annoyance that metal rings were inconvenient on many occasions.They often take it off when they work in a restaurant or when they play golf.It was so easy to lose that it was only worn on the wedding day and stored away the rest of the time to avoid the hassle.
But they both wanted to wear the ring 24 hours a day to show their commitment to their family.They had a friend who worked in a silicone factory, and that’s how they got to know silicone material.Silicone is not only comfortable to wear, but also cheap, even if unfortunately lost, you can easy buy a new one.They decided to make a silicone ring and pooled all their savings of $22,000 to launch their company, QALO. QALO consists of four words: Quality, Athletics, Love, and Outdoors. This represents KC and Ted’s expectations for the product and reflects their attitude towards life.
They charge $20 to $30 for silicone rings,Some people think silicone rings are too cheap to show the meaning of love.But Ted feels that “the price of the silicone ring does not represent the sincerity of the love, and they want to provide people with cheap but more meaningful rings”Money was so tight that they had little to spend on publicity, so they had to shoot their own video.KC and Ted wear expensive suits and QALO rings and play various extreme sports.
‘You don’t wear uncomfortable clothes when you play sports, so why wear uncomfortable rings?
Then they listed professional athletes, soldiers and firefighters as their target customers.One pilot was KC’s college classmate Andy Dalton, who plays for the Cincinnati Bengals in the NFL.
Andy was filmed wearing a QALO ring during an interview on HBO’s sports show, explained that “it is very meaningful to wear a wedding ring on the sports field”.This has led to a huge increase in the number of people searching for “silicone rings”, with QALO being the biggest beneficiary.
When silicone rings became more and more popular, they began to develop silicone necklaces, silicone pet tags and other products based on silicone material.
QALO is now a popular product on Amazon, with more than 3,000 retail locations in Australia and Japan, and plans to expand to other countries such as Germany and South Korea.This is often the case with business innovations, which can come from very humble ideas.Break the unwritten rules in the industry, for example, the ring material is mostly metal, why can’t it be more comfortable silicone material?
At the same time, we are looking forward to the infinite possibilities of silicone materials！