Olivia Landau and Kyle Simon ’17BUS met as students at the Gemological Institute of America and are reinventing the diamond engagement ring shopping experience through personalized service and expert education.
Simon, dedicated to the principles of sustainable development in Sierra Leone, co-founded the fair-trade diamond mining company, Arikymo in 2013. Landau, a 4th generation jeweler, was selling engagement rings at Tiffany & Co. when her friends began asking her advice on making their own engagement ring purchases.
Landau was using her access to wholesale jewelers to help her friends select diamonds and create their own tailor-made designs at a competitive price. Realizing that her friends weren’t the only ones mystified by the process of buying an engagement ring, Landau created a blog and an Instagram account, both centered on buying precious stones.
Requests began pouring in. Not only were her readers seeking out advice on what sort of stones to purchase, but they too, wanted bespoke jewelry designs like the ones Landau had landed her friends. Landau realized that she may have inadvertently stumbled upon the beginnings of a business.
Upon graduation from Columbus Business School Simon decided to turn down his job offer at Goldman Sachs and work alongside Olivia to expand The Clear Cut beyond the initial blog/Instagram and launch a direct-to-consumer diamond engagement ring platform.
Later that year The Clear Cut was accepted to the prestigious Techstars accelerator in New York. Since then The Clear Cut has been growing 100% quarter over quarter with features in Business Insider, Vogue, TechCrunch, and The Knot.
Reach out to Olivia@theclearcut.co if you or someone you know needs a high-quality hand-crafted diamond engagement ring at a fair price!