Material Good’s Rob Ronen: ‘Sales should be secondary’ to the in-store experience

“The retail experience that was being offered was subpar,” Ronen said on the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast. “I would go to different retailers … that were carrying high-end timepieces, and I noticed that it was all about product and price. A client would walk into a store, they would ask for a specific product or ask to be shown different price point products, and then they would haggle and negotiate over price — because that was still a time when discounts were prevalent in the watch world. … It was not experiential. I felt like there would be something we could do better.” 

The first store served as a proof of concept, even attracting Hailey Bieber and John Mayer, among other celebrity shoppers. So, eight years after its opening, in early December 2023, the founders opened a second store in Miami.

Along with discussing the company’s unique approach to physical retail, Ronen spoke on the podcast about how it’s meeting the standards of discerning luxury shoppers while also appealing to aspirational consumers. His comments from the episode, below, have been lightly edited for clarity.

Deprioritizing sales in-store

“One of the greatest things that happened when we first opened was that people would walk in, and they would be looking around, and they’d be kind of awestruck — and they wouldn’t even know what they were looking at. They would come in and they’d be like, ‘Is this a jewelry store?’ ‘Is this watches?’ And we don’t attack clients. We let people come in, we offer them a drink — water, coffee, whatever they’d like — and we let them explore the space. In the center of the space, there are no showcases. Everything is on the exterior walls, and it’s all integrated as you would in your home — in your library, your living room, your family room or a formal seating area. The anchor in the middle of the space is a 15-person dining room table. All those spaces will and can be used for selling, however, they’re there to give you the comfort and warmth of someone’s apartment or home. Material Good Soho was very much designed like a Soho loft. … We have crazy-high ceilings and we have exposed H-vac systems, but it’s all done in a very cohesive, luxurious way, where you can come in and explore our products in a way that makes you feel like you’re not being sold. You’re there to just experience it. I’ve always said that sales should be secondary. Let someone experience the space. And if they like it, they’ll come back.”

Selling luxury watches and jewelry amid the rise of e-commerce

“We’ve had about a year and a half of some trickiness around the world where, I don’t care what anybody says, the luxury goods world has corrected — as have many, many industries. Things have — I don’t want to say cooled, but — definitely corrected. And so what that causes us to do is continue to put money, time and effort into how we continue to show who we are out there. Because if you Google things in luxury, watches and jewelry, there’s no shortage of it. So, how do we differentiate ourselves to know that, if you walk into any one of our spaces, we’re different? How can we appear and show you that through a screen? And that is a very, very hard recipe to put together. And it’s an ever-changing thing. And we’re learning, just like most people are — especially in this post-Covid, new state of the economy. You have to continue to reinvent, whether you’re massive like Net-a-Porter or you’re you’re smaller like us. … It never ceases to amaze me that someone can go on onto our site and spend $60,000 on a timepiece. Timepieces [used to] have to be touched and tried on. And with jewelry, you used to have to sit and wear it. Covid really changed people’s ideology to: ‘I can buy it, and I’m comfortable spending it.’ … However, we’re trustworthy because we have physical locations. …In watches and fine jewelry, that makes a big difference.”

Lab-grown diamonds vs. ‘the real thing’

“We never do anything with lab-grown diamonds. … Don’t get me wrong: Is it a very big topic of conversation in the jewelry world? Sure. How could it not be? But I almost look at it like: the Louis Vuitton bag you see on the street versus the Louis Vuitton bag you buy in the store. Our clients still want to know that they are wearing, feeling and holding the real thing. … Lab-grown diamonds are cheap because they can easily be made. The real thing will always carry that more special uniqueness to our clients. We have thousands of clients who would never buy lab-grown diamonds. … Every client says the same thing: ‘How could I feel comfortable giving my significant other a piece of diamond jewelry knowing that it was inherently much less expensive because it wasn’t, quote-unquote, the real thing?’ I can’t speak for everybody, but that’s how we feel here.”