Five questions for: Tobias Kormind, co-founder of 77Diamonds.com

What does your business do?

77Diamonds.com designs and crafts fine jewellery and sells it directly to clients. We are an online, contemporary diamond jeweller that has disrupted the fine jewellery industry.

Our technology brings the world's largest selection of diamonds directly from the source to the fingertips of the consumer (with a 360-degree view of the diamond) and allows them to create their own unique piece of jewellery, all at an accessible price. Our clients simply hand-pick the diamond or gemstone and combine it with one of our exquisite designs, or work with our bespoke team to create a newly imagined piece. It's all made to order, fully transparent, and completely ethical.

What's been your greatest achievement?

It is hard to identify a single greatest achievement, as every year has many battles fought and mostly won. We have been privileged to win multiple industry awards (the first are always the sweetest!).

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And we have reached many major milestones, such as moving our headquarters to Mayfair, opening our own workshop, and successfully launching multiple showrooms. We now have an international footprint.

What has been your biggest challenge?

Dealing with the paradox of offering best-in-class products and customer service while significantly undercutting traditional jewellery pricing.

This has been exceptionally difficult because we had no outside investment until the middle of 2018. The process has involved rigorous prioritisation, a great deal of compromise on projects and timings, and sometimes lots of frustration.

What are your plans for hitting your targets this year?

Making the business more efficient, continuing to improve the process for customers, and further embracing social media.

What's the one piece of advice you'd give fellow entrepreneurs?

It's always going to be much harder than you think and it will never work exactly as expected. Be flexible, formulate contingency plans, and apply the 80/20 rule (get it live and fix the kinks later).