It can only be through unmatched drive that a determined entrepreneur made millions from Silicon Wedding Rings.
The world has always known metallic rings, not plastic rings. When friends told KC Holiday that his product was the dumbest product they had ever seen, his heart sank. A person of little faith would have bolted out when they asserted that nobody would buy the product. But KC Holiday was not made of a material that could crack under pressure.
The idea of a plastic wedding ring when the world had gotten so used to metallic rings over the ages seemed far-fetched. Even crazy. Who would wear it? For what purpose and why?
These tough questions would be answered as the sales rolled in and millions searched for the product only two years after its manufacture. What KC and his partner didn’t know is that they had stumbled on a first, that even Google did not have in their searches. And no store seemed to stock.
This is the incredible story of a man so consumed by the desire to offer solutions and also transform his life. And how in a short span of time, this weird product caught the attention of the world and changed his fortunes.
The defining moments
KC Holiday’s dream in his youth was to move to Los Angeles and become an actor. Those dreams changed when he met his future business partner Ted Baker. Ted managed a restaurant in Beverly Hills and offered him a chance to bartend and wait tables in the restaurant.
A few months after their encounter, they both got married and realized they had the same problem. They both had to bear the pain of the metallic wedding ring between their fingers as they worked. It disturbed them that there seemed to be no solution for this as the world had long accepted the metallic ring.
They continued talking about it for days as they worked in the restaurant. At this time, KC says he never used to look at his bank account because it was awful.
He was determined to replace his $ 2,000-a-month job that involved bartending and waiting tables at the restaurant. In his own words, “I wanted to stop waiting tables. I wanted to eat lunch when everybody else was eating lunch, not serving other people.”
The Product.
KC and Ted looked around for a plastic ring that could not be a pain as they went about their daily duties. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find it anywhere. They therefore decided to make it.
KC therefore approached a friend who made rings and asked him if he could make a plastic version of what he manufactured. His answer, “Yes, sure, why not??,” encouraged him a great deal.
Due to people’s indifference towards plastic, they decided to add value a little bit and make a silicon wedding ring. Their focus was to create a functional wedding band for an active lifestyle.
But how would people receive a plastic or silicon wedding ring? This question lingered as they embarked on producing the first batch of wedding rings.
Gathering resources.
Neither KC nor Ted had enough resources to start this off. They agreed on a handshake to contribute every little they had towards the first products. To help move things, he and his wife decided to move in with his mom to focus on building the business.
His restaurant shift started at 8 am and that of his wife at 11 am. Because they had one car, they went together, the wife sleeping in their red Fiat in the restaurant’s back lot as she waited for her shift in the same restaurant. “Bless her!”, KC says.
Their homes became their offices, their dining table, the room where decisions like building a website were taken. Ted’s garage became their inventory management location.
After months of work, the first batch of boxes with rings came to Ted’s garage.
But there was a problem. When they opened the boxes, they found the rigs to be awful. Deformed and useless. Unsellable. The rings had uneven edges, and nobody would want to wear a ring in that condition.
But they had to make them sellable because they had no more money to invest in new rings or for their improvement.
Surviving a scare
Exhibiting the traits of every successful entrepreneur who identifies solutions and struggles to fulfill them, KC and Ted refused to be defeated. Realizing they had made the worst mistake of their lives, pumping money in a pit, only two options remained. Shut down the company and their pet product or find a way to fix it.
Walking aimlessly in his mother’s house where he lived with his wife, wondering what to do, KC’s eyes caught an object. He found a tiny pair of scissors in his mom’s bedroom that he didn’t know existed. His Mom’s eyebrow scissors.
Then an option presented itself.
He trimmed the edges of the uneven rings with his mom’s pair of eyebrow scissors. And sure enough, there was a ring that was sellable.
The goal was now very clear. 50,000 deformed rings were now reconstructed and ready for the market. They named their product QALO.
The next Challenge: Finding Customers.
The duo had no money for marketing, having emptied their bank accounts to pay for the production of the first batch of rings. Because they didn’t have money, they became experts in guerilla marketing. They therefore devised innovative ways to get the product out to the market.
- Because there was no money for marketing, they figured out that email marketing is free and sent out multiple emails introducing their product.
- Ascertained that the only thing stopping them from selling was a website. But a website alone they realized wasn’t going to bring people.
- They thought of reaching out to famous people who could identify with the product and help make it down, at a time when influencers had not become so popular as a medium of marketing.
- Used a concept called seeding. This meant sending the product QALO out to people to try out free of charge. And expecting nothing in return. They sent it to as many people as possible. This was the period before influencers became a thing.
KC knew football quarterback Andy Dalton’s wife Jordan. He also had information that they were newly married. Hoping to use Andy’s popularity to get the ring out, KC sent Jordan a ring congratulating them on their wedding and offering them the rings free of charge.
Jordan received the rings and sent back a simple, ‘Thanks.’ And that was it. Nothing more.
Their first customers were therefore firefighters, athletes, and military people. People who worked outdoors and for whom a metallic ring was a nuisance.
The Breakthrough for QALO.
The breakthrough for KC and Qalo was when Andy was interviewed on a pre-season football documentary on HBO. During the interview, the first 10 minutes were dedicated to the ring on Andy’s finger and what it meant to him. Andy praised the ring as affording him comfort in the field as well as representing a commitment to his marriage.
It was a big win for Qalo. “We could not have sent him a script that was a better way of articulating exactly what our positioning was as a company,” KC said afterward. He just said the right words.
The two entrepreneurs seized the opportunity to answer viral questions on Twitter about the product. Sales started trickling in.
Sales were so good that KC decided to quit his waiting job at the restaurant and went all in to build QALO. Qalo in his own words, “was the first mover in Silicon wedding rings and if they didn’t move fast, someone with more money would run with their idea.
The next 6 months ended with over 13 people working in a 200 square foot office. When one had to talk to a customer, all the rest had to keep quiet until the call was over.
It was now time to build a real company with systems and structures.
Revenues in the formative years
- First year -$40,000
- Second year – $3.2 million
The revenue from Qalo comes from 60% e-commerce and 40% retail.
When they sold, it had grown to $125 million.
The determined entrepreneur made millions from Silicon wedding rings and drew the attention of celebrities. Lebron James, Dale Earnhardt, Eva Shockey among others.
Quotes from KC Holiday and lessons in Business and Startup.
- Go out there and find the problems people have and help them by giving solutions.
- You have to be shameless enough to tell people about your product without scaring them away. You have to tell people you exist.
- Part of building a business is what you say no to not what you say yes to.
- In business, know your numbers. If you don’t know your numbers, you are not in business.
- Care about your customers.
- Validate your solution as quickly as you can and give it all you possibly have.
- Focus on being better than being bigger.
- You should be able to communicate with anyone as an entrepreneur.
- You can’t build a business without incredible people.
Conclusion on how a Determined entrepreneur made millions from Silicon Wedding Rings.
Qalo silicone wedding rings represent adventure, commitment, and an elevated quality of life. By recognizing the agony that active people face in their everyday lives with the metallic rings, KC and his partner found a solution.
Taking on the entrenched and generally accepted metallic wedding industry was a challenge that seemed unsurmountable. But several people were suffering in silence. Torn between publicly showing affection and commitment to their spouses and their comfort while working with a metal between the fingers. And KC and Qalo provided a solution.
They disrupted an industry by creating an easy solution and product that friends called dumb and unsellable. But one that would draw in millions of customers previously suffering in silence.
After 8 years at Qalo and 2 years managing a venture fund, KC decided to go all in on coaching CEOs on how to scale consumer brands. He does this through his platform kc holiday.com.
An incredible story of courage, resilience, innovation, and thinking without the box that future entrepreneurs should emulate.
Related Stories: MKBHD: Running a YouTube channel professionally like a company.
He started and scaled a cleaning business to $5 million in revenue by the age of 22.
A Gambian orphan’s path to real estate fortune in America.
