You might not be aware of it, but I first entered the arena of Click & Mortar Business back in 1996, when my late wife and I launched NiceIce.com which specialized in round brilliant ideal cut diamonds and custom jewelry, I know operate the web site as a blog which provides in-depth diamond grading tutorials and consumer education. Today’s question being  posed by Natalie Sisson, as part of her 30 Day Blog Challenge is “Whose online business do you admire most and why?” and the answer is…

Brian Gavin Diamonds because his approach to marketing diamonds and jewelry online is professional and innovative. It seems like every time I look at the web site, a new, state-of-the-art feature, which is intended to provide their customers with a better online diamond buying experience, has been added to the web site.

And he’s continually creating marketing campaigns which are absolutely amazing… for instance, they just launched a contest called “Your Story Written in the Stars” to launch their new Signature Cushion Cut Diamond, which is giving people the opportunity to win one of three diamond solitaire pendants being given away, in exchange for submitting a story about their engagement, enduring love, or an inspiring moment in their lives… Thus far the response rate for the contest has been really great, and there have been some pretty amazing stories submitted by people, you can read them on the web site…

The pre-launch campaign was really cool… about a bunch of people received a package which contained two lenses on one day, which was followed by another package a few days later, which contained a tube that the lenses fit into, which when snapped together made a telescope.

Who thinks of this kind of stuff? I think it’s simply brilliant, and find that Brian Gavin comes up with this stuff on a pretty regular basis… so I admire his creativity and his business model, and as a result, I write about him and his diamonds a lot on my blog about diamonds, I’ve learned some amazing online business strategies from following his success!