How The Moissanite Company leveraged TikTok to build a $7.25 million business

It was a love of the creation process of her own moissanite engagement ring – bringing to life the ring from start to finish – and a passion to afford other couples this precious experience that inspired the founder of a Brisbane-based bridal jewellery company to turn a $10,000 investment into $7.25 million in three years by the time she was 24.

The Moissanite Company was founded by Makayla Donovan in 2020 and today she operates the company, as well as Cultured Clarity, a curated range of laboratory diamonds, alongside her husband and co-founder Tom and a team of 20 employees.

Donovan spoke with SmartCompany about how TikTok, in particular, has paved the way for the company, as the founders continue their mission to fill in the gap in the Australian market for moissanite and lab-grown gemstones.

“Although I’d consider us old souls, and we’re not on TikTok personally, we certainly understand the way our generation consumes content and how pivotal platforms like TikTok are to reaching couples and as a result, business growth,” Donovan says. 

Despite this, Donovan said they have utilised TikTok from the very beginning, and even prior to launch. 

“If you’re a keen marketeer I think you’ll appreciate that there is no point launching a company if you’re launching to nobody,” she says. 

“So from the beginning, it was important for us to create real content for our pieces and appeal to couples just like us through platforms like TikTok and Instagram. 

“At the time, TikTok was still quite a new platform and virality came quite easily through engaging content. We used this to direct people to our website that was soon to launch and encouraged them to sign up to our mailing list so when we did launch, they’d know all about it.”

Crafting personal connections, every day

Donovan says TikTok has allowed the brand to reach millions of individuals.

“We saw this in the very early days of our business through naturally showcasing our pieces in realistic ways, which at the time, not a lot of competitors were doing,” she says. 

“It was important for us to show couples how our pieces looked up close, on the hand, in the sun, in the shade; the realness of it all instead of some glossy editorial photo. And this drew people in by the masses.

“Since, we’ve seen rapid growth on this platform with some of our posts reaching up to 8+ million views.”

Donovan says they have found the content that tends to land with their customers is content that feels really personal to them.

@themoissanitecompany

Let’s compare – choosing the right gemstone. Moissanite vs Cultured Diamonds ✨ #engagementring #labgrowndiamonds #moissaniteengagementring #moissanitevsdiamond #cultureddiamonds #engaged

♬ You – Petit Biscuit

“Like we’re speaking to them and can be sent onwards,” she says.

“This includes posts like ‘if you know your partner, which ring would they choose’. This style of posts showcases various pieces for people to send onwards. 

“As well as content around ‘which stack would you choose’. People love engaging with this style of content. Couples also love to watch behind the scenes of our craft, we often share videos from inside our workshop and they are amongst the most beloved.”

Engagement is key on TikTok

In terms of engagement, Donovan says she finds being extremely present and consistent is key.

“We post at a minimum, twice a day,” she says. 

“We also know that context is everything, so most of our posts are accompanied by text.  

“Sometimes people aren’t always scrolling with sound on too, so text is a very important aspect to the content for context and also appealing to the audience in an emotive way.”

At the beginning of 2023, The Moissanite Company’s TikTok following stood at just under 10,000 followers. Four months into 2024, its follower count has blossomed to 133,000.

Donovan says this growth can be credited to the beauty of the company’s pieces and consistent engagement with its community.

“This was achieved through responding to comments, DMs and interacting with the accounts held by our audience,” she says. 

“Sharing unique one-of-a-kind pieces increases our engagement, therefore, we have taken this into consideration and have implemented sharing custom pieces to our TikTok strategy.”

In turn, this has increased the brand’s overall enquiries and custom design sales. 

“TikTok has played a pivotal part in deriving brand awareness and global exposure. We believe that this is owing to its unique capacity to engage users unlike any other touchpoint,” she says. 

“With consumers preferring short-form content, TikTok provides a simplified process to view a product, gain insights from other consumers and ultimately purchase their item.

“With our verification and hundreds of reviews, TikTok has brought further credibility to our brand and to the forefront of their minds when searching for ethical bridal jewellery.

“It’s massively contributed to our global presence as a leader of lab-grown gemstones in the jewellery industry.”

Addressing a growing market

Like its social media following, the market segment that The Moissanite Company is seeking to address is also growing quickly. 

However, the true value of the market is hard to pin down amid conflicting estimates. 

Global market research store Research and Markets added a report to their offering in January that predicted the moissanite market is expected to increase from its current value of US$44.2 billion to reach US$71 billion by the end of 2031.

In a report published in November 2023, market research company The Brainy Insights estimated the global lab-grown diamonds market is expected to reach US$20.6 billion by 2032, a steep increase from the US$10.8 billion reported in 2022.

However, according to Daedal Research, in 2022 the global lab-grown diamonds market was valued at over US$22 billion and is forecasted to grow to over US$37 billion by 2028.