My Business Strategy Serves Billionaire Clients: Serpentine Jewels

This as-told-story is based on a conversation with Ali Galgano, founder of Serpentine Jewels.

After graduating from Cornell University, Galgano launched her career at Goldman Sachs and developed her passion for jewelry on the side. Galgano earned her Graduate Gemologist (G.G.) diploma from the Gemological Institute of America and completed formal training in jewelry design. In 2008, she started ecommerce jewelry brand Charm & Chain, which was acquired in 2015. Her experience building her first company, alongside another business consulting with clients on engagement rings, laid the foundation for Serpentine Jewels, with locations in New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut. Founded in 2016, Serpentine Jewels hit seven-figure revenue within its first year.

The piece has been edited for length and clarity. 

My journey building Charm & Chain and consulting with clients on engagement rings taught me everything about the mechanics of the industry and client service. Around the same time, many of my friends were getting engaged, and I realized a void in the market. Clients lacked a trusted advisor to guide them through diamond sourcing and custom design. I distilled what I wanted to see in the market into the DNA of Serpentine Jewels: a modern private jeweler centered on expertise, deep customization and lifelong client partnerships. 

 When I was thinking about what I wanted Serpentine to be, I had enough clients at that point to start and self-fund the business. But I had to start small. Because it was self-funded, I couldn’t put millions of dollars into inventory. Today, I am still the sole owner of the company. I’ve grown it into an established fine jewelry house independently. That’s allowed me to maintain full creative and strategic control while still shaping every aspect of the brand’s growth and evolution. 

Setting the scene: Two locations for a hands-on, personalized experience 

Our New York City studio is really the heart of our design, gemological and operational activity. So our core team is there, including designers, gemologists and operations staff. They’re all centralized in New York to ensure seamless collaboration from the initial concept all the way through production. I split my time 50/50 between our locations. 

 I am highly involved in the day-to-day parts of the business, from examining pavé settings to selecting specific stones for our clients’ bespoke projects. Each piece meets my own standards for what I would want to wear before it leaves our studio. 

 I designed our Greenwich location to offer a more personal residential atmosphere. The space provides a highly tailored environment for our bespoke consultations and one-on-one viewings for our clients. It almost feels like being in a friend’s living room. Jewelry is such a personal, intimate thing to so many people. Feeling relaxed and like you’re not in a retail environment can be helpful to get to the psychological root of what clients are looking for.  Also in Greenwich, we regularly host philanthropic events. We do a lot of educational events there, diamond buying workshops and cultural programming.

We have about 12 full-time employees between those two locations. Also, we have our brand and content strategy team based in Washington, D.C. That’s a remote arm of our business, but we do meet with Washington-area clients down there. Then we have someone who’s on our Boston team and is kind of our Boston jeweler. We also have a lot of virtual clients. 

One of the things that’s unique to our business is the seamless integration of our departments. Whether it’s our in-house gemology team, our estate and vintage experts, our design team — we operate as this holistic ecosystem. 

Establishing relationships for high-ticket sales

Early on, I received the best business advice from my dad: Relationships are everything. With these high-net-worth relationships where we’re selling high-ticket items — six figures, sometimes seven figures — those relationships are built over time, not through aggressive selling. That’s how I started this business. People came to me because they needed someone to trust in the jewelry business.

 Since the very beginning, we have not done any traditional marketing. We haven’t done Google ads or Instagram ads. The entire business has been built upon word of mouth, which makes sense for a jewelry brand. People need that recommendation from a friend to establish trust.  I used to think it would be very strange for someone to buy a six-figure diamond off of Instagram without ever meeting us, but that happens much more frequently than you would think these days. 

Inside the atelier process: taking out the guesswork

Women often come to our atelier first to try on pieces of jewelry. The process always starts with a conversation with me about what they’re looking for, what’s already in their jewelry collection and what they wish was in it. We come up with a strategic plan for their jewelry collection. That’s fun for a lot of people because then I have their preferences and am able to liaise with the husband separately. We take down anniversary and birthday details, so if they have a significant other, when the time is right, we’ll reach out to them and facilitate the sale. The guy gets credit for getting the woman exactly what she wants, but doesn’t have to guess. 

 Many of our clients are in their 40s. I’ve noticed that when women are in their 40s, they often want to take control of their own jewelry boxes. People want to come in and have an intimate chat because they need someone to help them figure out what direction their jewelry collection should take. They might have a lot of the basics, but it’s time for them to personalize their collection. 

What today’s consumer actually wants in their jewelry box

 I feel like today’s consumer doesn’t focus on a single brand or style or category. They want to combine bespoke jewelry, gemstones that they choose, estate and vintage jewelry, family heirlooms and contemporary design to create collections that reflect their own personal style. A lot of that involves mixing eras, influences and aesthetics. With the clients that I have that have the most interesting jewelry boxes, the pieces might not 100% make sense together. 

 You could have a billionaire client whose most important possession is a little string bracelet that her daughter made for her. That’s such a great example of how people just want other people to look at them and say, “Wow, she had her own point of view on this.” 

For instance, if someone comes in looking for a 40th birthday gift and knows they want a tennis bracelet, we talk about why they want that piece and what void it might fill in their collection. Then I might say, “Well, have you ever considered also adding some of your kids’ birthstones?” People think outside the box a lot more when they have a partner who pushes them outside of their comfort zone or gives permission to make individualized decisions that aren’t based on what their friends have. 

An eye toward the future: managing inventory and scaling a high-touch service

One of the biggest challenges with this business has been strategic inventory management. Balancing a portfolio of high-value natural diamonds requires a delicate and sophisticated approach. So we curate and create our ready-to-wear designs not for immediate sale, but as a strategic design library. These pieces often serve as a jumping-off point for bespoke projects. The challenge, of course, lies in maintaining a collection that is robust enough to inspire immediate interest while remaining agile enough to pivot to the unique specifications of any given client. 

Scaling such a high-touch service is another important challenge.  We provide a level of hands-on involvement and bespoke attention that far exceeds the traditional retail experience. Each client and project receives intense personalized focus, which is inherently time-intensive. So in order to scale our model effectively, we’ve had to intentionally expand our team. We’ve had to hire top-tier designers and quality control specialists. This allows us to uphold the highest standards of craftsmanship and design turnarounds without diluting the specific vision and rigor that I bring to every piece. 

 This October marks Serpentine’s 10th anniversary, which is an exciting milestone for us, and it’s a great opportunity to reflect on how our brand has evolved. We went from a personalized jewelry service to a real destination for bespoke design, exceptional gemstones and more recently, rare vintage pieces. We are a modern take on the family jeweler model.

This as-told-story is based on a conversation with Ali Galgano, founder of Serpentine Jewels.

After graduating from Cornell University, Galgano launched her career at Goldman Sachs and developed her passion for jewelry on the side. Galgano earned her Graduate Gemologist (G.G.) diploma from the Gemological Institute of America and completed formal training in jewelry design. In 2008, she started ecommerce jewelry brand Charm & Chain, which was acquired in 2015. Her experience building her first company, alongside another business consulting with clients on engagement rings, laid the foundation for Serpentine Jewels, with locations in New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut. Founded in 2016, Serpentine Jewels hit seven-figure revenue within its first year.

The piece has been edited for length and clarity.