What does it take to scale a luxury resale business when you have to win both the customer selling the product and the customer buying it?

In this episode of The Next Nova Podcast, Matt Phillips sits down with Andrew Brown of MyGemma to discuss how the company evolved from wholesale diamonds into a curated luxury resale platform focused on handbags and jewelry.

Andrew explains why MyGemma treats sourcing and selling as two distinct sides of the business, how years of SEO content generate leads from consumers looking to sell luxury goods, and why the company distributes inventory across MyGemma.com, more than 20 marketplaces, wholesale channels, and live shopping.

The conversation also explores how MyGemma prices inventory using historical transaction data and current market information, matches products to different marketplace audiences, and uses email, SMS, affiliates, paid search, and physical mail to acquire and retain customers.

On the operations side, Andrew shares how Salesforce became the company’s internal source of truth and how MyGemma is beginning to use Claude and AI to improve team efficiency rather than simply reduce headcount.

Matt and Andrew also discuss seasonality, access to capital, live shopping, product mix, inventory turn, gross margin, customer service, and why distribution matters in luxury resale.

Andrew closes with advice for founders: bootstrap as long as you can and retain as much ownership as possible without limiting the growth of the business.

In This Episode

• From diamond wholesale to luxury resale
• Managing sourcing and selling as two businesses in one
• Using SEO to acquire sellers
• Selling across MyGemma and 20+ marketplaces
• Pricing luxury inventory with market data
• Matching products to marketplace audiences
• Email, SMS, affiliates, paid search, and physical mail
• Repeat customers and retention
• Salesforce as an operational source of truth
• Using Claude and AI to improve efficiency
• Live shopping and reseller partnerships
• Customer service and bootstrapping

Chapters

00:00 Meet Andrew Brown
00:16 What Makes MyGemma Different
01:23 From Diamond Wholesale to Luxury Resale
02:38 Two Businesses in One
03:24 Expanding Distribution Across Marketplaces
04:15 Going Where the Customer Is
05:24 How MyGemma Prices Luxury Inventory
06:48 Moving Slow-Selling Inventory
07:23 The Brands and Products That Sell Fastest
08:10 Customer Acquisition Beyond SEO
09:39 Repeat Customers and Retention
10:11 Curating Inventory by Marketplace
11:03 Building the Salesforce Engine
12:01 Where AI Fits Into Operations
13:51 MyGemma’s Biggest Growth Challenges
15:19 Live Shopping and Reseller Partnerships
16:01 The Three-to-Five-Year Growth Strategy
16:49 What Is Driving Better Performance
17:45 Customer Service and Bootstrapping Advice

Resources

MyGemma: https://mygemma.com/

The Next Nova Podcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3T0bb1zyABAchkIw75RpFy?si=b8771f6576804605
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-next-nova/id6813648765

Vexnova: https://vexnova.com/

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