Chloe Alpert, founder and ring concierge.

Born into the trade

Chloe was at her first jewelry show when she was five days old. Her mother, Sharon, founded Teaman Jewelry in 1979, and Chloe grew up in that studio: chasing runaway diamonds under the bench, then learning to mount stones and grade diamonds at it. She has worked in jewelry professionally since 2009, more than seventeen years, and the two still work together. The family's trade relationships, more than 45 years of them, are how Ring Mint reaches the rare and high-end stones that never appear in an online search.

Credentials

• Cert GA, the Gemmology Foundation Certificate from Gem-A, The Gemmological Association of Great Britain, London.
• Seventeen years of bench and trade experience across diamond grading, stone sourcing, CAD design, and production.
• Second generation of a mother-and-daughter jewelry business with in-house production in Pennsylvania.

Why Ring Mint exists

Someone shows Chloe their ring and tells her what they paid, and she can see exactly where the money went. Usually it was not into the ring. A traditional jeweler recovers a lease, a sales floor and a payroll in the price of whatever sells. Ring Mint carries none of that: no store, no showroom, no employees, no held inventory. Stones are sourced after the client describes what they want, so there is never stale stock to steer anyone toward, and the same money buys a materially better piece. The full model is explained on the custom engagement rings page.

How she works

One person, start to finish. A conversation to set budget, deadline and preferences; stone options sourced against that brief from a network of more than two million natural and lab created diamonds; a design built from scratch in CAD and refined without limit; an optional wax model mailed for an at-home try-on; manufacture to order in about two weeks; delivery with an independent appraisal, the grading report, and fully insured shipping. The concierge page describes what that changes compared with a showroom or an online configurator.

What she writes about

The Ring Mint Journal is where Chloe publishes what she sees from the bench: first-hand investigations (she bought 50 "lab diamonds" on eBay and every one was moissanite), plain guides to lab and natural diamonds, gemstones, ring styles and costs, and honest comparisons of the ways to buy a ring. Everything is written by her, dated, and corrected when the facts change. Journalists can find bios in three lengths, quotable statements and brand assets on the press page.

Elsewhere

• Instagram, where finished rings and works in progress are posted.
• LinkedIn and Pinterest.
• Trustpilot, and every review reproduced in full on the reviews page.
• chloealpert.com, her personal site.