How Three Jersey Shore Developers Intend To Drop The Price Of Diamonds

(forbes.com) - These three 28-year-old guys work out of Asbury Park, New Jersey, just a quick drive to the boardwalk and The Stone Pony, the venue that’s famous for launching Bruce Springsteen’s career. One of them, Justin Insalaco, is a former Mercer County cop, who came up with the idea for a law enforcement app after getting frustrated that he couldn’t access critical information, like policies and floorplans, from his cell phone. That app became Guidant Systems, which has been adopted by The Department of Homeland Security and The Pentagon Force Protection Agency. Insalaco developed it with his business partners Matthew Roselli, a former advertising executive, and Jason Elhomsi, who came out of financial marketing. None of them have any background in jewelry, which is why Roselli found ring shopping so challenging after he decided to get engaged a few years ago. “When you say you’re getting engaged,” Insalaco says, “about 15 people in your network in Jersey and New York tell you that they’ve got a [diamond] guy.” Still, Roselli found the process daunting, unsure of whom to trust and why ring prices varied so much from jeweler to jeweler. That got the team at 3BDreams, a marketing think tank that Insalaco founded after Guidant Systems became successful, wondering. They founded Legemdary in 2015, with the notion that engagement ring buyers should have access to the kind of easy, seamless shopping experience that the internet has made possible for so many different industries. Legemdary is reverse auction site that bypasses the retailer completely . Instead, it connects buyers with wholesalers.