Former college roommates parlay inner-circle coolness into hot hip-hop jewelry brand
BY ALYSON DUTCH
What is it about fandom that breeds wild success? Why do huge groups of people coalesce around sports teams? Ideologies? Fashion trends?
Social scientist and human behavior expert Malcolm Gladwell attempted to explain this in his books, “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” and “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,” which discussed the phenomena of groupthink and repetition of message.
How can product makers—always on the hunt for the Next Best Thing—tap into this?
In the case of Derek Belay and Cuong Diep, these two former college roommates unflinchingly spent 17 19 years honing an expert nose for the precise aspects of pop and subculture that make groups shiver with anticipation and buzz.
They then served up those iconic heroes, moments, symbols and shapes in iced-out jewelry covered in more stones per millimeter than Tiffany would ever dare to set into a diamond pavé piece.
Understanding the culture
As cofounders of Los Angeles-based King Ice, Ethiopia-born Belay and Vietnam native Diep hit a nerve: They were the first to develop a bona fide men’s urban bling jewelry brand. Their drip is so good that licensors from Pokémon to Sonic, Halo to Fortnite, have given them their only official jewelry rights.
King Ice is one of several businesses Belay started when he was 16. He sold African art, cars, and got into the jewelry business after a trip to the wholesale jewelry district in downtown Los Angeles. He and Diep were buying sterling silver women’s jewelry low and selling high on eBay.
“One day we noticed a vendor who had hip-hop jewelry, big crosses and Jesus pieces and thought, ‘There is something there,’” Belay said. “We understood the culture; we grew up in that environment. So we shuttered all our marketplaces, and one day in Starbucks we came up with the King Ice name.”
When asked for the inspiration of the name, Belay said “It’s pretty self-evident”—ice being slang for diamonds or diamond-encrusted jewelry. Entrepreneurs who name companies to explain what they do spend less in marketing to gain reputation.
Their fantastic voyage (remember that ’90s hip-hop hit by Coolio?) is based on getting to the heart of what is culturally relevant to a fan community. They have looked long and hard for pop culture icons like the 7-11 Slurpee cup, favorite gaming characters, the Halo sword—and yes, even Snoop Dogg, for whom they have made jewelry for more than a decade.
Most of their jewelry is launched to kingly success.
“It’s a little bit of science and art,” explained Belay, “and you still get it wrong. Fans are discerning, and you don’t always predict correctly. But when it hits, it sells like wildfire and our inventory gets wiped out in a day.
“In the licensing world, we have discovered the importance of a deep dive into their customer base, characters and the environment in which these personalities interact. We rely heavily on our relationships with those brands to walk us through their world and the mindset of their customers.”
Best buys
Belay and Diep cite two major turning points.
In 2018, they acquired a license for Death Row Records—the famed label founded by Dr. Dre, Suge Knight, The D.O.C. and Dick Griffey that brought 2Pac (“All Eyez on Me”) and Snoop Dogg their fame. The jewelry line hit a gold vein of ’90s hip-hop fan love. Belay recalled that move with a dry laugh: “Well, that worked.”
Not every move was their best. They acquired licenses for The Powerpuff Girls, SpongeBob SquarePants and even other hip-hop record label legends like No Limit and Ruff Ryders, but “they didn’t hit as well,” Belay said with a shrug.
Though Belay handles the marketing side and Diep is the design guru, they both share a thick entrepreneurial skin. Belay explained:
“Since my first businesses as a teenager, I didn’t care about losing money or what others might call failure. My guiding star has always been, I knew I had to be right only once.
“But you have to go through all of it to get there.”
The second turning point happened in 2021, when they acquired a Sonic The Hedgehog video game series and franchise line to market. “We saw how the community reacted to something that was just perfect for them; it sold out in a matter of hours. The Halo energy swords were another big one that sold out.”
The Snoop scoop
Sometimes, pop culture moments just happen—as when Snoop Dogg attended the 2024 Olympics Summer Games in Paris and carried the torch during Opening Ceremonies.
“Before he left, he asked us to make a medal-styled pendant,” Belay said. “We chose the Eiffel Tower as a symbol of the Parisian Games.”
The custom XL piece features 14K gold and over 600 handset stones representing the Olympic colors highlighting the Olympic rings and a striking, torch-topped Eiffel Tower.
It turned out that a shiny, sapphire-studded G.O.A.T. piece they had created for him earlier drew the most attention. While Snoop was making appearances alongside his unlikely bestie, Martha Stewart, some misidentified his G.O.A.T. pendant as a satanic Baphomet.
“In fact, that pendant was a goat head,” said Diep, who designed it—“a nod to the sports acronym, ‘greatest of all time.’”
Snoop’s Olympic appearances were one of the biggest cultural moments of the Olympics. Other stars, like gymnast Simone Biles, were wearing their own G.O.A.T. pendants.
The relationship between the hip-hop star and King Ice began at an album listening party in 2012 for the rapper The Game, who released his album “Jesus Peace” in December. Belay and Diep were tasked with gifting 100 “Jesus Piece” necklaces to partygoers, and approached Snoop.
“Snoop just happened to love it,” Belay said. “His manager reached out, and a partnership was born.”
Not everyone can get into these parties—or have the moxie to walk up to a celebrity—but the duo’s intuitive cultural comprehension led the way, and it worked.
“It just turned out that Snoop was a really sweet guy and he thought we were good people, and it clicked,” Belay said.
Catching the copycats
King Ice holds no patents but trademarks its work heavily and copyrights every design.
Belay explained that having copyrights makes it very easy when copycats are selling on marketplaces like Amazon or eBay.
”We simply send our copyrights, and the marketplace administrators take down the interloper’s pages automatically.”
Being knocked off is a backhanded compliment. But when it starts to bite into your business, it is not so flattering. The King Ice brand is being closely watched as a trend maker.
“We don’t have lawyers who search for copyright offenses,” Belay said. “We take the time ourselves to Google search every week and fire off cease-and-desist letters, which usually prompt them to take down the copycat SKUs.”
He said it’s “not that hard to identify infringers. The competitors use the keywords on our site and steal traffic with cheaper product. So, we keep searching for the same keywords to ensure they are going to our site.
“We look for the biggest offenders, but we cannot stamp it out completely.”
Details: kingice.com
King Ice
FOUNDED: 2007
LOCATION: Los Angeles
PRODUCT: Affordable cross-culture jewelry
PAST, PRESENT CELEBRITIES: Game, Wiz Khalifa, Snoop Dogg, Mike Tyson, NLE Choppa
PARTNERSHIPS: Warner Bros., Paramount Global, 20th Century Fox, NBC Universal, Live Nation, Sony PlayStation, SEGA, Bandai Namco, Ubisoft, Epic Games, Pokemon, and Microsoft Xbox
DID YOU KNOW? All jewelry in the 2013 Katy Perry music video for “Dark Horse” was supplied by King Ice.