Jet-Setting Jewelry Store Owner Delivers Engagement Rings by Plane

Private jeweler and pilot Dan Moran often flies his own plane to meet with clients.

DENSE CALIFORNIA TRAFFIC and tight client deadlines are no match for intrepid private jeweler Dan Moran, owner of Concierge Diamonds.

Moran, an L.A.-based pilot, flies to his clients to deliver diamond engagement rings and fine jewelry, sometimes just in time. He describes his plane, a Piper PA-46 JetPROP, as a time machine. “It lets me get into situations I never could have otherwise,” he says.

The third-generation jeweler also meets prospective clients in airports for custom consultations and diamond selections. He’s flown as far as New York and Chicago to meet clients, who live in all 50 states and dozens of countries.

Before becoming a pilot 11 years ago, Moran rode a motorcycle in his leisure time. He met a group of fellow riders who were also pilots.

“They took me along as a passenger for a few flights, and I just fell in love with it,” Moran says. “At some point, they said to me, ‘Are you going to do this thing for real or not?’ And I decided that if I waited until I had enough free time and enough free money, I never would. So I did it, and it’s completely changed my life.”

On a personal level, Moran says he’s found joy, contentment and peace in flying.

“A lot of people, when they hear that I fly airplanes for fun, say to me, ‘Wow, you must be some kind of daredevil. It must be a big adrenaline rush.’ And that couldn’t be further from the truth. I don’t go up there because it’s exciting. I go up there because it’s peaceful. It’s beautiful and quiet. It demands your full attention. It causes me to be fully present in that moment.”

Professionally, it’s changed the course of his business and has enabled him to schedule multiple client meetings in a variety of locations.

A recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, brought him to five clients in four cities in one day. “Absent an airplane, that’s just not possible,” he says. One of the legs of the trip took nine minutes instead of 90. “Clients enjoy it. I’ll take them for a spin if I have time.”

A flight over the Golden Gate Bridge is a memorable way to celebrate the purchase or delivery of an engagement ring, and it becomes part of the engagement story.

“Every guy shopping for a ring needs the physical object, yes, but he also needs what we call the quest. He can show his princess that he slayed the dragon for her. He can tell her, ‘To make this ring, you can’t imagine what I did! I met the jeweler at an airport and we went flying and we designed it together and I worked with the craftsman.’”

Moran has also been directly involved in proposals. One client took a ferry to Catalina Island with his girlfriend and proposed while on a hike. The hike ended at the airport where Moran was waiting to take photos and fly them home. “There are all kinds of moments like this I like to create or participate in,” he says. “It’s fun for me as much as it is for them.”

Dan Moran

With his business model, time crunches are surmountable. A client commissioned a pricy custom ring (mid-six figures) on a Monday and needed it by Thursday for an event. After begging his team of bench jewelers to work overtime, Moran hopped on the plane and flew to San Francisco with the ring. It was on his client’s finger 20 minutes before the event.

Referral is the largest source of new clients. Concierge Diamonds also has a niche on social media and hosts private events at high-end venues. Moran organically grew a loyal following on Reddit, simply by being there for years and consistently answering questions about engagement rings that arose in that space.

Moran’s parents were wholesalers in New York’s Diamond District. “It’s been in my blood my whole life,” says Moran, who trained with his uncle, a diamond cutter in Tel Aviv. Moran uses education to ease the stress of proposals.

“That’s my mission, to open a window for the consumer into this world, which is traditionally a pretty opaque world,” he says.