The Black Tux Acquires Wedding Band Brand, Plans To Open New Showroom

The Black Tux, a leading tuxedo and suit rental company wants to save customers a trip to the jewelry store by acquiring Marke, a wedding band specialist. The Black Tux is hoping to take a piece of the $70.5 billion wedding band industry.

“We identified the wedding band category as one that was similar to tux rentals when we first started, meaning that it had a somewhat antiquated experience and just had a lot of opportunity to create something that was high quality and disruptive in the space,” said Andrew Blackmon, cofounder and CEO of The Black Tux.

“As we looked at doing that, we came across a few people who were doing the same thing, and the one we liked was called Marke, so we decided to acquire the company,” Blackmon said. “It’s a New York company founded by people who’ve spent their whole lives in the jewelry industry. It’s a multi-generational family business, so they have product know-how and know how to create pieces that feel almost heirloom in quality.”

After nearly declaring bankruptcy during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic when weddings and other events were put on hold, The Black Tux achieved its best year yet in 2022, growing revenue by 35% year-over-year, and becoming profitable for the first time.

“At the moment we’re not looking to make other acquisitions,” Blackmon said. “We’re continuing to grow the tux and suit rental business, and integrate Marke into the company. It will remain its own brand. We just integrated some of the operational side and are making sure our customers know about it as an option. That’s our focus for now.”

Marke features custom home try on-kits to dial in the perfect style and right size, allowing consumers to test drive their favorites from the comfort of their own home without feeling rushed. Every aspect of the wedding band is customizable, and handcrafted with ethically-sourced materials, including 100% SCS-certified recycled gold and platinum.

The Black Tux operates four showrooms, including Chicago, Dallas, Santa Monica and Williamsburg, N.Y. Blackmon said the company is looking for a site in Atlanta to open its next showroom. There are also Black Tux shops at 25 Nordstrom locations.

“We’ll continue to expand the showrooms,” Blackmon said. “I wouldn’t say we have an exact number, but my guess is that we’d have more than 20 over time, if not quite a bit more than that. We’ll continue to work with Nordstrom as well, because the Nordstrom shop-in-shops do really well for us. If we look at a five-year time period, I would love our customers be able to do this online or really anywhere across the U.S. and be able to go into one of our locations without needing to drive that far.

To date, since 2013 The Black Tux has dressed close to 2 million people, and has grown the business substantially, Blackmon said, of the company, which was completely online when the business started.

The Black Tux’s fit technology makes virtual shopping easier. The user gives his body type, age, weight and preferences. “Because we’ve dressed so many people, we have so much data that we can pretty accurately predict what size a customer is going to be in our garments,” said Blackmon. “That’s made it much easier for the customer. Because we’ve dressed so many people, we have a proprietary algorithm that learns over time and gets better and better.”

Most people approach the rental market with a little stigma, and they don’t like it, Blackmon said. “We try to manufacture the highest quality garments and make sure the service is surprisingly excellent for customers,” he added. “If that happens, then they really spread word of mouth quickly.”

Most of the business grows from organic word of mouth traffic. The company does some advertising, but it’s a pretty low percentage of sales, Blackmon said. “We’ve raised about $70 million to date from investors including First Round Capital, Menlo Ventures, Stripes and TZP Group. A big reason we’ve grown outside of the experience and word of mouth is the natural and authentic connection we create with our content.

“On a lot of the photo shoots I play the creative director role or a creative role because I really believe in tapping into that organic and authentic connection with the customer,” Blackmon said. “We get a lot of feedback from the customers who really love the images and the videos and all the content that we create. We develop a lot of content for our customers.”

The Black Tux has published a grooms’ guide, and a groomsman’s guide. “We found and still believe that a lot of people are a little unsure of what to wear and how to wear it,” Blackmon said. “They’re not sure what formal means, semi formal, black tie, all those different things.

“With these things we can really educate the customer and really help them,” Blackmon said. “The mission of the company is giving people confidence for life’s most important moments. Our whole goal is to give people confidence and allow them to express themselves creatively.”