Stepping stones to success

The jewelry business has become a double-treat for Cahaba Heights resident Ryan Snuggs. Since becoming a bench jeweler at the age of 18, Snuggs has worked in gems and metals from manufacturing to sales. 

As manager of the Bromberg’s location at The Summit, Snuggs gets to help customers select a piece of jewelry and also has a hand in designing high-end pieces, such as his specialty rings from hand-selected gems for Bromberg’s and, most recently, his own line of cufflinks. 

Michael Ryan Cufflinks, a men’s jewelry line available exclusively at Bromberg’s, launched in 2015 and has sold more than 120 pairs in its first three years.

“In the cufflink world, it’s not bad. I’d never sold 100 pairs of cufflinks until we launched the line,” Snuggs said. “I’m fortunate I get to work with the consumer. Most jewelry designers don’t have that. … I get the pleasure of getting to meet people and see what they like and what they don’t like.”

Snuggs said he prefers not to tell a customer when they’re looking at his line of cufflinks because he enjoys the natural feedback. 

Since its launch, Michael Ryan Cufflinks have produced more than a half dozen designs of sterling silver cufflinks such as the Southern Gent, a striped school colors design (orange and blue, crimson and white, green and gold, etc.) and Redemption, a play on the British cross to honor the Snuggs’ family heritage. 

Other designs include Aviator, Blue Ocean, Nighthawk and Italiano, which all retail for $250/pair, as well as the Classic-Origin, which is listed at $195 and can be engraved.

Michael Ryan Cufflinks is set to release its second generation of designs this fall — a limited edition crimson and white houndstooth, a satin finish pillowed pattern, a floral motif and a weave pattern, which Snuggs said looks like multiple fabrics woven and quilted together. 

“From a design standpoint, I think our best work is to come … I’m really excited about the pillow design and floral,” Snuggs said. “Everything we did [in the first line], we did to be the best that we could make it, and this Gen2 is going to be a better version. It’s going to be a little shorter, a little stockier, a little more robust in terms of wearability.”

Each cufflink features the same basic curves and symbolism in its design, along with personal touches unique to each one. 

“If you look at the side profile of our cufflinks, just the aesthetic beauty of the bevel was kind of an original idea of mine. When someone starts out in their career, they kind of have this valley and they rise out of that valley,” Snuggs said. 

While the design is made to symbolize any rise from a valley or start of a career, it could be argued it symbolizes the rise of Michael Ryan Cufflinks and Snuggs’ path as a jeweler. 

When Snuggs was preparing to graduate from Auburn University in 2006 with a business degree, he wanted to wear special cufflinks for the ceremony but couldn’t find anything he liked, not even in school colors. This would eventually lead to the Southern Gent design. 

The son of a draft designer and seamstress, Snuggs grew up around design and decided to design his own. By this point, he’d already been a bench jeweler and had been creating handmade pieces since his senior year at Clay-Chalkville High School, when he crafted a necklace for his mother while apprenticing for Bromberg’s master jeweler Philip Flenniken and Patrick Conway.

In the years following his graduation from Auburn, Snuggs sketched designs of cufflinks and cast a few prototypes for his personal cufflinks to wear, including the ones he wore while proposing to his wife Taylor, as well as designing for friends and family. 

“It was small stepping stones of building up confidence and belief that you can do it, and that people will like what you’redoing,” Snuggs said.

After moving back to Birmingham and joining the Bromberg’s sales team, a customer approached him one day wanting to buy a multi-metal design right off his wrist. 

“It would be ridiculously expensive because I have a lot of blood, sweat and tears in this,” Snuggs told the customer. He decided he needed to make something out of sterling silver to make it more affordable and began sketching designs he’d later pitch to Bromberg’s, who agreed to sell his line.

Nearly a decade after his first concept, he was selling his line. Snuggs said his cufflinks began as and still are a fun thing he just threw out there. His main focus is creating high-end designs for Bromberg’s and managing The Summit location, which saw its highest year of sales in the store’s 16-year history this past fiscal year.

“There’s a lot of vulnerability there when you put a product out that you think is great, and you think everyone will love it,” Snuggs said. “I’ve certainly learned what I think is beautiful is not always going to be what people will buy. I always run it by a couple of people before we make it.”

Snuggs said the feedback during the past three years has been good, from a client gifting pairs to the Auburn and Alabama coaching staffs to manufacturing reps from across the U.S. complimenting the line.

“There’s so much more there, when you look at it with the eye, that’s aesthetically pleasing. … Everything has a little more contour or shape to it that’s a little more difficult to make,” Snuggs said. “When you have something that’s well thought through, well planned, that’s resilient in its design, it’s going to rub off on you. It’s going to give you a little bit of a confidence booster knowing you’re going to be wearing the best of the best.”

To learn more about Michael Ryan Cufflinks, visit brombergs.com or michaelryancufflinks.com.