The Ring Lord — Our Story

Welcome to The Ring Lord!

We've been making rings, scales, chainmaille supplies, armour components and finished maille for more than 30 years. What began with a piece of fence wire on a Saskatchewan farm has grown into a specialized manufacturing company serving chainmaillers, jewellery makers, costumers, artists, designers, film productions and creative professionals around the world.

Today, The Ring Lord manufactures approximately 90% of the products we sell, giving us direct control over quality, innovation and pricing.

The Ring Lord Today

Legal Name: The Ring Lord Corporation
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Toll-Free: 1-855-RINGLORD (1-855-746-4567)

Today, The Ring Lord is a team of approximately 25 people, operating more than 20 machines and working with a network of experienced maillers for specialized finished projects.

Our operations include approximately 16,000 sq. ft. of factory and warehouse space, plus an additional 2,000 sq. ft. within an anodizing facility, allowing us to maintain greater control over the quality and consistency of our anodized products.

But The Ring Lord started much, much smaller.

How It All Began

The story of The Ring Lord begins in 1995 with our original founder, Jon Daniels.

As a young man growing up on his parents' farm, Jon took a piece of fence wire, wrapped it around a nail to form a spring, cut the individual coils apart with side cutters, and assembled his first piece of chainmaille.

That experiment sparked a lifelong interest.

Later, Jon discovered a website selling mild-steel rings for chainmaille for about 3 cents per ring. He thought he could make them for less, so he contacted the company and offered to supply rings for 1 cent each.

They accepted.

That simple offer became the beginning of what would eventually become TheRingLord.com.

We began selling rings online in 1996, initially through Sara Trice's Chain Mail Connection. By 1998, Jon had created his own webpage while continuing to sell through Chain Mail Connection.

Then Bernice entered the story.

As wire, rings, containers and orders began taking over every available corner of their apartment, Bernice brought organization to the rapidly growing operation. Bins were purchased and labelled. Product codes were created. Customers and orders were entered into a database. A shopping cart was developed.

Jon and Bernice eventually wrote the software for both the original website and The Ring Lord's internal inventory system.

What had started with fence wire wrapped around a nail was becoming a real manufacturing business.

Our History

• 1995–1996 — The First Rings
  • Jon begins making a single type of ring as a hobby, initially supplying Medieval Menagerie and later Chain Mail Connection. As demand grows, so does the variety of rings.
• 1997
  • Bernice, co-founder of TheRingLord.com, graduates from university with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.
• 1998
  • Jon graduates with a degree in Engineering Physics.
  • A dedicated webpage is created for selling rings while sales through Chain Mail Connection continue.
• 2000 — TheRingLord.com Is Born
  • Bernice develops a professional website and TheRingLord.com officially comes to life.
• 2001 — Things Get Serious
  • January: One million rings are sold in a single month.
  • February: Bernice becomes The Ring Lord's first full-time employee.
  • March: With nine employees and orders continuing to increase, The Ring Lord orders its first industrial ring-making machine.
  • July: The new ring-making machine—nicknamed Tor—becomes operational, and the first machine-cut rings are sold.
  • August: The Ring Lord wholesale division opens.
  • September: Five million rings are sold in a single month.
  • October: The Ring Lord moves into the garage of a 30-acre property outside Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
  • As the business continues growing, Bernice designs a new 1,300 sq. ft. building for the property.
• 2003 — The Tower of London
  • March: Saskatoon StarPheonix publishes an article in the Business and Technology section featuring The Ring Lord.
  • April: The Ring Lord employs more than 10 maillers to create four enormous banners for the Tower of London in England.
  • October: An additional 1,300 sq. ft. of wire-storage space is constructed.
• 2004 — Manufacturing Expands
  • Bernice designs another major expansion, adding approximately 2,600 sq. ft. of manufacturing space.
  • The Ring Lord orders a punch for manufacturing scales and punched rings.
  • An industrial welded-mesh machine also arrives, giving us the ability to manufacture 22-gauge, 5/32" ID welded chainmaille fabric.
  • 2006
  • Approximately 1,300 sq. ft. of existing wire-storage space is converted into manufacturing space, with another 800 sq. ft. added for wire storage.
• 2008
  • August: NUVO Magazine publishes a feature on The Ring Lord and our welded-chainmaille product line.
  • September: Another 500 sq. ft. is added to the factory for office, lunchroom and storage space.
• 2009
  • An automatic weighing and bagging system arrives, allowing us to pre-package many of our rings and significantly improve order-processing efficiency.
• 2010 — 10 Year Anniversary
  • Our tenth year as TheRingLord.com goes by so quickly that we forget to celebrate it! 
• 2011
  • May: Another CNC ring machine is purchased.
  • October: The Western Producer publishes a feature about The Ring Lord.
• 2013 — The Hobbit & Warcraft
  • We finally get to reveal that The Ring Lord scales appear in The Hobbit.
  • During this period, we also undertake an enormous project for the movie Warcraft.
  • In approximately two months, our team and local maillers produce around 80 chainmaille shirts, along with multiple sets of horse armour.
  • The project ultimately involves weaving approximately one million rings, developing custom-profiled rings, custom casting and even creating a new scale size specifically for the production.
• 2014 — The Move to Toronto
  • August: Grant Philp joins founders Jon and Bernice as co-owner and Chief of Operations of TheRingLord.com.
  • That same month, most of The Ring Lord's operations move from Saskatchewan to Toronto, Ontario.
  • Moving a manufacturing company is no small undertaking: approximately 150,000 lb of machinery, equipment and inventory make the journey in three semi-trailer loads.
  • We also introduce new, lower-cost shipping options, including USPS service for our U.S. customers.
  • December: The final Hobbit film is released, giving audiences another opportunity to see our scales on the big screen.
• 2015 — 1.13 Million Rings
  • February:  Our scales are in Seventh Son!
  • April-May: We complete a massive 1.13-million-ring curtain installation in just eight weeks.
  • August: The Ring Lord is featured in Shop Floor Lasers magazine. 
• 2016 — Warcraft Arrives in Theatres
  • May: The Huntsman- Winter's War movie is released and uses our rings.
  • June: TheRingLord is the 1st company to be a member of the Sask. Environmental Society Solar Co-op.
  • July: Warcraft is released.
  • The project represents one of the largest film-production jobs in The Ring Lord's history, involving approximately one million woven rings, dozens of maille shirts, horse armour, custom-profiled rings, custom casting and newly developed scale components.
• 2017 — The Great Wall
  • The Ring Lord appears in another major Legendary Pictures production: The Great Wall.
  • Yes—Matt Damon is wearing our chainmaille.
  • TheRingLord is a finalist for 2 SABEX Business awards - Business of the Year and Customer Service.
  • Jon and Bernice are also named finalists for the regional EY Entrepreneur Of The Year awards.
• 2019 — New Colours and New Ownership
  • Nicholas joins The Ring Lord as General Manager.
  • We introduce Limited Edition anodized aluminum, allowing us to offer colours unlike anything previously available in our standard anodized-ring range.
  • We subsequently develop processes that allow those Limited Edition colours to be expanded into our scale products.
  • Later in the year, Grant Philp, Eduardo and Art, owner of the anodizing facility, purchase The Ring Lord from Bernice.
• 2020
  • Covid Shut down began, the factory was able to remain open and started using it’s 3D printers to make protective face shields to give to organizations that were having problems finding available PPE for sale.
  • Management and staff had to figure out and cope with the new realities of ongoing shut downs and Covid protocols
  • Lady Gaga Chromatic Era photo shoot, designer Laurel DeWitt. Lady Gaga on ‘Chromatica’ Era: "I Was in a Really Dark Place" All metal with the exception of the gloves were supplied by TRL.
• 2021
  • Management worked hard to keep and secure ongoing partnership with previous and new suppliers. Supply chain management was key in order to ensure long term supply of quality raw materials.
  • Negotiations with suppliers amidst rising raw material costs.
  • Work with staff to biuld a strong and long-term team.
  • Look for web developers to create a new website, the old website was outdated and had the potential for security breaches.
• 2022
  • Launched the new website and ERP. This was a very difficult project due to the amount of products and links to their raw materials, the ERP is the brains behind all of the manufacturing process and inventory.
• 2023
  • Continued nearly full time with website and ERP support, many lessons learned along the way.
  • Secured and establish new processes and minimums with blackening company in order to continue selling blackened stainless steel products.
• 2024
  • Strengthen key aspects of the company, including quality and customer service. This was our biggest hurdle but since quality raw materials were secured it was time to ensure that the protocols in the factory were up to the expected standard.
  • Kylie Jenner had a photo shoot wearing a beautiful top which was created and designed by Laurel DeWitt Kylie Jenner Just Wore Her Most Risqué Halloween Costume to Date, the materials were supplied by TRL.
• 2025
  • Transitioned most of the old style kits, where you receive bags of rings which could make up to 10 of the kit item, to the new style kit where you only pay lower price for 1 kit item, and its packaged accordingly.
  • Partnered with influencers and kit creators to ideally help grow many kit creator brands and continue promoting the art of chianmaille and scalemaille

More Than Rings

Over the decades, The Ring Lord has evolved from one person making rings from fence wire into a specialized manufacturing operation capable of producing millions of precision rings, scales, welded maille, armour components, jewellery supplies and custom products.

Along the way, our products have found their way into Hollywood films, historical installations, architectural projects, costumes, jewellery, artwork, aerospace projects and countless creations made by individual maillers around the world.

Through all that growth, the basic idea behind The Ring Lord hasn't changed very much:

Make interesting things. Figure out how to make them better. Make as much as possible ourselves. And give creative people the materials they need to make something extraordinary.