ع
Britons are spending more on watches and jewellery while visiting high streets less. Abelini’s Hatton Garden expansion shows why the physical store is becoming a service layer for digital retail.
British jewellery retail produced an unusual pair of numbers this summer. In July 2026, the value of sales through watches and jewellery retailers was 19.2 percent higher than a year earlier, according to the latest Office for National Statistics retail series. Sales volume rose too, but by a smaller 9.5 percent, according to the corresponding ONS volume measure.
At the same time, shoppers were disappearing from the pavement. British Retail Consortium and Sensormatic data show high-street footfall fell 3.8 percent year on year in July, with England and London particularly weak.
The contradiction is useful. Jewellery demand can strengthen without traditional footfall strengthening with it.
The store is changing jobs
That distinction matters most in categories where the internet solved research before it solved reassurance. Engagement-ring buyers can compare settings, metals, certification and price on a phone, yet the purchase remains tactile, emotional and unusually high-stakes. The physical shop therefore does not need to originate every transaction. It needs to remove the final uncertainty from one.
Abelini founder Nilesh Rakholia described the shift in almost exactly those terms in a 8 May 2025 column for Professional Jeweller: “Opening a store in 2025 isn’t about chasing footfall, it’s about deepening the experience.”
That is a different retail equation from filling cabinets and waiting for passing trade. The website carries assortment and price discovery. The appointment carries comparison, sizing, explanation and confidence.
Hatton Garden becomes a conversion point
Less than two months after that column, Abelini opened another location in Hatton Garden. The 30 June 2025 launch was positioned around consultations, ready-to-wear pieces and bespoke work rather than simply additional shelf space. Rakholia told Jewellery Focus at the opening: “Opening a second location in Hatton Garden is a natural step for us.”
The timing is important. Hatton Garden’s traditional advantage was concentration: a buyer could walk between jewellers and compare stones in person. Digital retail recreated that comparison at national scale. The district’s remaining advantage is therefore not that information is available there. It is that expertise, physical inspection and human reassurance are available after the customer has already done the information gathering.
For a digitally developed jeweller, a Hatton Garden address can work less like the beginning of the funnel and more like its closing room.
The showroom begins at home
Abelini has pushed that logic one stage further through a home-trial service. UK customers can order as many as three sample designs, produced in silver with artificial stones, and try them before committing to the finished jewellery. The company’s sample-service terms put the process explicitly between online browsing and the final purchase.
There is one genuine limitation in that model. A sample manufactured in silver with an artificial stone is not the finished gold, platinum or diamond piece, and Abelini makes clear that these are demonstration products rather than jewellery for normal wear. The trial resolves scale, style and proportion more effectively than it resolves the final feel of the materials.
That boundary is precisely why the physical consultation still earns its place.
Revenue without the passer-by
The July numbers offer a useful picture of where specialist retail may be heading. Jewellery sales value rose 19.2 percent while high-street visits fell 3.8 percent. Even after allowing for the gap between value growth and volume growth, more product moved through the sector while fewer people walked the traditional retail streets.
The implication is not that stores have lost their purpose. It is that revenue is becoming less dependent on the passer-by. The winning physical space can be smaller in function and larger in influence: a place to inspect, customise, reassure and close a purchase that began elsewhere. Abelini’s move deeper into Hatton Garden is useful evidence of that transition because it came from a business that had already learned to sell before the customer reached the door.
