“I always loved design and hip-hop jewellery and I had a passion for buying, selling and trading. When I was younger I used to flip sportswear and trainers, and then I came across the Breitling Bentley Motors T watch that started my journey.

A friend was selling the watch and I knew it had a retail value of about £7,000. My watch knowledge wasn’t great at the time and it was a risk, but I did my market research and took a chance, buying the watch for £1,000. A few people advised me to go to Hatton Garden to sell it and the buzz of everyone hustling and doing deals made me realise that it was where I wanted to be.

At the time, I was 18 and grinding to make £20 on a pair of trainers. I sold the watch for £1,800 and I remember thinking ‘Wow, that was a quick £800’. I then bought and sold other watches, making a profit of several hundred pounds each time. Gradually, I started to buy scrap gold and invested in a gold testing kit, scales etc. I had become a trader of watches, diamonds and jewellery, and I was good at it. I understood the psychology behind buying at discount, landing items and closing deals. Although there was no big plan in the beginning, I couldn’t have found a better career.

The industry in Hatton Garden is notoriously hard to break into – some people have worked their whole lives in the business and they don’t readily hand out help and advice. I have given blood, sweat and tears to get to where I am now. I started at the bottom of the pit, going to different dealers and asking if I could work for them for free, even if it was just making tea, so that I could learn.

At the time, while there were other people my age who were working there for friends and family, I think I was the only one taking it seriously. I had a bag of diamond parcels, scrap gold, some gems and a few watches and used to walk around buying for the right price and selling on, buying, selling, buying, selling. It was hard, but that’s how I learned the business. If you make a mistake, you can lose a lot of money – it hasn’t happened to me many times because I learnt to have my wits about me.

Over the years I’ve earned the respect of the old-school institutions in Hatton Garden – most of whom have been there much longer than me and some of whom no longer operate there. I was fortunate to grow up and build my business around these old school dealers who possess a different mentality, business etiquette and ethics to those who have come in over recent years. I was mentored by the best people in the business – some with over 60 years’ experience in the jewellery trade. The fact I am still young, still building my business and can use this experience is priceless.

Now that A Jewellers is well-known, with a store that we opened just weeks before the first lockdown in 2020, we attract big names with big money and my phonebook is filled with global contacts from doctors, oil traders and lawyers to footballers, entertainers and royalty. But these relationships were hard earned, using good business ethics to build a reputable brand at grassroots level.

If we say we’re going to deliver something, we do; if we agree a deal even over the phone, the deal is done. Too many dealers are quick to rip off high-net-worth people, but we look after our customers, treat them fairly and build relationships which, in the end, brings so much more than a fast buck.

We embraced digital early on and now have close to a quarter-of-a-million Instagram followers. From posting a few pictures, I made a sale and after that, I kept pushing, the users kept on coming and the sales started to fly. I didn’t understand it fully but it meant that I didn’t need a physical location to operate out of, I could be anywhere in the world and still make money – without the rents of Bond Street.

I realised we were selling more on social media than some famous watch and jewellery shops, and soon their customers were coming to us. Don’t get me wrong, having a social presence isn’t easy and the amount of energy it requires is mad, I’m on it morning till night and because of the time you put into building this online platform, you feel like you’re manifesting this vision to the point where it does become your world.

As we posted more of our work, we slowly started to become more popular. We were doing something different – we were putting up one-of-a-kind creations but also showing the prices, which no one else was doing, and this has played a role in why so much of our business is done via Instagram. Celebrities started to notice the page and our name popped up on people’s Instagram feeds.

Most of our jewellery pieces were one-offs, and eventually I decided to test out how it would be to diamond set a watch. We sold it to an existing client and started to make more and I realised that there is a market for these watches. So, I learnt more and started doing different types of stone work such as flower setting, which was only really being done in America at the time. It takes double the amount of diamonds and creates a honeycomb pattern rather than a grid. After the first few, it went viral and blew up and then we started specialising.

Although we are customising amazing watches, I haven't had any problems with the brands themselves. I think because we’ve become so popular, more and more people are buying these watches when they perhaps wouldn’t have done so in the past. We are helping to make watches and brands popular among a certain demographic, which means that the brands are selling more at the end of the day.

Of course, we are dealing with rare and expensive timepieces, so the work we do has to be carried out by expert craftsmen. We have operations in Asia, the Middle East, the Americas, mainland Europe and the UK, all of which have workshops, diamond setters, goldsmiths, casters and watchmakers who are at the top of their field. Depending on the job at hand – a baguette-set watch, an invisible emerald diamond set, a custom piece using coloured stones, or a ‘simple’ flower-set diamond watch, the best workshop will be chosen.

The first celebrity we worked with was Krept from Krept and Konan [award-winning rap artists and holders of British Empire Medals for services to music and the community]. A lot of our wilder pieces are made for rappers and influencers to commemorate special occasions. For example, we’ve recently created Headie One’s ‘Edna’ piece featuring a picture of his late mum surrounded by a diamond face and heart shaped diamonds to mark both her passing and his platinum record-selling album Edna.

Another commission we’ve recently completed was for Slow Thai. It’s a custom-made, self-portrait chain with natural coloured diamonds and rubies – every single stone hand selected. We’ve also done a ‘29’ piece for Young Adz featuring a goat’s head to represent GOAT (greatest of all time), and also an encrusted Ladbroke Grove sign for AJ Tracey which was presented to him at one of his gigs.

Watches that really stand out to me are those that are vintage, rare and in high demand. When a watch isn’t mass produced, it becomes even more special over time. More contemporary pieces that appeal to me are the limited Richard Mille Tourbillons. There are also factory-set diamond and gemstone Rolexes and Audemars Piguets that are very special as well. For me, the rarity of a piece is what really makes it stand out.

We have just completed a truly special, one-of-a-kind Audemars Piguet Royal Oak for Tinie. It took an awfully long time to make; each ruby was hand selected in order to make sure all the stones were identical in colour – these are Pigeon Blood Burma rubies and every gem in the chandelier-style bezel was also hand selected and cut individually to fit in place. This watch is priceless.

People talk about a ‘watch bubble’ but I don’t see this. Watches are some of the rarest, most coveted commodities and prices keep going up, even when everything else is going down. Watches aren’t just about following fashion, they are one of the best, and safest, ways for people to invest their money as they’re proven to become more valuable over time – I don’t see demand dipping in the near future.

To anyone looking to enter the watch and jewellery industry, my key advice is to be honest with customers, value your reputation, work hard and learn from your mistakes. Your word should be your bond, and you should never ever go back on a deal, even if you have made a mistake, as it could cost you your reputation which, in this industry, is everything. If you treat your customers well, they’ll come back to you time and time again and spread the word to their network; without those relationships, it’s pretty impossible to grow.

The next step for me and my team is to take A Jewellers global with a massive online store and an app. We are finalising our customised infrastructure and systems to manage stock and customer relations and imminently, we will be entering the NFT space. Ultimately, the goal is to be the world’s biggest celebrity jeweller.”

As told to Tracey Llewellyn

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