Threads Styling, an online personal shopping service based in London with a presence on both WhatsApp and WeChat, said its communication tools have helped grow its fine jewelry business in recent years. And while the average online sale of fine jewelry is £3,000 to £4,000 ($3,734 to $4,978), Alyse Chirumbole, the company’s director of fine jewelry and watches, said established customers have used WhatsApp to buy high-end jewelry with a worth of what she described as “millions”.
Nouf Alzamil, who works in tech and lives in Saudi Arabia, has been shopping at Threads Styling since 2012; she said she now makes most of her fashion and jewelry purchases through the platform, messaging her personal shopper “once a week or more,” and buying fine jewelry “four or five times a year.”
In 2019, her Threads personal shopper helped her buy a Patek Philippe watch that was not available locally; now, she said, she’s likely to take inspiration from stylized jewelry shoots and picks of “trending” items that Threads posts on social media.
“Probably 60 percent of the time I buy something outright because Threads suggested it; the other 40 percent of the time I’ve seen something I like, and I’ll ask my client to find it,” she said in a phone interview. She said she recently bought a necklace from Loquet, as well as jewelry from Shay and Kamyen, two brands she discovered on Threads.
“I definitely think Covid has accelerated digital shopping among my friends,” she said. “In Saudi Arabia, we don’t have as many options for in-person shopping, and nobody wants to spend a lot of time indoors anymore. So it is good to have someone who can discover new brands and inspire you.”
She said she likes to buy nice jewelery based on photos and videos, although “anything £20,000 or more, I personally would like to see.”
