Little Treasury Jewelers co-owner on always going against the grain

The co-owner of Little Treasury Jewelers, Steve Hammalian, has explained why he and his wife and co-owner, Linda Hammalian, have always enjoyed doing things differently.

The company was founded in 1996 by Linda, and started life as a shopping cart selling low-end jewelry.

Today, Little Treasury Jewelers is a major shopping destination for luxury watches, and, as part of an in-depth forthcoming interview in Watch Insider, Steve Hammalian revealed why he’s always tried to go against the grain.

“From the beginning we had the instinct to always go the other way. We see people going left and we head right. We always make ourselves different from what we see around us,” he told Watch Insider. “That’s very much in our DNA, stepping out of the mainstream and presenting something that people haven’t seen.

Part of this contrary philosophy towards running the store has inspired Little Treasury’s approach towards the curation of the watch brands it stocks.

“Our secret sauce is independent and micro brands that we diligently seek out,” Steve said. “We try to learn about the brands and often have them come in for a trial run to meet our customers, and, if it’s a go, we bring them on board. We’re the first, second, or third dealer in the US for a number of these brands, so we’re pretty well-known for introducing interesting brands into our market.

“We’re very focused on meeting compatible people behind the brands as well as the brands themselves, and if it’s something we like and we like the people, we try to engage in some way,” he continued. “In fact, I consider us a bit of a pioneer among independents for staging watch events, having been doing it since 2005. We’ve held about 150 events, both in the store and outside. We’re very much in the mode of wanting to directly expose our customers to the people behind the watches and vice versa, and we’ve created some very interesting relationships doing that.”

He admits that this approach may also act as a turn-off for certain brands of a certain prestige.

“I think some brands might not be comfortable in a store called Little Treasury in a town called Gambrills with 30 mostly micro brands. Geographically, we are very much in a bedroom community. We pull in a lot of our higher-end customers from 30 miles away. Our local customers often travel 40–50 minutes in miserable traffic to come to us, and they’ll ask: “Why are you here?” and I say: “Well, you came here, didn’t you?” 

The full interview will be published in the August 2026 edition of Watch Insider.