TALKING SHOP: Little Treasury Jewelers makes it in Maryland

Founded in 1996, Little Treasury Jewelers is an independent, family-owned luxury retailer located in The Village at Waugh Chapel retail plaza in Gambrills, Maryland. From its humble beginnings as merely a shopping cart selling low-end jewelry, today it stands as one of the premier watch destinations in the Baltimore–Washington metro area. Originally the brainchild of Linda Hammalian, her husband Steve Hammalian later joined the business to help run it, becoming the yin to her yang. Steve spent some time with Watch Insider’s Daniel Malins to explain how their teamwork makes the shop tick.

Daniel Malins: How did Little Treasury Jewelers come to be? 

Steve Hammalian: We’re a bit of an anomaly, actually. My wife, Linda, founded the business back in 1996 as a pushcart in a shopping mall, selling silver and bead jewelry with an investment of $500. This was a seven-day-a-week operation run by herself working many hours a day, and she did very well with that, for what it was. She had an amazing personality and developed a good following. She opened Little Treasury with almost no background in business, and no background in jewelry. It’s really an amazing story. 

We met a couple of years after that, got married in 1999, and decided that she needed a better situation. We moved to a diamond exchange in another mall here in Maryland with a 10 x 10 booth. She brought in some lines of basic jewelry and started carrying fine jewelry as well, and that lasted for a little over a year. We had been looking for a regular store situation during that time, and we found a place in the current center we are in and signed a contract for a 1,500 sq ft space. The building was not built yet, so we waited several months for it to be finished. We opened the shop with a number of jewelry brands we had acquired in the meantime, and it went rather well from the beginning. I was doing my own things while helping Linda get situated. 

This is my fifth career! At the time, I was consulting for some high-tech firms in the area, and I would help Linda out with back-office work and provide some security, but I was not involved in the operations on the floor. One day, I was reading some trade literature, and I saw an advertisement for Ball watches and it caught my eye. I called the distributor at the time, Jeffrey Hess down in Florida, just out of curiosity. He said: “We’re having a sales meeting next week, why don’t you both come down and take a look?” 

We hopped on a plane, went down, had a nice dinner, saw the collection, and signed up for about 38 pieces. Within three months I sold every one of those watches. I had never sold a thing in my life, I was totally a corporate admin-type guy. It lit something in me like: “Hey, this is fun!” We continued to order Ball watches and added some other lines. I had almost no retail exposure at all, so it was an eye-opening experience. Over the years, we added lines and to date we’ve had at least 70 watch lines through the store. We have progressed to some of the major brands like Grand Seiko, Omega, Breitling, and, recently, TAG Heuer just in the last six weeks. 

Our secret sauce is independent and micro brands that we diligently seek out. 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. 

DM: Out of all the brands you stock, what percentage of them involve you chasing them, rather than the other way round? 

SH: With the larger brands, you’d be surprised that we’ve actually been approached by them more than us approaching them. Some of that may have to do with our geography. We are in a bit of a donut hole. We have major brands represented maybe 20 to 30 miles north and south of us, so we’re probably in a spot that was of interest to some of those brands. 

In terms of the smaller brands, over the years we’ve been going to Switzerland for Baselworld, Watches and Wonders, Time to Watches, and all the related, smaller events. 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. We like to try out a brand if possible, and the way we do that is by involving them in events we sponsor. 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’ve taken over clubs for an evening in Washington, DC, for instance, and introduced watch brands that are new to that market. 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. 

DM: When you say clubs, do you mean nightclubs? 

SH: Yes, we took over a nightclub in Georgetown with Grand Seiko and another DC venue with NOMOS. And we took over the lobby of a five-star hotel in DC and packed 200 people in it with Bremont watches some years ago. In the past two years, we leased and built out a space across the street from us — we call it ‘The Escapement.’ It has several purposes: a third of it is an event space with a bar, fireplace, AV setup, and reconfigurable showcases; a third of it is a video studio; and the rest is workspace for the people who support our website and social media. 

We essentially ran out of space for any back-office activity here in the main store and our events were getting too large for the showroom. So, we now do events in our second space and have expansion room for marketing staff and such. In addition to solo brand events, for the past 13 years we’ve done an annual two-day event we call ‘Time Out.’ We bring in all the brands, set up tents in the parking lot, serve barbecue and beer, and shuck oysters for the customers. We draw quite a crowd — people have come from across the country, from California, and even Panama one year to attend. A lot of the attendees socialize over the weekend and go to local bars together, so we’ve developed a sort of social network around the business doing this. 

DM: Tell me more about how you utilize the video studio that you mentioned. 

SH: Before we built The Escapement, we were early on in video and live streaming. I was personally live streaming back in 2017. Through the live streaming and videos we now have over 1,500 videos on YouTube. We made a name throughout the country and, to a certain extent, internationally and we have about 20,000 followers on YouTube, so that’s another outreach we’re working on. 

DM: Do these ideas around events and original content come from you or your wife?  

SH: Most of it comes from me. I am somewhat of an introvert, but in terms of getting the message out and putting people together, I’m all in. I try to bring in staff members who share that energy and have been very lucky with that. We’ve also had very supportive customers. My original live streaming was instigated by a customer who had 45,000 followers on YouTube. He started inviting me on his live stream as a guest, helped me set up my gear and get going with that. 

We’ve often learned from customers or progressive brands and just tried to adopt their way. We don’t come from a traditional mom-and-pop jewelry background, we’ve always had to feel our own way. We’ve always been, in some sense, running scared. We’re never ever overconfident. We constantly ask: “What can we do that’s new? What can we do that engages people in an interesting, deep way?” It’s not just about making the sale, it’s creating this culture around our business that’s driven both of us. 

DM: Do you see the energy and money spent on events and content as an investment needing a direct return, or are you just trying to create goodwill around your brand with an eye on the long-term? 

SH: Our events are, for the most part, not selling events. We do close sales, but that’s not what they’re about. It really is about creating a community and introducing ourselves to new people. It’s very effective. We’re having an event with Doxa soon and we put out one email invitation and a post on our website and have almost 100 people signed up. Probably a third of those are people who are new to us. We give a little talk at the beginning, then we get a talk from the brand, a Q&A session, and a lot of socializing and showing of the product. We do not track how much money we make off these events and, for the most part, we do this on our own without contributions from the brands. 

DM: When you think of the decisions you’ve made, do you look back and think sometimes you’ve sacrificed making a bit more money in favor of working with the type of brands that you’re personally passionate about? 

SH: On both the customer end and the brand end, we’re very much about the relationship. We are very much customer-centric and want to make sure customers are more than satisfied with their experience with us. If you call us from California, we treat you as if you walked through the door. We try to train our staff to do likewise and to be very kind and respectful. We are very involved with a lot of our brands. A lot of the owners and principal people have become personal friends, and we’re very much not driven by the bottom line. We’re driven by making everybody as happy as we can. 

We let people know we’re not going to be the least expensive retailer in town. We have to fund our events and give you the drinks and take you out for dinner, so I’m not going to be the cheapest guy. If you can respect that, we’re going to have a nice relationship. We’ve just always gone from the standpoint of taking care of the customer, treating the brands respectfully, and things will take care of themselves — and they have. 

DM: You mentioned earlier that you have a good location because there are no competitors directly on your doorstep. Where does that end? You carry great brands like Grand Seiko, Omega, and TAG Heuer, but are there even higher-end brands that you can see yourself potentially working with over time? 

SH: I think some of the brands you might be alluding to might not be comfortable in a store called Little Treasury in a town called Gambrills with 30 mostly micro brands. I have to be realistic that we’ve gone in the direction that is probably not going to attract some of those 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?” 

Realistically, we couldn’t be located over where those customers live because those brands are already situated with other retailers who have been there for years. It wouldn’t be feasible to move closer to Montgomery County and still retain those brands, we’re pretty realistic about that. 

DM: Would you ever consider changing the name of the store, or is that a red line? 

SH: It’s probably a red line. People can always find us and we’re always surprising people — either locals who bump into us because we’re the jewelry store in the area, or people who travel to us because they’ve heard about us. When they walk in, they’ll say: “I’ve never seen NOMOS, Fears, Atelier Wen, and Grand Seiko in one spot.” It’s somewhat random, but it excites the collector. Little Treasury was translated from something in Chinese by my wife when she opened the shop, and I don’t think we’ll ever change that. 

DM: People are obsessive over micro brands, and it seems like a good formula, especially if you blend it with the more high profile mainstream brands. Does it surprise you that your attitude isn’t replicated more often around the country? 

SH: From the beginning, even without knowing much about the watch business, we had the instinct to always go the other way. We see people going left and we head right. We always make ourselves surprising and different from what we see around us. Now, with everybody doing events and everyone being online, we’re looking for the next direction to go. That’s very much in our DNA, stepping out of the mainstream and presenting something that people haven’t seen. 

DM: Do you think about your legacy and about Little Treasury surviving long-term? If so, does succession come into it? 

SH: Very much so. We don’t have a family that is obviously going to take over, but we want the business to persist. We’ve put our heart and soul into it and are not interested in liquidation. We are interested in continuity, and we have ideas about certain people and directions we could go in — we want to put it in good hands. 

DM: Would those be members of staff or friends? 

SH: It would preferably be members of the staff. 

DM: You spoke of going left when others go right, but what still drives you to keep being like this, day in, day out? 

SH: There’s something about the challenge of running the business that has really hooked me. It’s problem solving; it’s taking ideas and things that I like to learn a lot about, incorporating things that catch my eye into the business and then testing them out. “Let’s put this in our newsletter, let’s see how this works, let’s adopt some new technology.” I really enjoy trying to pull all the strings and make it work. 

On the other side, my wife is much less into technology, but she’s the heart and soul of the business — she’s the entrepreneur. I never would have started a business like this on my own, but I’m the guy who can drive it. She’s the person who charms the customers, who people love, and she is self-taught in terms of jewelry. She’s amazing with gemstones, jewelry design, and materials properties that I haven’t gotten myself involved in. We are a very complementary team. 

DM: How difficult is it to go home and switch off? Are you there in the evening talking about watches and jewelry with the TV on in the background? 

SH: We do some collaborating at home, but for the most part we turn it off. Working together 24/7 is sometimes challenging, but we’ve done really well because we are very complementary people. There isn’t a lot of overlap in our personalities or interests, so between the two of us we cover all bases for the business. 

DM: What is the split of watches versus jewelry when it comes to sales, and how has that changed in the last 30 years? 

SH: Watches have become a larger part of the business. From a jewelry standpoint, repairs and custom pieces, we are an average-sized, successful mom-and-pop jewelry store for a local market. But with watches, we are a national business. We sell to every state in the Union and we sell to a number of other countries every year. We’re known more broadly for the watch end of things. 

DM: If you sell to other countries, why are they buying from you rather than in their own country? 

SH: I don’t know! We’ve sold to Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan. I think we have the odd piece online and people see it and reach out to us. We’ve also had some pretty unusual brands and some things that have come and gone that people have sought us out for. We don’t market it outside the country, but we do get calls and we can see that people are hitting our website from around the world as well. 

DM: You described yourself as a problem solver — what would you say are your biggest problems as a business?  

SH: Staffing is always a priority — wanting to recruit the best people and keep them trained. In our environment, since we do repairs and everything that a full jewelry store would do, plus 30 or so watch brands, staff need to be on top of it and be authoritative. We don’t want someone to come in and say: “I talked to the associate, and they had no idea what they were talking about” or post it on a forum. That’s death. So, keeping everybody up to speed and keeping customers happy, that’s always a concern. 

The two things that keep me awake at night are succession and the fact that we have a lot of customer information. We’ve been very diligent about collecting things about customers like whether they have a child in college, or love green dials on watches, or won’t wear anything over 40 mm, and so on. There are thousands of customers in our core database, thousands who have hit our website and left information, 20,000 followers on YouTube, people who have signed up for events over the years. I want to bring that together — that’s my challenge, to integrate. We’re trying to cross-correlate what we know about people so that we can market their interests, so we don’t send you something about pearl jewelry when you’re into 45 mm sport watches. That’s something that really has had me working overtime this year. 

DM: How do you create an environment that keeps people wanting to work for you beyond just a paycheck? 

SH: That’s tough. We do need people who are interested in, and capable of, growing. There’s a lot to learn here and a lot of exposure to industry people. Just as we try to bring customers together, we also try to do that with our staff. We’ve sent people to Switzerland, the UK, Las Vegas, and so on, for training and industry exposure. And we have training every week here in the store. If you’re inclined to want to learn, to be in a pretty dynamic environment where you meet a lot of people and have a lot of opportunity and get paid well, we’re here.

This article was first published in the August 2026 edition of Watch Insider.