A unified store platform for the next phase of growth.

A successful stack. A bigger question.

James Avery's stores had evolved well beyond traditional in-store selling. Functioning as omnichannel service centres, brand outposts, fulfilment locations, and customer engagement hubs. The company's legacy technology stack had not kept pace with this shift, limiting its ability to deliver a modern, unified commerce experience and creating growing inefficiencies for store associates.

The problem had built up gradually as the business grew. Associates were working across an assortment of six to eight different applications to get through their daily tasks: a patchwork of point solutions built up over time to plug specific gaps. This added training burden, operational friction, and inconsistency across the associate experience. Rising costs of maintaining aging software and hardware, combined with the training overhead of the fragmented toolset, made it harder to support omnichannel expectations efficiently and constrained the business's ability to grow without adding significant operational overhead.

Beyond that day-to-day friction, the challenge had a strategic dimension. James Avery wanted a platform that could deliver a best-in-class store experience and a truly omnichannel way of working, with better visibility of stock across every channel, especially in stores; a clearer, more predictive understanding of customers to drive satisfaction; and store operations running on modern, streamlined workflows rather than the existing patchwork. The business also wanted to reduce its dependence on legacy systems in its future architecture, with all of this ultimately supporting the bottom line.

There was also a dimension specific to James Avery's own business. Its fine jewelry and charm-bracelet offering depends on ongoing service work, repairs, resizing, engraving, and long product warranties, that a standard retail platform doesn't provide out of the box. Closing that gap, rather than settling for a generic fit, was central to what James Avery needed from this project.

The partner that could see both sides.

James Avery chose AbsoluteLabs to lead the transformation on the strength of thorough, well-presented delivery approach, deep platform and luxury retail expertise. The same people who worked the sales process stayed on through delivery rather than handing off elsewhere.

"Working with AbsoluteLabs felt less like working with a vendor and more like working with an extended part of our own team. Their team was highly organised, well-versed in the platform, and consistently adapted to what we needed."

‍Harsha Bellur · Chief Information Officer, James Avery

Internally known as Unified Retail Commerce (URC), the project centred on NewStore, a mobile point-of-sale and order management system rolled into one, chosen for its lower technical overhead, the agility it gives James Avery to open new selling locations, and its support for multichannel customer journeys.

The project also extended James Avery's move toward a modern MACH architecture: Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless, to orchestrate data across the estate. AbsoluteLabs' scope included:

• Setting up, configuring, and testing the NewStore POS and Order Management System (OMS)
• Migrating customer records and a full year of historical order data
• Integrating NewStore with James Avery's existing systems, including Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Salesforce Service Cloud, ERP, Relate, and Customer Data Platform (CDP), via Enterprise Service Bus, Kafka integration services with responsibility limited to NewStore facing components.
• Building a set of James Avery-specific capabilities into NewStore, covered in detail below

This scope was proven through a pilot deployment that went live the week of 10 November 2025. Following its success, it was rolled out to the wider estate, reaching full deployment in spring 2026, delivered through close collaboration across both organisations, with a shared program management structure keeping scope, schedule, and risk on track throughout.

Built for James Avery

James Avery's service-led model, which includes repairs, resizing, engraving, charm work, and long product warranties, needed capabilities a standard retail platform doesn't provide. Closing that gap was central to the engagement. AbsoluteLabs built four capabilities into NewStore, specifically for James Avery:

• Service & special orders - a dedicated workflow for repairs, resizing, engraving, and charm work. Associates log the item with photos, price it against James Avery's own rules, route it to the Kerrville workshop when needed, and the customer is notified automatically when it's ready, without leaving the platform they already sell from.
• Unified engraving, in store and online - the same engraving designer customers use on jamesavery.com is built into the in-store app, so associates and customers see identical designs, fonts, and pricing whichever channel they're in.
• Cash and safe reconciliation - the app tells associates exactly how much to move from till to safe, reconciles what the safe reports back against what was expected, and sets the optimum float to leave for the next day, closing a gap NewStore doesn't cover natively and making the next morning's opening smoother.
• Real-time marketing preference sync - a customer's opt-in/opt-out status updates instantly between NewStore and James Avery's CDP, removing the lag that can cause awkward or costly moments in store.

Results & Early Impact

James Avery's full rollout reached completion in spring 2026, and the business is currently in its post-launch stabilisation period.

• Strong associate adoption of the new platform
• Training time for new associates has been reduced considerably
• Reduction in time to fulfil BOPIS orders by store associates
• Simplified and faster verified returns