London is about to get a gold showroom, on the heels of the gold price slipping to a five-year low.
Bullion broker Sharps Pixley’s high-security store at 54 St James’s Street will offer small gold ‘gifts’ starting at £40 but more well-heeled customers will be able to splash out £25,000 on a kilogram bar of the precious metal - about the size of an iPhone.
Chief executive Ross Norman said the shop – in London’s clubland near Boodles and White’s - would fill a gap in the market when it opened in the autumn. He said: “You’re working in the global capital of trading in gold and yet gold isn’t visible on the high street. Our mission is to make gold visible and accessible. Most of our clients are foreign, Russian, European, Indians. Britons don’t really get gold.”
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He added: “Our look and feel is quite bling, I have to say - serving Middle Eastern clients - so we’ll look a little bit odd next to those crusty old boys in those clubs, but they’ll get the picture eventually.”
Sharps Pixley - which traces its origins back to 1778 - was bought by Germany’s bullion dealer Degussa in 2013. Degussa has been owned since 2011 by Germany’s super-rich Von Finck dynasty, whose forbearers founded European insurance giant Allianz.
Norman said the firm would be appealing “more to the wealthy foreign element in London”. He said: “It is a slow process to get British people to understand it has a role to play. It’s a form of insurance.”
