Built by Corey / Proposal for Dipples Fine Jewellers · Bury St Edmunds
Current site  ↗ Open live preview  ↗
★ Proposal · prepared for Dipples Fine Jewellers · 25 May 2026

A few specific fixes for dipples.com

Dipples Fine Jewellers · Bury St Edmunds branch · website rebuild. I rebuild small-business sites in my spare time when I can see they are leaving conversions on the table. The Bury St Edmunds branch opened in October 2022 in a building that has been a jeweller's since 1745, and the Suffolk press called the Dipples takeover "heritage secured". Almost none of that lands on the live site. Three findings below, then a working rebuild you can click through.

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Bury branch · 14 Abbeygate Street, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk IP33 1UN Founded · 1878 MD · Chris Ellis, 5th generation
The curved walnut shopfront of Dipples Fine Jewellers at 14 Abbeygate Street, Bury St Edmunds, with the brass JEWELLERS lockup over the bow window and the projecting antique street clock on a wrought-iron bracket
14 Abbeygate Street · Bury St Edmunds · a jeweller's since 1745

Two heritages, one building. Five generations of Dipples, 277 years of continuous jewellery at the address. Open the live preview  ↗

Three findings, ordered by impact on Bury walk-in customers

What the current site is leaving on the table at the Bury branch.

A walk-through of the live dipples.com and the Bury landing at dipples.com/map/dipples-bury-st-edmunds on 25 May 2026.

01

The Bury St Edmunds branch has no real landing page.

What I saw
The URL the Bury branch surfaces on Google is dipples.com/map/dipples-bury-st-edmunds, which renders a generic Shopify "map" stub with the phone number, the email, "Monday to Saturday, 9:30 to 5:00", and nothing else. There is no full postal address (14 Abbeygate Street, IP33 1UN appears nowhere on the page), no photograph of the curved walnut shopfront, no mention of the building, no map embed, and no opening-day or heritage context. The branch landing was set up at first opening in October 2022 and has not been edited since. A customer Googling "jewellers Bury St Edmunds" lands on the Norwich-flagship homepage banner instead.
Cause
Shopify out-of-the-box treats the Bury, Norwich and Dereham branches as identical store locations, not as distinct shops with distinct histories. The "Tivon" theme generates one map stub per location and assumes the merchant will write the page later. The page-builder block to attach a hero photo, an address, an opening-hours table, an embedded map and the building heritage exists but was never filled in. Meanwhile the most distinctive shopfront in the entire Dipples group, the curved walnut window with the brass JEWELLERS lockup and the antique street clock, sits unused in the Shopify media library.
After rebuild
After rebuild: dipples-fine-jewellers-bury-st-edmunds.builtbycorey.com gives the Bury branch a real landing page. Curved-walnut shopfront photograph above the fold, full 14 Abbeygate Street address, embedded Google Map pin at IP33 1UN, opening hours with the Sunday-closed note, the 277-year building heritage rendered as the second-strongest moment on the page after the hero. Chris Ellis named, Rebecca Ellis named, the October 2022 Thurlow Champness handover named. A customer Googling "jewellers Bury St Edmunds" lands somewhere that already knows it is about Bury.
02

A 277-year heritage at 14 Abbeygate Street, none of it on the site.

What I saw
The Suffolk press, when Dipples opened in October 2022, ran the headline "Bury St Edmunds heritage secured after Dipples jewellers takes on former Thurlow Champness and Son." The story: a jeweller has stood at 14 Abbeygate Street since 1745, when George Lumley founded a watchmaker on the site. The trade passed through Gudgeon in 1815, Thurlow Champness from 1901, Lt Col Peter Thurlow Champness in 1950, and Trevor Salt until 2022. When Salt retired and Thurlow Champness closed after 277 years, Dipples (already the Thurlow Champness repair partner) took the lease, re-employed the team, kept the Bremont and Georg Jensen cabinets, and reopened. Chris Ellis on the page: "We have immense respect for the business that Trevor and his family have built. During our discussions, we have realised just how similar our two businesses are, given our longstanding heritages." None of that story, none of the 1745 date, none of the headline, appears on dipples.com.
Cause
The Shopify "About" page (/pages/about-us-1) tells the Dipples-family story (Woodford 1878, Ipswich by 1890, Norwich around 1894, Dereham 1963, Bury 2022) competently. But the building heritage at Bury, the heritage that earned the Suffolk News headline, sits in a different lineage entirely (1745 to today, four owner families), and the Shopify template does not give it a home. The narrative that makes Bury distinctive from Norwich is the narrative the site cannot tell.
After rebuild
After rebuild: a dedicated heritage block on the Bury landing page that runs both timelines side by side. Left column carries the Dipples family lineage from George Henry Dipple in 1878 through to Chris Ellis as fifth-generation MD today. Right column carries the building lineage from George Lumley in 1745 through Gudgeon, Thurlow Champness, and Trevor Salt to the 2022 handover. The press headline runs across the top as a pull quote, sourced and dated. The customer choosing between Dipples and the chain jewellers on the High Street can see, in the second screen of the page, what the two-layered heritage actually means.
03

The most distinctive jeweller shopfront in East Anglia is not on the homepage.

What I saw
Open dipples.com on a phone and the hero is a Longines campaign banner served from Shopify, rotated alongside Bremont and Georg Jensen brand artwork. The actual Bury shopfront, the curved walnut window with the brass JEWELLERS lockup, the navy fascia, the projecting antique street clock on a wrought-iron bracket, the cream Regency upper storey, the Elizabethan timber-frame buildings either side, does not appear above the fold on the homepage, the about page, or the contact page. It is on the Bury map stub at sub-3KB resolution. The full-master Shopify file (1407 by 1500 pixels) is uploaded and dormant. Branded supplier banners are doing the work the real shop should be doing.
Cause
Shopify themes optimise for product retail (here is the watch, here is the price), not for the kind of heritage retail where the building is itself the brand. The Longines and Bremont co-op banners are easy to drop in; the curved-walnut shopfront photograph requires a custom hero block the Tivon theme does not provide out of the box. The supplier banners win by default.
After rebuild
After rebuild: the curved-walnut shopfront is the hero of the Bury landing page, full-bleed, with the brass JEWELLERS lockup visible at fold height. The headline runs in Cormorant Garamond italic over a Suffolk-cream paper background. Chris Ellis at the shopfront the day it opened appears in the heritage block. The interior cabinet shot, the Chris-with-loupe specialism shot, and the 22,950-pound multi-quartz necklace each get a portfolio frame. The Longines and Bremont co-op banners move to the brands carousel further down, where they belong.
Pricing

Fixed price, no hourly billing, no surprise upgrade tier.

£2,000
Fixed for the rebuild of the Bury St Edmunds landing page and the supporting heritage, branch and contact pages. One-off.
£150
Per month for hosting and ongoing care, including a monthly refresh of new commissions, watch arrivals or window-cabinet changes from the Bury showroom.
£50
Optional. Embedded chatbot trained on the questions asked at the Bury counter (bespoke engagement rings, remodelling inherited stones, Bremont and Longines service, sizing, interest-free finance).

No retainer. No contract. No in-person visits, fully remote from Switzerland.

Next step

If the proposal lands, reply with two or three twenty-minute slots in the next ten days for a video call.

I take on three East Anglia builds this quarter, and first confirmed wins the slot. If I do not hear back by 4 June 2026, the proposal site comes down.

See the live rebuild  ↗
A working preview you can click through.
Opens in a new tab. Best read on a phone first, then a laptop.