The Quiet Absence: What Ernest Jones’ New Lakeside Store Says About Digital in Retail
Ernest Jones has just opened its new store concept at Lakeside in Thurrock. Designed by Briggs Hillier, the format is organised around different customer missions rather than product categories alone — browsing and discovery, considered purchase, one-to-one consultation — with clearer navigation, dedicated consultation spaces and a Diamonds Collection given proper prominence for occasion shopping. It’s a considered, well-executed response to the brief.
What it doesn’t have is digital. I want to explore this more because Ernest Jones isn’t alone — it’s a data point in a wider question the industry is currently arguing with itself over: is digital falling out of favour in physical retail, or is it just changing shape?
Two Trends, Both True
Look in one direction and the story is retreat. Luxury retail’s dominant language in 2026 has become what analysts are calling “quiet tech” — technology that works behind the scenes rather than announcing itself on a screen. Stock intelligence, predictive maintenance, clienteling data — all present, none of it visible. The thinking goes that removing friction matters more than displaying the tools used to remove it, and that filling a shop with screens was a phase the category is now moving past.
Look in the other direction and the story is expansion. US in-store retail media spend is forecast to grow more than 30% this year alone, and the reasoning is structural rather than fashionable: unlike online advertising, physical stores are largely untouched by the disruption AI agents are bringing to digital media, which makes in-store screens one of the few channels a brand can still fully control. Kroger is already piping brand-made animated content directly onto its store screens rather than static signage, and retailers across grocery and beauty are treating the store itself as a media environment, not just a fulfilment one.
Both of these are happening at the same time, in the same year, often within the same sector. Take a step back and it’s not that digital is disappearing, but digital that behaves like an ad break bolted onto the room instead of something built for it.
The Real Divide Isn’t On/Off — It’s Bespoke vs. Borrowed
Stores pulling back on screens aren’t rejecting technology; they’re rejecting content never made for the space it’s playing in. A looping campaign asset designed for a paid social placement, dropped onto a wall because there’s a screen there to fill, reads as noise regardless of resolution. It competes with the room instead of narrating it.
The alternative isn’t more screens or fewer screens — it’s content built specifically for that environment, tied to that layout, that lighting, that customer journey. Personalisation research consistently points the same way: the goal isn’t flooding a space with more screens or louder messaging; it’s making sure every display and interaction feels intentional and timed to the moment a customer is actually in. That’s a content and curation problem before it’s a hardware one.
The same logic applies to personalisation more broadly. It doesn’t have to mean a screen recognising a face. Often it’s smaller and more human than that — an associate greeting a loyal customer by name, a display that changes because footfall data says it should, a consultation space that quietly adapts to what a customer has already shown interest in online. Digital’s job in those moments is to support the story the store is already telling, not to tell a different one over the top of it.
Where That Leaves a Store Like Ernest Jones
A store built around missions — discovery, consultation, considered purchase — is precisely the kind of environment where restrained digital would earn its place rather than compete for attention. A subtle animated layer at each product display. Quiet, contextual content in the consultation spaces that reinforces provenance and craftsmanship rather than promotes a discount. Nothing “whizzy” for its own sake — but something that moves, that responds, that makes a beautifully still room feel a little more alive without shouting over the materials and the layout that are already doing the work.
The brands getting this right in 2026 aren’t choosing between digital and no digital. They’re being ruthless about which pieces of technology deserve to be visible at all, and making sure the ones that are visible were built for the room they’re standing in.