The Watch Gallery, West London’s long-standing luxury watch retailer, has been sold to DM London, the company behind the Selfridges Wonder Room and the huge Rolex store in Knightsbridge.
Particularly significant is the fact that the shop, previously a partner business to Jura Watches in Mayfair, comes with an established web sales business, which DM London is intending to develop further and merge with its own web business that it has been establishing over the past two years. Meanwhile its luxury retailing businesses will be brought under the “Watch Gallery” brand.
Currently DM London’s trading business goes by the name of Time2, which takes in a number of major concession sites and shops and an e-commerce site. This is now being divided into two strands, luxury and designer. The luxury side will be marketed under the Watch Gallery label, and the luxury watches side of Time2.co.uk will be merged with thewatchgallery.com in March.
Meanwhile DM London is also announcing the acquisition of thewatchhut.co.uk, the largest online retailer of fashion/designer watches in the UK, previously belonging to High Street retail chain TH Baker. The Watch Hut label therefore takes over the designer/fashion side of the Time2 business, and Time2 as a trading name will be phased out.
What does this all mean? At the very least, it shows DM London becoming the major independent player in watch sales in London if not the UK; and, perhaps more importantly, it confirms the growing prominence of e-commerce, even at the luxury end of the market. We will have to wait and see if there is a knock-on effect for the line-up of brands on sale at the Watch Gallery, which includes niche independents like Quinting, Giuliano Mazzuoli and Chronoswiss along with big players like IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre and Panerai.
Furthermore, in a tricky (and then some) economic climate, DM London is predicting turnover for 2012 of £50m.
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