 | |
| Company type | Public limited company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Jewelry |
| Founded | 1924 |
| Headquarters | Braunstone, England, UK |
Key people | Dennis Millard, (chairman) Brian Duffy, (CEO) |
| Revenue |  £1,542.8 million (2023)[1] |
| £178.6 million (2023)[1] | |
| £121.8 million (2023)[1] | |
| Website | www www |
Watches of Switzerland is a British retailer of Swiss watches, with 16 stores in the United Kingdom.[2] The company headquarters is in Braunstone, England.[3] It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
History
Watches of Switzerland was founded in Ludgate Hill in 1924.[4] During the late 1970s Theo Paphitis, the entrepreneur, worked as a sales assistant at the Bond Street Watches of Switzerland store in London.[5]
The business was acquired by Ratners in 1988[6] but then sold on to Asprey in the early 1990s.[7] The company was the subject of a management buyout from Asprey in 1998.[8][9] It was then acquired, along with Mappin & Webb, by Baugur Group in November 2005.[8] It was then bought by Landsbanki in 2009 before coming under the control of Apollo Global Management in 2013.[4] The company was briefly known as Aurum Holdings before re-branding itself as Watches of Switzerland in advance of an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange in May 2019.[4]
References
- ^ a b c "Annual Report 2023" (PDF). Watches of Switzerland Group. Retrieved 13 February 2024.
- ^ "Our Showrooms". Watches-of-switzerland.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-10-24.
- ^ "Contact Us / Watches of Switzerland". Watches-of-switzerland.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-10-24.
- ^ a b c "Watches of Switzerland starts clock on London IPO plan". Evening Standard. 2 May 2019. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
- ^ "Enter the Dragon of balls, rubber and lingerie". This is London. 24 October 2007. Retrieved 21 July 2008.
- ^ Haapalainen, Valérie; Skog, Nan (1 February 2011). "Growth Strategies of Multinational Companies: the Jewelry Industry" (PDF). p. 53. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
- ^ "Crown jewellers sold off for a princely pounds 250m". The Independent. 4 November 1995. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
- ^ a b "Baugur buys £30m Mappin & Webb". The Telegraph. 13 November 2005. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
- ^ "Royal jeweller sells two chains". BBC. 24 December 1998. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
This page was last edited on 13 February 2024, at 21:25