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.
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]