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Big, swingin' watches
Stylish Tourbillon Boutique shows Swatch is bullish about Wall Street
By Teresa Novellino
October 09, 2009
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| Glashutte Original's "Julius Assmann 4" can be worn on the wrist or as a pocket watch. It was named after the founder of the company and is among the pieces available at the Tourbillon Boutique in New York's Financial District. |
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New York--Glashutte Original's "Julius Assman Tourbillon Skeleton" is the type of watch that a timepiece-lover--or an ardent multi-tasker--swoons over.
It features a hinge that allows the case to be detached from the strap so the timepiece can be worn two ways and it features multiple complications. There are 222 components within the watch's basic movement, 87 components for its flying tourbillon and 74 parts alone for the panorama date display.
"It's almost like a piece of electronics," says Michael Winston, general manager of the Tourbillon Boutique on Wall Street, explaining some of the watch's complications to a visitor. "You can wear it as a watch or a pocket watch...And you're marrying German technology with German watchmaking."
Glashutte is not your typical high-end watch brand in that it's manufactured in Germany, not Switzerland. Based in East Germany, the company was operating behind the Iron Curtain after World War II, and its workers learned watchmaking the hard way, relying on in-house manufacturing for all the components. Today, under the ownership of Swatch Group, the brand stays true to the Saxon art of watchmaking.
Such historic details are the sort that Winston likes to bring up at the Tourbillon Boutique, where the very name of the store pays homage to high-end, complicated timepieces, and where Glashutte Original is just one of the prestigious Swatch Group brands featured among a lineup that also includes Breguet, Blancpain, Jaquet Droz, Leon Hatot and Omega.
Catering to Wall Street
As a retailer, the Tourbillon Boutique's address is as important as its brands. It is located in Manhattan's Financial District at 45 Wall St., placing it within easy walking distance of not only the New York Stock Exchange, which is on the very same street, but also the city's biggest investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.
It's also steps away from Cipriani Wall Street, an upscale restaurant that can serve as an extension of the store for Winston, who brings his best financier customers over for a meal on the terrace or to smoke cigars and indulge in the wide selection of single malt scotch whiskeys at the bar.
To complete the location trifecta, the boutique, which opened this past spring, is also just a few doors down from Tiffany and Co., which opened in a historic building at 37 Wall St., in October 2007.
"Every day, we have a large concentration of Wall Street [workers], and we have tourist traffic as well," Winston says. The cachet of the location brings customers in, but it is the premium customer service and knowledgeable, well-trained sales people that keeps them coming back, he says.
The store opened mid-recession this past spring--a time period that did not, to say the least, coincide with a heyday in the financial world. The Wall Street bonuses that help fuel high-end watch purchases fell 44 percent in 2008 to an estimated $18.4 billion, after having topped out at $34 billion in 2006, according to the New York State Comptroller's Office.
But post-bailout, some of the big banks are back in the black, and analysts are predicting a rebound for bonuses this year. At the Tourbillon boutique, fingers are crossed.
"Everything's been improving, people are more optimistic, people are feeling confident," Winston says. "We're here for the long term, and we feel like in the long term, Wall Street is going to be a great place to be."
Careful placement
Rosita Djahannia, public relations director for Swatch Group U.S., says the Tourbillon boutiques were carefully placed in locations that are less expected.
Swatch Group's Breguet and Blancpain boutiques are on Madison Avenue, an area that has increasingly become a jewelry and watch destination as well as an overall luxury retail hot spot. But the decision to put the Tourbillon boutique featuring multiple brands on Wall Street was a different strategy because while it is an area that is convenient for those in the financial district, it is also a bit removed from the usual shopping zones.
The same holds true for a second U.S. Tourbillon store, which was purposefully placed in the upscale shopping center South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, Calif., rather than Beverly Hills, Djahannia says.
The desire to be a little bit different extends to the interior of the stores and to the merchandise mix.
"It's all of the prestige brands for the Swatch Group in one retail environment, and the idea is that this is how they should be represented," Djahannia says. "We made the display area very visible, but also open and airy so it doesn't seem so cold."
The New York store, one of the largest Tourbillon boutiques, features several areas where visitors can sit down on couches and relax.
Inside the boutique, each timepiece is encased and illuminated in its own museum-like glass vitrine, like a piece of art. Winston says the intention was to create a store that gets consumers excited about the watches without bowling them over with too many options.
"A lot of times you go into a watch store and you're overwhelmed," Winston says.
The average price points at the boutique tend to be in the range of $10,000 to $25,000, but storewide, prices start at $3,000 and go up to several hundred thousand dollars. That aspirational high-end purchase is encouraged, since the name of the store itself suggests high-end watches and the most prized of complications.
"People who are really interested and passionate about watches know what a tourbillon is when they walk in," Winston says.
But even if customers are already familiar with the mechanical device that counters the impacts of gravity on timepieces, Winston likes to dazzle them with the magnificence of the tourbillon anyway.
"The truly incredible part is what it takes to make it," he says. "I tell people it's more complex or as complex as a [sports car] engine in the space of a small dome."
The New York and California Tourbillon boutiques will soon be joined by a new boutique in Las Vegas' City Center, which is slated to open in December.
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