The shop: Breitling opens a shop in Sweden
At Biblioteksgatan 7 in Stockholm, close to 200 square metres have been fitted out with an industrial touch and the obligatory motorcycle and pedal bike as props for the watches in the display cases. Seating areas invite conversation about watches. -Here customers and prospective customers should be able to sit, look and ask about our watches, says the store manager. And the setting really is inviting.
By: Mia Litström and Britta Rossander
At Biblioteksgatan 7 in Stockholm close to 200 square metres have been fitted out with an industrial touch and the obligatory motorcycle and pedal bicycle as props to the watches in the display cases. Seating groups invite conversations about watches.
-Here customers and future customers should be able to sit, look and ask about our watches, says the shop manager. And the environment is really inviting.
The shop is run under the auspices of Watches of Switzerland Group which is a gigantic retailer chain with its seat in London and shops in England and the USA.
-Breitling today has close to 170 shops around the world of which a third are in collaboration with the English listed company, related Nasr-eddine Benassa who works at Breitling HQ in close collaboration with CEO George Kern.
-We are enormously happy to, together with our brand partners, be able to begin our expansion in Europe with the Breitling Boutique in Stockholm as the start. We have an expansion plan that to begin with focuses on the Nordics and Ireland which will lead to the opening of more mono-brand boutiques towards the end of 2022, says Craig Bolton CEO of Watches of Switzerland Group, Great Britain and Europe.
Stephane Dehner, operations director for Breitling Scandinavia, said at the sneak opening yesterday (15 June) that it felt in the heart that a Breitling shop is opening in Sweden. We understand that – we have of course followed Stephane's and his colleague Michael Owers' journey with Breitling since they started working with the brand in 1986 and got the distribution in Scandinavia.
They have put their souls into getting us Scandinavians and above all Swedes to embrace the brand and none of us who have been around since the 1980s can really forget the hype that they created by bringing the watches here.
All the guys wanted the big watches with chrongraph buttons and chunky leather straps with seams in a deviating natural-coloured stitch. This persistent work that these two tall, elegant and in all contexts highly visible guys put in has also meant that when you look at who still buys Breitling watches it is the domestic customer base and not above all tourists, which is common for several other brands in the higher price segment.
It is not only conversations about watches that the new shop invites. The models that previously flew past us in Sweden, the watches that are only sold in the brand's own shops, so-called Boutique Editions, will now be able to be shown and sold here. This also makes it possible for us writers to present these watches in depth. And right here at the shop's opening time the range is spiced with many of the otherwise hard-to-get watches.
