It has been a year of considerable change at The Dreyfuss Group. In April last year the family-owned company was bought for around £27 million by China Haidian Holdings, an investment firm that already owned Corum and Eterna along with two major Chinese watch brands and associated manufacturing operations.
Integrating the disparate elements of the group, and realigning them into mainstream and luxury watch divisions has created challenges and opportunities for a company that has been in private hands since its creation in 1895.
Thomas Tope, a seventeen-year veteran of The Dreyfuss Group, has taken it all in his stride, and seized the opportunity of introducing luxury Swiss maker Corum to his bulging black book of contacts. A major breakthrough this year was with Watches of Switzerland, which has agreed to stock the brand at its new Regent Street flagship store.
“It is the first major new account for the newly formed luxury watch division within The Dreyfuss Group,” Thomas reveals.
Thomas admits he is a weekday workaholic who only finds time to relax at weekends and on an occasional holiday to his favourite hotspot, Dubai. But this year he did allow a little more time for affairs of the heart. “My proudest moment would be marrying my beautiful wife last month,” he announces.
After 44 years in the watch and jewellery industry, over one-third of them working with Victoria Campbell and Robert Dreyfuss, his new wife might start encouraging him to slow down. But with his elevation to group sales director overseeing a team running Rotary, Dreyfuss & Co, J&T Windmills, Corum and Eterna, she may have to wait a little longer to put her feet up on the shores of the Arabian Gulf.
