British watchmaker Bremont saw sales rise by 21% to £17.3 million in its latest financial year, which ended in June 2021.
The business also made its first operating profit since 2015.
The financial result is all the more impressive because it was achieved during the pandemic and in the year Bremont opened its £20 million Technology and Manufacturing Centre, The Wing, in Henley, near London.
In an updated shared with WATCHPRO this morning, Bremont co-founder Giles English said the business has continued to accelerate its growth since covid-related headwinds have eased.
“Covid was clearly difficult with so many stores and the Caribbean being closed for so long but we are very positive with strong recent trading and should grow by over 25% this year,” he says.
Bremont says it currently makes around 10,000 watches per year, but The Wing gives it the capacity to scale up to 50 or even 100,000 watches, co-founder Nick English told WATCHPRO in a Big Interview earlier this year.
Accounts show Bremont just beating break even in its most recent financial year (it was actually an operating profit of just over £3,000), although the business and its backers continue to favour investment in future growth ahead of profitability for now.
“We will not be profitable in this financial year because we are investing so much,” Mr English said in March.
“The most important thing for us and our investors is to choose the right opportunities,” he continued.
“For example, we had the chance to open this amazing store in Shanghai with a partner. The timing might have been better in a few years but it was too good an opportunity to miss so we jumped on it. That does make us less profitable in the short term, but it would take us a lot longer to get to where we want to be if we did not take them.”
