Scottish watch retailer Chisholm Hunter is pushing further south as it plans to open its first store serving the Greater London area this summer.
The store will open at the Bluewater shopping centre located 18 miles outside London. This will be the most southern of the chain’s stores to date; previously its most southern store was the branch in Nottingham.
Chisolm Hunter has said that the opening of its Bluewater store is part of a wider expansion programme that it will roll out over the next six months, pushing the chain further south as well as looking for new locations in Scotland.
Chisolm Hunter director Tracey Brown said: “We have long had our sights set on the London market and now seems like the perfect time to open a store with the Olympics and the Queen’s Jubilee expected to bring a huge swell in the number of tourists to the city and surrounding areas.
“We already have a number of stores north of the border but this is our most ambitious venture yet and we are very excited at the opportunity of exposing our brand and shopping experience to a much larger audience. It is our intention to further expand into the south which we are very excited about and we have more expansion plans throughout the UK and Scotland on the horizon.”
The store at Bluewater, which is currently being fitted out and will open in summer, will sell a range of watches alongside jewellery. Watch brands currently stocked by the chain’s other stores include Longines, Ebel, TW Steel, Technomarine, Roamer, Rado, Montblanc, TAG Heuer, Oris, Certina and Maurice Lacroix.
Bluewater shopping centre, which is located is said to attract 28 million visitors a year. Other watch retailers in the centre include House of Fraser, John Lewis, Fossil, Beaverbrooks, Fraser Hart, Goldsmiths, H Samuel, Leslie Davis, Ernest Jones, Omega, Swag and Swatch.
