Most watch brands, if taking over an entire building on London’s Bond Street, including two floors of retail space, would shout it from the rooftops, at the very least celebrating with a star-studded opening party.
But that’s not the Seiko Watch Corporation (SWC) way. For Grand Seiko and its sibling Seiko, it was a soft opening in mid-November that marked the momentous occasion of a debut at 68 New Bond Street.
Although not the first Grand Seiko/Seiko standalone store in the UK, Knightsbridge having opened in 2017, the sheer scale of the new space (1,790 square feet across two floors, including 794 square feet for Grand Seiko and 996 square feet for Seiko and its sub-brands) is a clear message of just how far the two brands have come since Grand Seiko’s first official appearance in Britain at SalonQP 2009.
When David Edwards, managing director of Seiko UK Ltd, joined the company in 2018, there were around eight points of sale, today there are 31, covering the length and breadth of the country, and including 13 Grand Seiko shop-in-shops (SiS) – five with Watches of Switzerland Group, five with Chisholm Hunter and three with independents (Frances & Gaye, Coventry; James Porter, Glasgow; and Deacons, Swindon).
It is also a reminder that the two brands operate slightly differently here compared to the US, Europe and Asia. In the UK, both brands share an MD in Mr Edwards — who brings experience gained at Swatch Group and Richard Mille — and operate through one fiscal entity.
Beyond that, however, are the similarities with the rest of the world — Grand Seiko has a dedicated GS Team well-versed in fine watches and luxury retail with collective experience spanning Harrods, Watches of Switzerland Group, Omega, Cartier and David Morris. The same approach also extends to Seiko and Lorus which each have their own team.
On the decision to move from Knightsbridge to Bond Street, Mr Edwards says: “It was driven by me. When I came on board I thought it was important to re-brand the Knightsbridge Seiko store as Grand Seiko. However, due to the store layout (long but narrow), you still had to walk through Seiko to get to Grand Seiko. The boutique was crying out for a refit, so we needed to make a decision: stay in Knightsbridge and renovate, or look for a new location. We started looking for other places, not because we didn’t like the area, but just because we needed a different format.
“I walked a lot of streets during lockdown (obviously when we were allowed!). There are some amazing properties to be had and some amazing prices attached to them — but I invariably kept coming back to Bond Street. And then it was a question of space and this was one of the very, very few locations that fit that bill. So that’s why we ended up here.”
Between them, the southern section of Bond Street (Old) and the northern section (New) make up 0.5 miles (0.8 km) of prime retail space, which according to Westminster City Council houses the world’s highest density of haute couture boutiques. Many of the buildings are protected by listed status, however, during the construction of Crossrail, which now includes an Elizabeth Line station at Bond Street, parts of Hanover Square, which backs onto Bond Street were demolished, requiring an amount of rebuilding, including 64-72 New Bond Street.
According to Crossrail, the Elizabeth Line has already led to a significant rise in footfall, with an estimated 200 million annual passengers set to use it. At 60 metres long, the escalator at the Hanover Square entrance to the station is the second longest on the TfL network, just one metre behind the escalators at Angel underground station and, naturally, Grand Seiko initiated a takeover of the escalator’s digital widescreens within weeks of the station opening in November 2022.
Owner of the new development, Great Portland Estates plc (GPE), replaced the demolition site with the 8,400 sq ft Medici Courtyard — one of the first new public courtyards in Mayfair in more than 100 years — plus a 221,500 sq ft mixed-use development owned by the joint venture GHS Limited Partnership.
The new site includes 167,500 sq ft of offices, 40,000 sq ft of retail units facing New Bond Street and six residential apartments. In addition, No. 20 Hanover Square will house footwear designer Jimmy Choo’s new London Fashion Academy, with students showcasing their work in one of the new luxury retail units.
Other leading retailers in the development include luxury bridal label Pronovias, Royal Warrant-holding florist Moyses Stevens, Italian menswear brand, Canali and high-end audio supplier Bang & Olufsen. The Grand Seiko unit has the added benefit of display windows lining a new arcade that leads from New Bond Street through to Medici Courtyard, home to Joey Ghazal’s New England inspired the MAINE restaurant.
Marc Wilder, Leasing Director at GPE, commented: “A project of this scale in Mayfair is rare and the overall creation of Hanover’s new courtyard, retail arcade, prime offices, café, restaurant and thoroughfare marks the beginning of a long-lasting legacy for the capital. The development is in the heart of London’s luxury fashion district and our joint venture has provided us with the unique ability to create and launch a new mixed-use destination created for the future of London.”
While the majority of luxury watch stores are currently situated further down on Bond Street, Mr Edwards suggests that the brand is sufficiently destination — in Knightsbridge around 80% of customers were UK-based and travelling into London — that it doesn’t need to be next door to another watch store to attract customers. He also believes that the passing footfall from the regeneration of the north side of the street will create a large amount of speculative visits.
But the real benefit of the increased floor space is, according to Mr Edwards, the opportunity to keep both brands together while maintaining their separate identities.
“There’s a convenience in having the two brands in the same location. But what Bond Street has allowed us to do is to separate them by giving them different floors — Grand Seiko on the ground and Seiko on the first. The look and feel for each is clearly very different. And that is important. It is our flagship store in the UK, but it is not only about selling, it is also about demonstrating to our retail partners how we think a Seiko/Grand Seiko display should look.”
While the Grand Seiko floor is sophisticated and mature, the Seiko floor is dynamic, youthful and ‘cool’. The feel is very different to Knightsbridge — floor to ceiling windows at the front and glass display cases to the side let in huge amounts of natural light, while the colour palette is noticeably paler and less ‘man’s club’ than before.
The phenomenal, and rapid, rise in brand recognition for Grand Seiko is, says Mr Edwards, due to a deliberate push to attract consumers and not just the collectors. “There was this hotbed of people that knew about Grand Seiko,” he says. “It was almost like a secret they had stumbled upon.
“And so, of course, we have had to walk the line between destroying this secret beauty spot and building on it. But I think, by telling the story of the brand in a very different way, we have managed to grow organically and without hype. We weren’t interested in taking double page spreads in every single luxury title, we were more intent on spreading the message editorially and via social media.
“We had a big anniversary celebration planned in Japan in 2020 for the 60th anniversary of Grand Seiko, but the pandemic put an end to that. Instead, we diverted the budget into other areas — especially in the UK and the US. So the covid years were fertile for us. We took the time to look at how we communicated our message and we put a fresh strategy in place.”
Part of that strategy was celebrating the uniqueness of Japanese watchmaking and working out how to explain that essence through the history of SWC. Importantly, these stories had to be organic. They could not be used as a marketing campaign cobbled together to provide a competitive advantage, but needed to authentically explain who Grand Seiko is.
“The guards are coming down a little bit and there is a new sense of ‘we don’t have to be so strict or corporate, let’s play a little bit’,” says Mr Edwards on the changing strategy and the new willingness to talk about the unique Japanese-ness of SWC. “I think that has undoubtedly helped to get these behind-the-scenes stories in motion. And we are starting to talk about our horological firsts and innovations — it will always be a whisper not a shout type of approach, never boastful or brash as that is just not us.”
While Grand Seiko has been on a massive trajectory in the UK in the past few years, so too has Seiko. That’s partly due to product, but is also down to a change in the distribution network and the realisation that while brand awareness was high, brand understanding was low, something that could only be redressed by telling the stories of the sub-brands.
Recognition by organisations such as the Houlden Group is proof of a growing appreciation of what the Seiko brand has to offer these days, including the recently re-introduced King Seiko capsule collection. And Seiko is increasingly being offered SiS space in independent and multiple retailers to present its collections properly.
“I knew that the Seiko offer was actually far better than I was seeing in the UK market,” says Mr Edwards. “Unless you knew the brand inside out, you only saw what was on sale here and that shaped perceptions of what the brand is. Models at the entry-level were over-distributed in the UK and we needed to stop that and bring that high-end luxury feel that the Swiss do so well.”
“Working with our retailers, we have also raised merchandising standards. There is a recognition that it isn’t about finding a bit of space and filling it with product. You have to tell the story, and the displays here in Bond Street are an example of what we would like to see in retailers. Of course, it’s not going to happen to the same extent, but at least it gives a hint of what can be done.”
The Prospex SiS, on the first floor of 68 Bond Street, is the biggest in Europe representing the importance of Prospex, which has seen a 280% growth in the UK since 2018 and now rivals Grand Seiko in terms of turnover. Mr Edwards puts this partly down to the development of story-telling about historical pieces and reissues of models such as the 1965 re-creation which has a retail price of £1,100. Understandably, the pieces sell incredibly well with retailers, and demand is increasing 50% year-on-year.
Seiko 5 Sports is the ‘cool kid’ of the group, with partnerships that allow it to be more freestyle and to bring in the quirkiest Japanese traits. “We’ve asked for the date dial to always come with dual languages because that is what fans want. Sometimes it’s the little things that you don’t think about that resonate most and so we constantly feed that back to HQ. The most common request is, ‘Can we dial up the Japanese-ness?’.”
One of the, as yet, less-recognised sub-brands is Presage, which features self-winding, in-house movements and showcases traditional Japanese crafts such as Shippo Enamel and Arita porcelain. Skills sometimes triumphed by other brands who specialise in metiers d’art, the Presage range offers authenticity at incredible prices and according to Mr Edwards is “a sleeping giant in the UK”. That said, there has been a three-fold increase in sales since lockdown.
So, with this meteoric rise, could Seiko not have kept Knightsbridge and opened in Bond Street? “Yes, we could,” says Mr Edwards, “but we don’t consider ourselves to be retailers. In 2017, Grand Seiko wasn’t available anywhere else in Knightsbridge — or, indeed, in central London. Now it’s in Watches of Switzerland Knightsbridge (as well as others across the capital) and Harrods. Do we, therefore, need to be there in a brand boutique?”
Mr Edwards is emphatic that the brands are not going into competition with traditional retailers, saying there are no plans to have any boutique editions beyond the initial Grand Seiko to celebrate the store opening — the first time the UK has ever had a country-specific, limited-edition.
“With the Bond Street flagship we’re not trying to make it the most profitable watch retail store in London,” he says. “We’re doing it because we want to tell our story and explain the different brands that we have and the stories that we have behind them.”
But would he consider a collaborative standalone boutique with a retailer? “It feels that would be a natural evolution,” Mr Edwards says. “Four years ago, we weren’t in Watches of Switzerland for example, then we started with pop-ups in Regent Street and Oxford Street, then a counter presence and that led to various SiS, so the next logical step would be a retail unit with a partner — whether a multiple or an independent. But it’s not something that keeps me awake at night. It’s got to be the right location and the right partner.
“Brands and retailers by and large, are different. Brands make watches and retailers sell them, and both do a good job. So if the two come together in a partnership that works for both, what’s the problem? It’s not necessarily a model that we’re following, but I wouldn’t rule it out. For now it would be good to have more SiS and definitely, that’s a conversation we want to have with independents as well.”
On the digital side, Mr Edwards acknowledges the importance and the fact that retailers and consumers will research a brand online before buying into it. “The covid years forced us to get on-board with e-com. The pandemic had so many people looking at their screens. Maybe they’d only ever heard of five brands before, but they started researching independents, and this had a fascinating impact on the market.
“We wanted to use it for our story-telling and brand building. That was the only window retailers had at that time so we made sure we put as much effort into it as we did with physical retail and that gave this whole different world view. We brought people in to run e-com and digital comms properly for us in-house and we’ve never looked back.”
The stories really are resonating with buyers. With Phillips New York gearing up to sell a collection of vintage Seikos, consumer demand to see more of these pieces is high, with Mr Edwards saying that the VIP room in the new store is already planning to host watches on loan from the Seiko museum in Tokyo, as well as rarely seen pieces such as the Kodo, and watches from the ultra-rare Credor collection. For now it seems that Bond Street is the perfect home for the Seiko/Grand Seiko family.
“For an international watch brand Knightsbridge is a prime location within central London and it’s been an incredibly successful store,” says Mr Edwards. “However, we needed more flexibility and the ability to tell both stories properly. But also, and let’s be honest, if you are a watch or jewellery brand Bond Street, whether it’s New or Old, is where it’s at!”
Grand Seiko’s Bond Street Limited Edition
To celebrate the opening of the 68 New Bond Street store, a 50-piece, limited-edition timepiece has been created. The watch will be exclusive to the London boutique.
A 38.5mm steel case houses a textured dial that mimics the gravel sections of a Karesansui Zen garden, themselves designed to evoke impressions of rippling water. Depending on the time of day, the effects of light and shade on the face give the effect of gentle movement.
The watch is powered by the manual-winding Spring Drive Calibre 9R31 which, thanks to its double mainspring arrangement, has a power reserve of 72 hours. The trademark gliding seconds hand remains the secret signature marking the watch as a Spring Drive creation. On sale now, the Bond Street Limited Edition costs £7,750.
