After selling all of its 38 Pandora franchise stores earlier this year, Seattle-headquartered Ben Bridge is a leaner group of 36 stores, many of which are being restyled and shifting upmarket with their selection of watch and jewelry brands. The group is now firmly in growth and investment mode, according to CEO Lisa Bridge, as she explained during a recent conversation with Rob Corder in Las Vegas.
WATCHPRO: We are meeting during the Las Vegas for the JCK and Couture shows in June. The events seem busy and confidence is high on the back of an incredible 2021 for the watch business in the United States and a strong start to 2022. How have the past 18 months been for Ben Bridge and how do you feel about the economic headwinds that now seem to be gathering?
Lisa Bridge: 2021 was an unbelievable year across the board. It was exciting to be part of and to see people come into the watch world, get excited about it and want to start collecting. We have seen that continue so far in 2022. There are certainly economic indicators out there that give us a little pause for thought, but so far business has continued to be really strong.
The most important part is that we have captured the attention of a growing customer base and got people thinking about buying watches and starting a collection. We need to continue to inspire these people and keep them coming back. This can’t just be a moment in time, and it is our responsibility to maintain conversations with these new customers and continue to inspire them.
WP: As a CEO, do you simply ride this incredible wave of demand for as long as it goes, or do you look a quarter or two ahead and plan for different eventualities? I was speaking to another retailer this morning who said that the strength of the market is at 15 right now on a scale of one to 10. He warned that businesses might get so used to today’s situation that they could run into difficulties if we drop to what should be an exceptional 10 out of 10.
LB: You have to plan but, as a retailer, you have to be an optimist and I am certainly that. We certainly know how to run the business successfully if demand drops to a more normal level. The market cannot go straight up forever, but we will take a plateau.
WP: A plateau would certainly be acceptable, given the weakening economic outlook, particularly if you have a new cohort of watch customers you hope to turn into regular buyers.
LB: Absolutely right. There are celebrations ahead for everybody, and people want to mark those occasions in a meaningful way. We have to show them that we have what they need in our stores.
WP: Ben Bridge has been through a significant repositioning as a business, particularly with the sale of 37 franchise stores back to Pandora earlier this year, which contributed to your network of stores dropping from around 80 to 30. Is the direction of travel to shift upmarket so that you can do more business in high value goods from fewer stores?
LB: That is true. We have wonderful stores and great people. We have really focused on the Ben Bridge brand. We want to be in locations that reflect who and what we are now. That means we need the right brands to be partners with.
We are really investing in key locations and growing the importance of Ben Bridge in each of those places. If you look, for example, at what we are doing with our home city flagship store in Seattle. We are moving that store from where it has stood for 94 years to a big beautiful prime location on the best corner in the city where we have a big, tall open space.
That raises the status of the store and makes it more important to our customers and to the brands we work with.
It is all about focus, and it has required us to think differently about growth. Rather than measure our growth according to the number of new doors we are opening, we are looking at how healthy each store is; are we increasingly important in that particular market; are we growing organically and in what other ways can we grow?
WP: In a nutshell, has the recent journey been about shifting from a volume player to a luxury retailer?
LB: I think that is true.
WP: What does that shift upmarket mean to Ben Bridge in terms of the brands you work with on the watch side of the business?
LB: We have wonderful partner brands and we are growing with them. We have brought all our watchmakers here to Las Vegas this week from our corporate office and a number of our stores. We have been talking together about our heritage in watchmaking and I believe we are having a renaissance thanks to our focus on watches and the work we do with our partners. That is exciting to see.
WP: How has the mix changed for Ben Bridge between jewelry and watches as you have made this transition?
LB: Our aim is to carry jewelry that works alongside the watches we offer. We want to take care of our customers at the special times of their lives, and we want to be accessible at various price points. The key is that we match the quality and level of jewelry and watches.
WP: I often write about how the Swiss watch industry is making fewer watches year after year, but making each watch more valuable and more expensive than before in order to keep the industry growing overall. Is it the same for retailers like Ben Bridge?
LB: That is part of the story, but it is important that we watch the unit sales as well. Our goal is to have customers for life. We want them to come to us early in life and we then have to give them reasons to keep coming back.
We have taken lessons from the early 2000s to 2008 when we were growing revenue but not unit sales. That made things difficult when the market changed because we had not been bringing new customers in over that time. We are conscious that, while we are very happy with the elevation of our average price point, we want to have products to offer new customers who might be looking to buy their first Swiss timepiece. We want that experience to be perfect so we can encourage them to get into collecting.
WP: Piecing this story together: you have fewer stores, an elevated roster of jewelry and watch brands selling at higher price points. If you manage to maintain the same customer base that you had with 80 stores, and you are now selling them more expensive goods through 30 stores, that sounds like a recipe for tremendous success.
LB: That’s the hope.
WP: How does ecommerce fit into that plan?
LB: Online is really important to us. We look at it both as a store and also as a welcome mat where people discover us when they are dreaming about their next watch or special purchase. There is a huge opportunity there to translate our expertise in stores to the digital world.
We have major projects going on at the moment, both re-platforming and redesigning our ecommerce store. That will go live in a few months. We want it to represent our brand better and have a distinct Ben Bridge look and feel. We want it to be engaging and interesting so that it can recommend products in the way we are able to do in our stores.
WP: How much more helpful are watch brands these days when it comes to supporting your digital marketing and ecommerce strategy? Five years’ ago, they barely wanted to talk about ecommerce, let alone help retail partners make the transition to online.
LB: Things have really come a long way and it has been really exciting how watch brands have helped us develop our ecommerce. Our customers are looking online for information and inspiration, so we need to give them what they want. We have a growing number of brands that we are now able to offer online.
WP: Jewelers can be defined in the minds of customers by the watch brands they carry. If I look online, the Ben Bridge website has Patek Philippe and Rolex front and center while at the same time you offer high volume brands like G-Shock and Tissot. Where would you like Ben Bridge to be positioned moving forwards?
LB: Every one of our stores should be representative of the community in which it operates. That means having the right people working for us who are engaged with their community and it also means having the right brands for the customers. We do not have a cookie cutter solution for every location.
WP: Watch brands are increasingly demanding of their retail partners in one simple sense: you have to be able to sell their watches better than they can do it themselves in any town or city. If not, they will simply sell direct to consumers through their own boutiques or online. Is that something you are having to respond to all the time?
LB: I have read WATCHPRO articles where you talk about the value expert and experienced retailers bring, and that should not be discounted. I believe it strongly. You have to know the territory, and that is difficult for a brand to do. Our people are phenomenal and add value that is not easy to replicate. Having wonderful passionate people who are committed to building long term relationships with customers is not easy. We do that and so we bring great value that is different to what others can bring.
WP: What does that mean? Am I going to feel it when I walk into any one of your stores?
LB: I would think so. Our people are different. The care, the community, the sense of family we have within the organization is unique to Ben Bridge.
WP: Do you think there is anything different that you bring as a female CEO for such a large retail group?
LB: Absolutely. We all see the world through our own lens. I one hundred percent bring something different. We have been very accepting of family and diversity in our organization for many years.
WP: How much has the contribution of watches increased for Ben Bridge in recent years?
LB: Watches as a category has certainly grown. Diamonds has grown tremendously as well, but watches has grown more. We don’t talk about the split between different product lines, but I can say that watches has grown faster than anything else.
WP: How are you dealing with demand running so strongly ahead of supply for several of the watch brands you stock, particularly the likes of Rolex, Tudor and Patek Philippe?
LB: It is a wild time, and certainly not something we have seen before in terms of not having inventory out there in our cases. In some ways it is a good problem because it is bringing energy to the category, but it is a challenge to make sure that customers have a great experience when they come into our stores and they are not able to buy watches they would like.
WP: It must be the case that first time customers coming into your stores, even with $10,000 to spend, are not going to be able to buy the watches they would like. How do you deal with that?
LB: It is really hard. I have customers who contact me personally to see if I can help them buy certain watches. Have friends who I might not have heard from in a decade getting back in touch. I feel very honored that customers come to us, but it can be uncomfortable.
We do our best to uncover with customers what it is they like about the watches they are asking about, and whether there is an alternative we can offer. We have had to develop different training for our people such as emotional intelligence courses to give them the tools to handle these difficult conversations. It is more than just product knowledge, it is a whole range of skills.
WP: I guess your teams need to be detectives as well to root out people posing as loyal and loving customers, but who just want to flip watches for instant profits.
LB: It is a challenge because we do not just want to sell to the same customers over and over again. We do want to develop new customers, otherwise nobody could break in and become that next collector and nobody would be able to buy their dream watch for a very special occasion in their lives. There is some risk that new customers might flip a watch, but it is worth the risk when you are trying to inspire a new generation of collectors.
WP: It is well known these days that to improve your chances of moving to the top of a waiting list for a hot Rolex, customers need to be shopping more regularly for other products like alternative watch brands or diamond jewelry. That sounds like a good problem to have for a multibrand business like Ben Bridge.
LB: We do not play those games. What we want is for customers to come in and built a relationship with one of our associates. Our associates can be advocates to get that watch onto their wrist. If we know what a customer loves, and what occasion they are celebrating, they will get as close as they can to fulfilling their wishes.
WP: We spoke about how average price points are increasing. How far might that go for Ben Bridge? Are you selling watches in the $100,000 and upward market?
LB: There are certain watches we sell in that price range. We have different stores within the business. Some of them are selling Rolex, some are selling Patek Philippe, so it depends. We have some very successful customers who want extraordinary things and we want to take care of them.
WP: The market has been so strong over the past 18 months in the United States that many businesses have had an extraordinary windfall of turnover and profit. In your case, does that money go into repairing the damage done during the early months of the pandemic or are you now in a position to allocate significant capital to building or refurbishing bigger and better stores?
LB: It is both of those. We were in a very strong position going into the pandemic so we were able to weather that 100 year storm. On average, we were closed for 106 days per store. That was really challenging and we have worked to put ourselves back into a strong and healthy position, but we are also investing in the future.
We have major construction projects underway including our flagship property in Seattle. We are investing heavily in digital.
WP: Do you have a cautious eye on what may happen this winter? There is likely to be a seasonal rise in covid and there is no way of knowing whether certain state governors may choose to lock down again.
LB: We are a lot more flexible and nimble than we were a few years’ ago. We could never have imagined dealing with what was thrown our way, but we adapted and made it through. Now we are better prepared for whatever might come in the future. We have become used to thinking that something unexpected will happen and our teams now have the experience of rolling with whatever comes our way.
WP: What did you learn about yourself and your closest senior management team during the toughest days of the pandemic?
LB: Our team is wonderful, and we are stronger as a result of the challenges. It really showed how important it is to have expert and experienced people that can rely on one another to do their part and find a path forward.
WP: What can you tell me about the sale of Pandora stores back to the brand?
LB: We were the largest franchisee of Pandora stores in the world. We had 38 Pandora stores when we sold them in March, which was around half our store count at the time. The total number of stores we had was already down from the end of 2019 when we had 95 stores including Pandora. Today [without Pandora] we have 36.
WP: When you sold those stores back to Pandora, was that a good deal for you?
LB: It was wonderful for everybody. It is exciting for Pandora to have greater ownership and full omni channel control of their business, and it is great for us to be in a position to invest in the growth of Ben Bridge.
WP: Do you think the network of around 36 stores is about right, or are you looking to expand from there?
LB: We are certainly in growth mode and on the lookout for the right opportunities. We have a new TimeWorks store opening this Fall in the Seattle area, in University Village. We are excited about that. We have another store planned to open next year. We are always looking.