Wempe is closing its doors for the final time on Bond Street tonight, having been a landmark luxury watch retailer on the famous London thoroughfare since 1997.
It has been the largest of three retailers offering Rolex on the street, with the Watches of Switzerland Group running the other two.
Wempe lost its Rolex agency soon after Watches of Switzerland announced it is opening a destination Rolex flagship on Old Bond Street in 2023, although work has not yet started on the site.
Wempe was also an authorized dealer for Patek Philippe, but faced stiff competition from the only boutique in the UK run directly by the watchmaker.
The latest accounts for Patek Philippe show that showroom notched up sales worth £69 million last year.
Patek Philippe has reduced its number of UK doors from around 40 to 25 in the UK since the end of the pandemic.
In a statement from Wempe, under embargo until today, the company says the reason for the closure of its Bond Street showroom is: “The recent disadvantageous development of the local competitive environment”.
Wempe’s owner and managing director, Kim-Eva Wempe, suggests the retailer may open at another location in the capital.
“We very much want to stay in London, but not at this location,” she says.
Branded boutiques now dominate Bond Street, and they are getting bigger.
Walk down the famous shopping road today and you will see vast scaffolding screens protecting workers building vast new flagships for Burberry and Gucci.
When Gucci moves into its new home, Watches of Switzerland will start work on the Rolex flagship, which will be have 7,200 square feet of retail space over three floors.
Watch brands run their own boutiques, regardless of whether they are profitable or not due to the sky high rents and rates of the street, because of the marketing value of being seen at one of the world’s most prestigious locations and among the planet’s premier luxury brands.
Wempe came to the conclusion that there was no future for the continued operation of its business on Bond Street, but has not given up on London.
“We are thinking very intensely about alternative concepts and locations,” says Ms Wempe, but no decision has yet been made about when and where it will open a new showroom in the capital.
In New York, Wempe is still waiting for news of what Rolex has planned for its new headquarters in Manhattan.
Rolex revealed plans to build its own 25-floor building on 5th Avenue in 2019, and demolished its existing building on the same plot last year.
That building housed a Rolex boutique at street level, run by Wempe, but the German-based luxury retailer has not yet heard whether it will secure a deal to run a new store for the watchmaker when the building opens.
“We don’t have enough information yet about the plan for that building,” Ruediger Albers, president of Wempe US, tells WatchPro in an interview to be published in the March edition of the magazine.