WATCHPRO: I always like to start with a quick potted history. Tell me about Orr’s and how it fits into the watch and jewelry landscape in and around Pittsburgh.
LESLIE GORDON: Orr’s was founded in 1952 by my grandfather, so my sister and I are the third generation in the business. My grandfather opened when he returned from World War II in a small town around an hour outside Pittsburgh on the Ohio-Pennsylvanian border.
My parents went to work in the business and took it over in the early eighties. They moved the store to a slightly larger town nearer to the city and have been expanding ever since.
They moved once when they bought the business and then to Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh — home to the campuses of Carnegie Mellon University and Chatham University — which has since quadrupled in size since it opened.
We then bought Hardy & Hayes [which had represented Rolex, Patek Philippe and Cartier] in downtown Pittsburgh.
When we opened our current store in Sewickley, a small town 12 miles west northwest of Pittsburgh, we closed the old Hardy & Hayes location.
WATCHPRO: So, you are currently operating out of two showrooms in Squirrel Hill and Sewickley, and no longer have the downtown store. Tell me about your plans to open closer to the center of Pittsburgh again later this year.
LESLIE GORDON: The new store will be opening in the Fall of this year in a very vibrant and up-coming part of the city known as the Strip.
It is closer to downtown than Squirrel Hill and is a great area for young professionals. There is a thriving tech scene because of Carnegie Melon in Pittsburgh, and a lot of the businesses have their offices in Strip.
There is cool stuff going on like self-driving cars so it is a great demographic for us. It is also the neighborhood where my sister and I both live, which is convenient!
WATCHPRO: Do you get tired of having to sell Pittsburgh to people who still think of it as a rust belt city?
LESLIE GORDON: We definitely have that conversation frequently and there are still some people that are hard to convince. But Pittsburgh really is an awesome place, it has a lot of history and people who live are obsessed with the city. There is a good amount of culture here, but we are also close to New York and Chicago.
I lived in Washington DC for a while, I lived in London working for De Beers for a year, which I loved. But I always said, if I could not live in London, I would want to move back to Pittsburgh.
WATCHPRO: Over three-quarters of a century, Orr’s will certainly have seen the city change beyond recognition.
LESLIE GORDON: For sure we saw the collapse of the steel industry in the eighties and the financial crisis in 2008 but, I think because we are quite a small city, the highs are not so high, and the lows are not so low.
WATCHPRO: Anybody visiting today is going to be seeing flying taxis, robots and self-driving cars.
LESLIE GORDON: Exactly!
WATCHPRO: Before we get into the details of the new store, could you just complete the picture of where Orr’s is today.
LESLIE GORDON: We have two stores: one in Squirrel Hill to the East of Pittsburgh, the other in Sewickley to the Northwest, which is where I work. It is like a small European town with a lot of lovely boutiques. A lot of CEOs and athletes from Pittsburgh live around here because it beautiful, quiet and has many large historic houses.
We have around thirty employees across the two stores. We have a slightly different brand mix. Here in Sewickley we have Rolex and Tudor. In Squirrel Hill we have Cartier, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Panerai, IWC, Oris, Bell & Ross. Both stores have Breitling. We have a different mix of jewelry as well in both stores because their clientele are quite different.
WATCHPRO: How does business break down between jewelry and watches?
LESLIE GORDON:It depends on the year. We have a very strong watch business, for sure, but we take price in offering some big and very cool jewelry brands. We spend a lot of time at the jewelry shows making sure we know what is trending.
WATCHPRO: What led to your decision to open in the Strip?
LESLIE GORDON: We had noticed the neighborhood in Squirrel Hill, where we have been for 20 years, was seeing a little less foot traffic. We are a destination store that people travel to, but moving to an area where there is a lot more activity will get us in front of a different clientele who are already there walking around.
We want to be where a lot of the growth is in Pittsburgh and we want to be part of such a vibrant community.
Where we are opening is a very iconic area where all of the wholesale distribution used to happen for the city. There is a grain terminal across the street that has been turned into a cool shopping place.
There are old warehouses all around, and our store will be in one of them. There are specialty markets, great restaurants and cafes. Whereas downtown Pittsburgh is really all commercial, Strip is a really desirable place for professionals to live and work at places like Google, Amazon, Facebook or Uber. It is more vibrant and exciting.
WATCHPRO: You have been kind enough to share some architectural renderings of how the new store will look. I can see the huge warehouse structure you are using, which gives it epic scale. Was that part of the attraction of the new location?
LESLIE GORDON: We were looking at two choices. We could either completely renovate our existing store in Squirrel Hill, or it was time to create something completely new. We looked at the Strip and realized it would give us the opportunity to create something truly special, and also to give more space to some of our biggest brands.
We get inspired when we travel around the country and to other parts of the world. We always go shopping and visit high end stores in New York, Chicago or Europe and see what the new trends in luxury retail are. We want to bring some of that back to Pittsburgh.
WATCHPRO: Where are you pitching the new store? What do you expect your clientele to look like?
LESLIE GORDON: I would say we will have everything from the mid-market all the way up. As far as high end jewelry goes, we are the exclusive partner for Rahaminov Diamonds in Pittsburgh and carry Pomellato, which is beautiful. We have always had a very strong diamond business, including loose diamonds.
In terms of watches, we are not going to be carrying million dollar tourbillons, but we do have high end complication pieces from all of the maisons we work with. Many of our clients are serious watch collectors.
WATCHPRO: How close are you to finalizing the line-up of watch brands in the new showroom? I know these things can change right up until the last minute!
LESLIE GORDON: It is certainly subject to change, but hopefully not too much. We will have a huge presence for Cartier, which is super-hot right now. We have worked with Cartier for a long time and have a great relationship with them. They are really excited about this project and how we are presenting the brand in the store.
We have shop-in-shops for Jaeger-Le Coultre, Panerai, IWC and Breitling. We are still finalizing things with Omega, which would be fantastic for us because we have never carried it before. We will carry Oris and Bell & Ross in a multibrand area.
WATCHPRO: Can you describe the experience clients will see and feel as they come into the new store?
LESLIE GORDON: We have always gone out of our way to be welcoming, but in a relaxed way. None of my family are stuffy, so it is in our nature to make the experience comfortable, luxurious and friendly.
We know it can seem overwhelming to come in when we have so many brands, but we want people to have choice, and our team is incredibly well trained and knowledgeable so they can help people find what they want on their first visit, and to remember the experience and want to come back.
WATCHPRO: Will you have watchmakers on site?
LESLIE GORDON: Our watchmakers will remain here at our Sewickley store, where we have a Rolex-accredited watchmaker and service center and an independent watchmaker.
WATCHPRO: You have Rolex in Sewickley but not in the Strip. Could that change in the future?
LESLIE GORDON: There is a certain amount of space and positioning Rolex requires, which we have given them here in Sewickley. At the Strip, we have been able to give our other brands much better treatment.
They all feel they have the attention they would like across the two locations. The two stores will work together to help clients in any way they can. If that means showing them to our other store, which has the brand they want, that is what we will do.
WATCHPRO: We are speaking soon after Watches and Wonders, and I’d love to get your thoughts on the watches and brands you saw, but you were also there when President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs bombshell dropped. What was your experience before and after that news?
LESLIE GORDON: It was weird. Wednesday was a lot of anticipation of what might be said and Thursday was a day when nobody knew how to react. It was impossible to get clear answers but in general people looked to be patient and hoped that [as turned out to be the case, for now] the tariffs would not go through. None of us know how this will play out.
WATCHPRO: Current turbulence notwithstanding, how has the market been in general for you?
LESLIE GORDON: Watch people still want new watches. There is a lot of buzz around what is new. There is less speculative money chasing watches as an investment that can be flipped for a profit. This is much better for us because now we are having conversations with people who really want to learn about watches.
WATCHPRO: There has been a concentration of demand for the very biggest brands, and mid-market brands that did well during the boom years are losing market share. Is that something you are seeing?
LESLIE GORDON: Maybe there is a little bit of that, but we want to carry a range that includes mid-market brands that are great for special occasions like wedding, birthday or graduation gifts. That $5-7,000 price range is important for us and brands like Breitling and Oris are great for that.
WATCHPRO: Aside from the tariff issue, the price of gold has been at record highs and the Swiss franc is incredibly strong against the dollar, which is inevitably putting upward pressure on prices. They say luxury customers are less price-sensitive, but that must be getting put to the test right now.
LESLIE GORDON: Not just with watches but the price of gold has obviously been affecting jewelry as well over the past year. That came as a shock to us and our clients, but in time it just becomes normal again. If anything, demand for gold jewelry has been increasing. It is certainly on trend right now.
WATCHPRO: I wish you luck with the fit-out of the new store. These things are never straightforward, particularly in a historic building, and that’s before you get to the politics of placing all the brands!
LESLIE GORDON: It is not simple, and there are a lot of moving parts with the shop-in-shops, but it seems like things are on schedule.
WATCHPRO: That’s great, but might one change, like bringing in Omega, require an entire re-think?
LESLIE GORDON: We have their space ready for them. If that works, we’ll be delighted. If not, we will have some extra showroom for something else.