BRAND IDENTITY: Simon Wolf on 191 special years

WOLF’s is a success story like very few others. Founded in 1834, it spent last year celebrating reaching the extraordinary 190 year milestone. The company’s CEO Simon Wolf represents the fifth generation of ownership in the family since its inception, and his energy and passion for design, creativity and business are undimmed. Speaking to Watch Insider’s Daniel Malins, he sets out his road map to the 200th birthday celebrations and what still motivates him today, while paying homage to the drive and talent of the generations that went before him and made all of this possible.

Watch Insider: How do you feel the pop-up store in London’s Covent Garden went? And how do you measure its success?

Simon Wolf: By the time we finished it had been four months, and it was terribly successful from the point of view of a great platform to show WOLF off to the world. It was the only place where you could see the entire collection other than at a trade show and the shop-in-shop in Harrods in the Arcade section, which had just about every single item in it from WOLF. 

So, from that perspective, it was really lovely because we could see what customers were doing in the shop and what they liked or gravitated towards. But I don’t want to be in retail brick and mortar. I can tell you that because it didn’t pay for itself with retail sales. Where it did pay was in marketing value. We did our ‘Leaders in Conversation’ events, and it was just a great venue to have a bunch of people and champagne and hors d’oeuvres and questions after.

But retail is tough. My heart goes out to everybody in retail who’s stuck in one place and can’t move. I’ve always been a mover. So, if I can’t do business here, I take my two sample bags and I go somewhere else. You can’t do that with a store. We were in Covent Garden, but we were on the fringes, so not quite the right location. But would I do it again? Yeah, absolutely. If the right location and opportunity was there.

WI: I guess you’ve hit upon the fact that it depends upon how open your eyes are when you go into these things and by what criteria you’re judging them. Did you learn that there’s a reason why some of these big retailers are so good at what they do? 

SW: Yeah, as I said earlier, ultimate respect to retailers. They have a very tough task. It’s interesting to think whether we would entertain opening a retail store if it had to make a clear profit to make it worthwhile. You’ve known me now for well over a decade, and although I’m a careful person, I also sometimes think, “Let’s just go and try, see what happens, and not worry too much about the outcome.”

I don’t know what people have as an impression of me or the business today. We lead in the categories that we’re in; we have great retail partners; we’re highly respected. But you rewind 20 years and I was scrabbling around trying to pay for groceries. But, even when I was doing that, I’d risk everything.

You know, those CRMs that retailers who are successful really make work, they’ve told me how granular they are. And that’s something that is worth an absolute blinking fortune. They are in touch with that group that are regular shoppers and have relationships with them that take years to build.

You know, WOLF putting up a pop-up store for four months, that’s not going to build that relationship with somebody so that they keep coming back so you can build a business there. And that was never our intent, but if it had been vastly successful, I might have thought about it. But the model works in a retailer that has great customer footfall, is moving forward,  and who has the ideas. We prove it every single day across nearly 2,000 retailers globally. So retail works, but where we were on the fringes of Covent Garden, it wasn’t terribly successful from a retail perspective.

WI: You mention being a risk taker, but it’s a lot easier to take risks in good times, You’ve had to jump over many hurdles, like the financial crash, Brexit, Covid, US tariffs, etc. How much more difficult is it in the hard economic times to keep that mantra of risk taking? There must be a temptation to just consolidate, cut costs, hunker down, and ride out the storm.

SW: Paranoia and insecurity stop me from being safe. I worry every day that I’m not good enough, the product could be better, our branding could be stronger, our retail partners could be expanded upon. So my focus every single day is to find a way to just do it better. I felt like that even in the absolute abject, terrible times when I was carrying bags around in America, trying to build a business and getting the door slammed in my face. 

I don’t know, it must be the DNA in the family. My great, great grandmother took over the business and made it a success and knew nothing about how a business and a small little workshop in Malmo, Sweden worked. So I think it is this constant drive to have the best relationship with a retailer, give them the best opportunity to sell and make money developing product. I’m a complete and utter nutcase when it comes to detail, so whenever release anything unless it’s as perfect as a product could possibly be. Then, as soon as we release it, we’re looking to improve it.

We’re re-releasing the Rocket with a lock-in cuff and a docking station that it goes into. It’s this constant innovation, because however bad today is, it will get better. You can’t hunker down because others may be working harder to make a better product.

I remember when I went to America in 1988, I was 22 years old. I went to Chicago first, then to LA in 1992 and I loved working weekends at trade shows. I liked the fact that my competitors weren’t there and I was working while they were sitting at home with their feet up watching football or whatever. I was seeing customers and I just felt like, surely that day gets me something! It’s a little exhausting at times, but that’s the way I’m built, and I keep going even in the bad times. In fact, I spend even more money. I mean, last year we spent £450,000 on one evening. Who else does that? What nutcase would say yes to doing that? I mean, our income statement didn’t look so good, but I knew what I was doing. We had 350 people in the room and they all had a good time and many of them can’t remember getting home. 

WI: The sign of a good night! I always think when you’re a hands-on business owner, you’re on a hamster wheel and it’s difficult to take a bird’s eye view on things. In hard times, do you ever step back and think about market share and broader positioning, rather than just focus on weekly revenue and profit? Because you’re in a position to maybe ride out the storm better than your competitors.

SW: We are global: we have three offices, Hong Kong for all the Asia Pacific region; the UK for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; and then the LA Office for North and South America, Canada, the Caribbean, and Central America. A truly global network, which isn’t just office workspaces, it’s a warehouse with people that pick and pack, so it’s been hugely expensive to get that off the ground over the years. It means we can shift and pivot. 

60% of our total revenue comes out of America, but we can pivot away and focus elsewhere a little bit, which we have done in the last nine months because of tariffs. You juggle the balls or spin the plates that are the most important, and I’ve got this one over here which is Asia Pacific. I suppose I could say I’m fortunate because we’re very far reaching but we had to build it to get to that point. So we’re not immune but we can ride a storm easier than some.

WI: Regardless of the recent good news about tariffs on Swiss imports into the States being reduced, what has been the impact of US tariffs more generally on your business and how have you chosen to cope with them, both externally through price adjustments, and internally through cutting costs?

SW: We don’t have the margins to be able to soak up the kind of tariffs that we’ve seen. Where our advantage came is that I like inventory and I like to have a lot of it, because we’re not seasonal. We do seasonal things now and again, but really we stay away from them because it takes a year to two years to get any kind of traction going with any new item or collection. Everything we design is for the long haul, so I have a lot of inventory and I store it in all sorts of places. I’m like a squirrel.

I’ve got a warehouse in Hong Kong. I’ve got a warehouse in China and I had huge stockpiles of inventory. So what I did when Trump was threatening the increase in tariff, I loaded up about eight 40 foot containers and shipped them to America. It wasn’t great because it meant I was paying a lot of duty, but I wasn’t paying the big tariff, and that inventory has now almost been depleted. 

And did we lay off staff? Yes, we did. I didn’t do that in Covid, but this was different. With Covid, we all thought that by June [2020] it’ll be over with. There were all those government schemes that we took advantage of that helped us pay wages without anybody actually working, although we just kept going. But the difference is that the tariff was and is just a hard cost that absolutely plays havoc on everybody’s cash flow. 

To give you an example, a 40 foot container used to cost me freight duty, which was about 10 grand, and a container of that size would have about $100,000 worth in it, at my cost. So it was about 10%. Now it’s 70%. How can any business absorb that? It’s not possible. 

WI: How do you reflect on last year, and the 190th anniversary celebrations? To what extent did it make you think about your heritage and about who came before you and how much you would like to learn from them?

SW: I’m 61 this year in December and as you get older you get more melancholy, that’s for sure. I’ve watched my father become much more emotional over the years and it certainly affects me in the same way. When I wrote the book [‘WOLF: A family history of boxmaking’], I travelled and did interviews with family members. It uncovered all sorts of things that I actually had maybe forgotten or didn’t even know, and it was a very humbling experience.

Most of those that came before me are actually in so many ways better than me. They had a much harder time. To build businesses back in 1890 or 1920, it was very difficult. I suppose that’s why the wallet opened, because I wanted to celebrate these four generations and I wanted to do it right. And could I have done it even better? Yes, I could have focused on things more succinctly, but I think the four products that we developed were really representative of what each generation had brought to the table. So, it really felt like I was telling the story in the right way with complete respect to that DNA that’s filtered down to me. That makes me the person that I am.

And yeah, really emotional. I’m very, very close to my father. We travelled together all over the world trying to get the business going. He’s an incredible human being. We had huge financial problems in the UK years ago, to the point where we closed the factory. You know what my father did? He threw a party!

I didn’t want to wait for the 200 year anniversary, because I might drop down dead next week or something. So I wanted to get it done properly. Professionally, it’s a milestone that we made it to 190 and that we’re a successful business. In the last three years, it’s really moved on. I’ll go somewhere, talk to people I’ve never met, and they’ll know the brand; they’ve got one of our winders. I was always hoping for this because now we’re in the mind of consumers and the consumers are the ones that drive the business. Ultimately everybody else is in between you and the consumer. So yeah, it was very overwhelming. 

WI: If you had all four generations in the room today, and they could see the scale, the geography, the brand equity etc., what do you think they’d say? I mean, it’s come an awfully long way from where it started.

SW: Well, I think all of them would be like my father. He would say I’m doing a great job, he would say those things that would spur me on, but he would also say, “But what about that? What about this?” I think that that’s in the DNA. I know my grandfather was a terribly difficult man. He was brilliant, he was an environmentalist before the phrase ‘environmentally aware’ was even coined, and lots of other great things. But he was also a bit of a tough guy and you should never cross him. That energy I think would probably be here in the room.

That’s why I think I’m like that. I don’t rest, I just love it so much. The more pressure, the better I work. The more challenges, the better I work, and I’ve got a team that is just like me. They’re just brilliant people.

WI: Motivation affects people differently depending on their circumstances. You say your team are shaped like you, but they’re picking up a salary. They don’t want to lose their job and they want to prove themselves to you. As a business owner, how do you prevent your own motivation from slowing down and making sure the fire in the belly doesn’t die out?

SW: I feel as energetic as ever. I was in the gym this morning, I go swimming, I do a lot of things at home. I own some land and I’m planting trees. I built a pond. I’m cultivating. I mean, all that stuff I really love. In the next five years, would I like to focus more on that? Yeah, I would. Do I have a team in place that could look after things if I’m not here? Yeah, absolutely. I could choose to take a much smaller role and I think things would be pretty much okay without me. 

But I’m brilliant at a lot of things and I say that with no humbleness at all. I can really do things so well, so I don’t want to stop doing that as long as I have the energy for it. It’s sort of self perpetuating like an automatic watch. You just need to give it a bit of movement and the damn thing just keeps going. I can’t think of anybody at the company right now who isn’t really into what we’re doing.

And no one’s done it before. If you’re selling a keyboard or socks, they’ve been around so long, so you really have to fight your way into the market. We came into the watch winder market 25 years ago. Others were already in it, but we’ve made it a real business, where before it was a bit of a cottage industry. 

So that market has grown and we’re nowhere near the end of the size of the market. You look at these huge businesses, and they don’t get much bigger. That’s not happening with us. 

WI: You mentioned planting trees and building ponds outside of work. Do you ever give any thought to succession planning, or is it one of those things that you only really need to think about just before it needs to happen?

SW: Well, I am a planner and I do think that the team around me is so strong that I could pull back and plant trees all day long if that’s what I wanted to do. And the business would be just fine. But it’s not on the cards. I work out, I eat right, I want to be an old person that’s active. I just don’t want to be an old person. You’ve only got a certain amount of runway and I’d like to get to my 90s, which gives me another 30 years. All right, that’s enough time, but not if I’m sitting staring out in a bleeding window for 15 of them. That’s not living.

WI: I just wanted to ask about a subject that I know is very close to your heart, which is the environment and sustainability. You have a passion for it more generally, but how does it affect the decisions you make for the business? In more prosperous times it felt very en vogue as an issue, but some people have argued that in tougher times the noise becomes less prominent. How do you resist the temptation to cut corners when you’re getting financially punished by things like tariffs?

SW: At the end of last year, we were certified with the Positive Luxury Butterfly Mark, which is a hugely complex accreditation process of environmental, social and governance. It was much harder than I thought it was going to be. I thought we were doing all the right things already, so it was gratifying to get the certification. And every two years you’re re-certified, it never ends.

I’ve always said that one person can make a difference and I think a lot of people don’t think that. I’ve driven the business towards a far more sustainable position and I think, no matter how tough it is for you as a business, you should make conscious efforts to try to make a difference. And if you can only do a little bit, then do something else you can do. There are so many things you can do. Some of them are quite expensive. We put solar panels on our office building in the UK. We put panels on the roof, and on a sunny day I can charge two cars and run the whole office. I’m completely zero. In fact, I send energy back to the grid and the last cheque I got from them was £700. You can always do something.

Don’t use the excuse that business is tough. You can do stuff in the office, whether it’s recycling or water usage or energy usage or telling people to turn the tap off. We do lots of composting here because there’s so much food waste that normally goes in the bin that just goes in landfill and it lasts forever in a plastic bag. So you can do things.

What are your kids, your grandkids, and your great grandkids going to do? We’re all very much aware that we’ve made a difference, so your conscience should dictate you make a difference. This year, we’ve completely phased out any purchasing of animal based products for use on the exterior of our boxes. We’ve moved into sustainable materials, from bamboo to coffee grinds to apple leather.

I can’t deny that it is a business decision. Sometimes it’s commercially not possible to have everybody drive Teslas or electric cars, like all my sales people are. But one person can make a difference. If you own a company, you can influence those handful of people around you. I try and influence everybody here every day, and it’s not a bad thing. 

WI: It’s not just about the processes and the rules, but also the culture at the company. It’s easy to do that when you’re a one man band, but presumably much harder as you scale up.

SW: Every two weeks I put two little crib sheets on the tables downstairs in the office. I don’t shove it down anybody’s throat, I just put it there. So when they’re eating their lunch, they’ll read it. I’ve got everything from fishing, farming, eating vegetables, how you can save water. I just drop those on the table and rotate them.

WI: How do you see the next five years looking, not just for WOLF but for the  watch industry more generally? Do you believe better times are around the corner? You’re a glass half full kind of guy, but even you must have wobbles.

SW: I’m an optimist and I don’t have a crystal ball. You make your own success to a large extent. I think the influence of politics, particularly in America over business, is crippling, but I gave up worrying about that. I didn’t have enough wine in the cellar to numb my brain after the first month of worrying about it.

Looking ahead five years, I believe we’ll be just a much, much stronger brand. I mean, it’s been incredible the last three years where we’ve become stronger and more well known.

I’ve carried bags my whole life and I’ve always carried the most samples because I always felt like I had a better chance of selling something. I’d have two huge bags, my luggage, my briefcase, and I dragged that stuff all over New York, or wherever I was. I don’t do that anymore. I have a meeting on Monday to see a customer and somebody else will be carrying the samples. I mean, I get a kick out of that! That’s fantastic, you know? 

So, is that Simon Wolf ‘making it’? Perhaps. But when I’m in the meeting, I’m all about product and all about how we can market it. I’m all about the detail and I think I’m quite good at seeing what they could be doing for us and what we could do for them. So I’m trying to get that message across and it’s just frustrating when the retailer is either too busy or we’re too small. We’re not going to add enough to their bottom line, so they don’t pay us enough attention.

But in the next five years we just get stronger and stronger. We have a lot of fun doing it. We’ll be sneaking up on 200 years, so we’ll be preparing for that. I can only be optimistic, I cannot be pessimistic. It’s just not in my DNA.

This article first appeared in the December 2025 edition of Watch Insider.