Peers Hardy prepares for domestic dominance with Rotary

Rotary is a brand that used to dominate the sub-£500 price segment in the UK watch market, but it’s no secret that it has fallen on hard times in recent years.

With sales down over 75% since 2013, Rotary has been in desperate need of a kiss of life for a while, which duly arrived in the form of Midlands-based Peers Hardy, which is now a 50% owner of the brand.

Speaking to Watch Insider as part of a forthcoming wide-ranging interview, Peers Hardy managing director, Nick Baker, and sales and marketing director, Paul Harry, said that they have every confidence in restoring Rotary to its former glory, and that they will concentrate on the UK market before expanding too quickly globally.

“There’s nothing to stop us from doing anything — marketing initiatives, new product development,” Harry told Watch Insider. “We are focused on making this brand the number one sub-£500 brand, as it always was.”.

Baker added: “We have said we don’t want to attack the rest of the world yet, because the number one job is to sort out the domestic market. We are going to have some things that work and some things that don’t work, and if you then put that on a global scale, you’re asking for trouble. So, let’s get our market right first.

“Since throwing some ideas together for Christmas last year and seeing some of it work and some of it not, it’s given me and the design team a lot more time to understand the brand. As a result, the watches we are introducing are much more considered, and we’re having some really nice successes with new products,” Baker continued. “This is phase two, and phase three is our collaborations. I think it’ll still be a tough job for Paul, but it will make the job a little easier to go into the world because we’ll have a blueprint of what we’ve done in the UK.

Harry explained where he has been focusing his attention up to this point. “My focus has been on getting our sales force up and running, re-establishing Rotary with the key accounts that had delisted the brand, such as Beaverbrooks, Goldsmiths, Ernest Jones, and Fraser Hart, while also securing John Lewis, who were understandably getting nervous. All these top customers were not only aware of how big the brand had been but could also see the vision that we outlined for the future. We made the promise that we’re going to make Rotary great again and, so far, so good!.

“Once the domestic train is firmly back on the tracks and we are back into full store distribution across our target customers, then we can start thinking about expanding internationally.”

The full in-depth interview will be published in the August 2026 edition of Watch Insider.