TALKING SHOP: CD Peacock delivers the Windy City wow factor

The journey of Steven Holtzman to being at the helm of Chicago’s oldest business is not a typical one. From distributing Roger Dubuis to liquidating his own watch brand, Watch Insider’s Daniel Malins delves deeper into a path seldom trodden in conversation with the man himself.

Watch Insider: Can you explain the roads that led to you being where you are today? What were you doing in your previous working life?

Steven Holtzman: My only official degree is a degree in bartending from Boston Bartending School. I went to school for a year. I was not a good student. I ended up thinking that I was going to go and work on an island and be at a club there. As a 21-year-old guy, I thought that would be a great way to start. After that I joined my dad who had a company that was called Gruen Watch Company, and from the early ‘80s until 1987/88, I was building up this business of selling relatively inexpensive watches, watches under $100. It was a public company, did really well and we grew the business. In 1986, we were distributing six million units, so we were the biggest quartz analogue watch company at the time, from a distributor standpoint. Swatch was just starting and was getting really hot at that time too.

In 1986 there was an article in Forbes with a picture of me and my watches, talking about my dad. The article said; “Seymour Holtzman didn’t know he was sitting on a gold mine until his son Steven quit bartending and joined the company,” and that was kind of how I got into it.

WI: Did that excitement in those early days mean you never looked back?

SH: I found out really early in my mid-20s that I loved the category. I loved timepieces and I had an opportunity at a really early age. My dad gave me a great opportunity and gave me a lot of leeway, and that allowed me to excel. So, although I didn’t do well in school, I did really well with sales and marketing, and that was how I got my start. We had literally thousands of points of sale. Just in discount stores, we had 5,000 stores and in military bases. We had drugstores, supermarkets, department stores, duty-free, college bookstores, every possible class of trade. It was a great opportunity to see that I really had something. It was a good validation for me. I started early, got into it, and loved the category and that was how I cut my teeth. 

After that I left, I wanted to be on my own. I loved my dad, but I didn’t want to be in business with him. I wanted to do my own thing. I started distributing watch brands and I was selling entry level Swiss brands. Then, over the years, I represented Swiss brands and French brands and started working up the food chain, and in ‘98 I connected with Roger Dubuis. 

WI: How did that come about? 

SH: They were at the SIHH show, and I thought it was an incredible new brand that I’d never heard of. Franck Muller at the time was really taking off, Richard Mille was just at the beginning of the start of that brand, and I thought this would be a great way for me to segment into the higher level.

So, I was distributing brands, I had a team of about 30 people in Pennsylvania, five or six watchmakers, and we were a full independent distributor. From there, we started with Roger Dubuis and it was a match made in heaven. I loved Mr. Dubuis. The owner of the company was a guy by the name of Carlos Dias. He and I got along well and I built that into a $30 million business, which was a huge business for a new company.

That was from 1997 until about 2006. I had a good run with Roger Dubuis, but after a short period of time, or after my contract went into auto renewal, and I was in my second five-year term, I had a difference of opinion with Mr. Dias and he terminated my distribution agreement and we had a battle for about two or three years. 

When I was distributing Roger Dubuis, we were 30% of the business of the company. They were doing about $100 million in sales, of which we were $30 million. After Roger Dubuis SA terminated the distribution agreement, the next year they did $70 million in sales and after that, they did $40 million in sales. The last year, their business was kind of spiraling down and Richemont came in and bought the brand. They paid me to go away, I took that money and said: “You know, I’m a smart guy, I’ve done this before, I’m going to start my own brand. That’s how I got involved with creating Maîtres du Temps. Ironically, my first watchmaker was Mr. Dubuis, as he was not with Roger Dubuis at the time, so he joined me and introduced me to Daniel Roth, Kari Voutilainen, Peter Speake-Marin, Andreas Strehler, Christophe Claret, and all of these watchmakers that I had met over that initial period. 

There were eight or nine other watchmakers and I was trying to put together a team of independent watchmakers in order to create Maîtres du Temps, my own brand. It was an incredible project, a good concept, but in life everything’s about timing. We ended up launching the brand in 2008, right during the crash. So, right when our first watch came out, the market crashed. It was a rough first year and second year, but over time we built it into a respectable independent brand. 

WI: Did you find it easier to scale, given your background in distribution?

SH: I had a global footprint spanning Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the United States, with approximately 30 points of sale worldwide. Key locations included Milan, Rome, Paris, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Kiev, Moscow, Ginza, and Kuala Lumpur. I was with Seddiqi in the Middle East, while in the US I operated across multiple locations.

Rolling the story quickly on though, I couldn’t figure out how to scale it. I loved the concept. When I started, I heard about this guy, Max Büsser, and somebody came up to me and said that he’s doing the same kind of thing you’re doing. He was coming up with MB&F, and I was Maîtres du Temps. It was the same kind of concept, but a different avenue. He had great experience coming from the watch manufacturing industry, so he had a different experience. We were both always coming out with something similar. He was a lot better at it. He knew he had a much better idea how to scale it and how to build it and how to have synergy from movement to movement. Every time I was doing a new movement, I was creating a new engine. It took me longer to get it together, and, after about 12 years, I couldn’t figure out how to scale the business. 

I had a great experience, travelled all over the world, but I didn’t really see a way forward. Finally, in 2016, I relocated to Switzerland and determined that the business was not scalable, leading me to wind it down and sell off the remaining inventory. 

WI: So how did you go from that to running CD Peacock?

SH: Shortly towards the end of that run, my dad called me and said he was retiring. There was an opportunity for me because, other than my daughter who was involved in the business, CD Peacock and our boutique in Miami was kind of a boutique without a family behind it.

One of the things I always liked as a distributor was when I was working with the better stores that I sold to, there was a family, there was a face, there was someone. When I would go do training, the owner was there. He knew when everybody’s birthday was, he knew the community. That was always an important thing and it’s something that all the brands like. They like this idea of a family business. They like it when there’s a face, not just a name, and I saw this as an opportunity to be that with our family business. 

So, I moved everything back to the US. My wife and my daughter moved back to the US with me after living abroad and after thinking I was going to stay there. Another four years and I would have been able to qualify for a passport and that was my plan, as I was just starting to make money again. I was looking forward to that but I came back and started over again. 

When I walked into CD Peacock there was a big opportunity. It was a great business with a great name. My partner brands wanted us to be in nice locations and invest in the company. In both Miami and Chicago, there was an opportunity to commit to a bigger presence, commit to a different kind of business, and with both locations that happened. I really didn’t know what I was doing because I’d never done this before. I can talk about distribution, or talk about all the things that I had experience with, that I felt confident in, but I was in an area that I really did not have any experience in. Other than from looking in the window of a store or working with a retailer, I didn’t know what was involved in doing this. 

WI: Given you had to learn on the job from day one, how did you go about developing the CD Peacock brand itself?

SH: I hired some good people. They helped me through the foundation for building the store, all the politics of dealing with the brands and who’s going to be where, what size they’re going to be, who’s going to have a brand, and who’s going to be in our own space. I navigated through that with the help of others and built this store that was a huge investment.

People were looking at it and laughing and asking how it could be done. Roll forward two or three years later and so many people are opening these big superstores. Now people are investing in what looked like a crazy thing, so it ended up looking like it was a wise decision. It wasn’t because I knew what I was doing, it was because I was lucky.

I ended up in the right place, picked good partner brands, hired a new team, and just tried to transform a great company name and a great business in Oak Brook Center into a super business. Looking back at it now, it looks like I’m a smart guy and it looks like I really knew what I was doing, and I’m starting to feel a little bit of that validation because things worked out so well, but the business is growing at a phenomenal rate. 

The experience in our store is off the charts, the community engagement, the charities we support, the way we try to work with our teams in building relationships, and these are all things that I’m learning to do. 

WI: You talk about store experience, but how difficult is it to get the balance right between having a great store from an aesthetic point of view, while also ensuring time and effort goes into the staff working within it?

SH: We now have, I would say unequivocally, the most beautiful store that exists in the country, and maybe even in the world. I’ve sold to most good stores, but there was nothing like this that existed anywhere. We have hosted a wide range of notable events, including appearances by astronauts, professional sports teams, celebrities, and charitable organizations. This month, we are hosting two major events: one will host 200 guests, while the other will host 450. I mean, just the scale that this is happening on here is incredible. We have a team of around 70 plus people in the store, so even just the amount of lockers that you see, it’s massive. We have one refrigerator that just holds fruit. We’ve created this community and when I come in on a weekend, I look at the bar and see 30 people sitting around at 3pm. I mean, some I recognize, some I don’t recognize, but we have so many new clients and we have such a space to entertain that. I don’t see any limits as to what this can be. 

We have a full workshop of 12 benches here, right next to our corporate office. We are planning to work with our local community to offer a program to recruit high school students to become technicians. I need to get people in there. 

With service, with experience, with community outreach, with assortment, it gets better all the time. It’s easy to talk about it because it’s really something. It’s one thing to hear about it, but to see this space and to walk through it is something else. We just set up these sound activations where you walk into the back where we have a big strap bar and there’s an iPad and you’ll see a Breguet Tourbillon and there’s laser sound that’s shot into your ears and you can hear the watch. So you’re looking at it beating and it’s like you’ve got AirPods in. It is the most interesting technology, something I saw at Watches and Wonders last year from a company in Paris and they hooked it up last week. Our store is like Disneyland, there’s things like that where, for an enthusiast, you can come in and just get lost.

WI: In terms of scale though, do you ever rein yourself to pre-empt a market downturn? How do you keep pushing the boundaries while being mindful of the risk?

SH: Well, our partner brands are very realistic. They know things go up and things go down; things are not constant. I have also not been a part of that. I started four years ago, and it’s been in a good place, so I don’t have that sense yet. I mean, we could scale, we can have less people, but last Saturday I had 735 people in the store. That is crazy. I haven’t experienced that.

What I can tell you is that in both Chicago and Miami we’re in it for the long run. If things slow down, we scale down. If things continue to go up as they’re going now, we prepare. I mean we’re right in the middle of everything that’s going on in the Middle East now, anything can happen. Now, more than ever, it’s time to realize that there could be all kinds of things that would change the world we live in. All that I can say is that this company was started in 1837. We are the first business in Chicago. I run into people all day long that tell me about their great-great-grandparents that had a wedding ring that’s engraved with CD Peacock, or their silver platter in their dining room says CD Peacock on it. 

Chicago’s the third biggest city in the country and we are the dominant store in the market. We want to build our jewelry business. Jewelry and bridal is our biggest growth area right now. We have a huge watch business, but we’re really focusing on building that jewelry and bridal business. People are always getting married and when you get engaged, or when you buy a wedding ring and you start with someone, you have them for life. That’s the beginning of the journey. Our goal is really to embrace that as a foundation to our business. I think by leaning into jewelry, it gives us stability and it gives us more of a stable client base. Our traffic is up over 30% for the year. That’s above last year and we’ve been open for two years in this new space. We’ve consolidated from three stores to one store in Oak Brook, so having everything together is nice.

Questions come about expansion but right now I want to be where my partners want to be. If there’s an opportunity in our area with our partner brands, we’re interested.

WI: Would it have to be in your area? You’re already across two states, so would it be out of your comfort zone to add a third state, or would you rather keep it on the doorstep?

SH: I’d rather keep it within the areas that we are strong. Chicago is a huge market with all kinds of opportunities. Things are always changing. In Southern Florida, same thing. I mean, everybody’s moving to Florida. The traffic is unbearable because there’s just more people there every day, but I’d say we have good, strong teams in both those places and if I were to grow, I would definitely keep it in those two areas.

WI: Just a final point on the question of you being able to scale up and down quite quickly, is that because labor laws in the US which are a bit looser than they are in Europe? 

SH: No. A good person joining our sales team is worth their weight in gold. Bringing people in, it’s not easy, but it’s nice when you have the nicest house. We provide incredible benefits, great security, profit sharing, and all kinds of things that mean it is the place you’d want to work. What we do for our medical is over the top. Our rates went up like 65% this year and we covered it. I just want people here to know that we’re doing well and that they’re covered and that they’re important. The big thing for us and for all the stores like us now is training and CRM, and those are two areas where we really have to be good, so we’re investing a lot in that. Insofar as expanding and contracting, I haven’t contracted, so I can’t really talk from experience, but we have the store — I can’t be smaller!

WI: For someone who’s quite passionate and does allow their heart to occasionally rule their head, is there a wish list of vendors or brands you’d love to work with?

SH: I can’t be everything to everyone, so when I go to some of the big chain stores that have so many choices, I get overwhelmed. I think you have to pick your lane. There are obvious brands that I would like to be aligned with in both watches and jewelry. Many of those brands are downsizing and many of those brands are doing their own retailing. There are examples where those brands do something different, and they do it differently when they find a partner that maybe could do it and can add value. If I do my job well, those brands will want to be with us. I have to attract them. In order to do that, we have to do our job, and we have to do it really good. They have to go; “Wow, that was really something.” I would like to be the exception. 

I think by leading with my heart and, going back to that point, I’m two years into this and I’m working on so many new things in the store that are going to be coming out in the next year. Not products, but experiences. If I can keep that reinvention going and not sit on my hands saying we’re doing good, if I can keep trying to figure out what we can do, how we can change and how we can transform, then they’ll see that and realize we are really good. 

Leaning into that too, most of our big brand partners know what we should be doing. They force us to improve our experience. They force us to be better trained, to have better CRM. They lead us in this direction because they know what they’re doing. These are things that we did not do until they nudged us in that direction and said: “These are the important things that we see that we want to have with the partners that carry our brand.” We’re better because of what they’re doing.

So many of these cues are not things that I invented because I don’t know this stuff. Talk about watch distribution or liquidation or things like that, I can talk all day. But this stuff about transforming a business, providing an experience, following up with the clients — these are all things that I’m getting from our partner brands and that’s because they’ve been doing this for a long time. They know exactly what we should be doing, so we’re lucky to have good brands giving us good information and us being smart enough to know to take their advice and follow their suggestions, which end up becoming our model.

WI: There are some common themes among premium watch retailers and the lessons learned from certain brands who demand certain standards. That can only lead to driving everyone forward and raising the bar.

SH: Yeah, the good brands — and I’m not talking about the ones that just make good watches, but the good brands, the good companies —  they’re just excellent. I look at them and think “wow.” They’re in it forever and they’ve learned. They say good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from poor judgment. They’ve been through this. They know what works. So, being able to listen and take advice and know what to do with it, then that’s where we’ve been lucky. We’ve had some smart people give us good advice.

WI: I don’t think many people in the States would have had the international experience that you’ve had. Some stats show that, compared to a lot of countries, a lot of people born in the States either don’t leave or they leave later in life, but if you could take the best of what you learned on your travels and the best of what you continue to learn in the States, what would it be?

SH: In Europe, things don’t change. The buildings don’t change; they make things fit in the buildings. In the Middle East, I remember meeting with retailers. It would take a year for a decision. They say inshallah — if God wills — they don’t make quick decisions, just like the Swiss.

In Asia, they make quicker decisions, they react. Maybe they are a little closer to the US. My time in every country has given me just a little bit, a little spice, a little flavor that has helped form the stuff that I’m doing now. It’s not just one thing. It’s everything. I think when you put it all together, all of those things have been rich experiences.

When I started in the Roger Dubuis days, the Americans were so far behind. Every other market, Southeast Asia, everywhere in the world, they were so sophisticated in their taste for watches with the collectors and their knowledge. In Thailand it was amazing the level of collectors that existed.

The Americans, we didn’t have that. This was 10 or 15 years ago, and we were so far behind. In the US now, at least from a watch perspective, they’ve come on so quickly. Over the last 15 years, there are now so many great collectors and in so many places.

One of the challenges in the US was that the Americans weren’t investing in their stores. Watches of Switzerland and Bucherer, they saw an opportunity. There were these companies that weren’t transforming and that didn’t see the light. It meant there was a big void for two big European companies to come in and take over businesses and invest in it and build it and have a direction. They kind of took that international experience and they successfully used that in the US. 

I’m not a Watches of Switzerland and I’m not a Bucherer, but I saw a lot of those things and maybe more because I had 30 countries that I was visiting and working in, and I tried to take a little bit of all of those things and now try to use those experiences.

I think that’s what makes this unique because it’s not just coming from Switzerland, it’s not just coming from Europe, it’s coming from the best in Singapore and the best in Malaysia and the best in Jakarta. All of those things were phenomenal and if you could take one thing from each of them and put it into the pot, you would have a really good soup. And that’s what I’m trying to do.

WI: I know it’s changed hands a bit over the years but now you are a family business, what would you like the legacy to be? Do you think about succession or do you just live in the moment?

SH: No, I think about succession. Right now, I’m working on succession plans. I would like to have more of my children work in the business. It’s good to begin to think about those things now while I’m sharp and snappy, and while I can transform or pass that stuff on. The goal is for this to continue. This year we are about to have our 190th anniversary, so the thought of having this thing continue for another 100 years is the goal and that’s the direction that I’m going for.

WI: That’s amazing. I think that the watch industry is all too rare with this kind of thing. Certainly in the UK, so many family businesses have become obsolete, but it feels like jewelers are the ones where so many more have survived than in other industries.

SH: I’m fortunate. I think the one thing I bring to the party that these other people don’t is that I’ve created brands and I’ve been the distributor. I have enough of a different approach to give me a good perspective.

A lot of the people in these family businesses, the kids, they went off on their own, they worked somewhere for a year or two, and they joined the family business. These are people that have always been on one side. I’ve never been that person. I think that 360 view is what gives me a keen, bright perspective. 

Hopefully that is what continues to happen and evolve as I’m starting to feel a little more like I know what I’m doing, and I didn’t feel that way for the first two or three years. As I say, it is now nice to get the validation when people see these two these two locations and go; “Wow, they’re really special.” I realize how lucky I am to be where I am.

This article first appeared in the April 2026 edition of Watch Insider magazine.