TALKING SHOP: Schwanke-Kasten on going big in Smallwaukee

Milwaukee may not be the tourist trap of a New York or a Miami or a Los Angeles, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t high demand for a luxury jeweler that sells the finest timepieces, including Rolex and Tudor. Well over 100 years old, Schwanke-Kasten of Whitefish Bay has been serving local residents and those from further afield for decades. Despite facing the same economic turbulence that all family jewelers go through, Schwanke-Kasten has never looked healthier. Third generation owner Tom Dixon spoke to Watch Insider’s Daniel Malins about his last hurrah, and how his aunt let Patek Philippe slip through the family’s fingers back in the 70s.

Watch Insider: Tell me about how this all came to be, as well as the history of the name.

Tom Dixon: So, there was a company called Alsted-Kasten in Milwaukee in 1899, and my great-great uncle was Bill Schwanke, and he had a little watch repair jewelry store. In 1936, he merged with Alsted-Kasten and became Schwanke-Kasten. My grandmother worked there, my dad worked there, my mom worked here, I’ve worked here, my family’s worked here. We’ve pretty much been here for 100 plus years. I’m a Dixon; my aunt didn’t have any children so my dad came here and Schwanke is such a great name and we’ve had an outstanding reputation for over 100 years so we never changed it.

WI: For you, when did life begin for you in the role that you now have?

TD: I was here a little while when my dad bought the store from my aunt in 1986. I worked the summers and I sold my first Rolex for $697 — a Submariner with a date. Sadly, my father was killed in a car accident a year after he bought the store from my aunt, and so at a pretty young age I took over. I was 26, I was still in university when he died, but took a job at Marshal Fields in Chicago to gain a different perspective on retail. When I was 26, my mom wanted me to come back and run the store.

So I’ve been here a long time. It sort of segues into what’s going on now — my son is really taking over the day-to-day operations. It’s been an interesting thing because I didn’t have anyone looking over my shoulder, I didn’t have my dad here. I had brothers, but we had conflicts. Family businesses are hard to operate so now it’s me and my son, Charlie, and he has really taken over. It’s been an interesting thing for me to watch him do and learn — letting him do his thing, letting him have some wins and have some losses. I don’t want to be looking over his shoulder every minute because I didn’t have someone doing that; I just had to dive in and take over.

It was a very bad time for our family and our family business when my dad died. I mean, people were scared to come into the store, they were very sad. He was a really well-respected guy in the community, and it was tough. Happily, I get to watch my son take over and do an outstanding job. I’m still active in our Rolex Certified Pre-Owned program, which sort of re-energized me into watches because it has made it really fun to find cool, collectible pieces. You can deliver modern stuff and it’s fun, but the vintage stuff is special.

WI: When you look back on that tough period, what did you learn from it? If you’re thrown in at the deep end, I think that speeds up the learning process in a way that you probably benefited from long-term.

TD: Well, because we had this long history prior to that, we had some really great partners that were very helpful to me, as well as some snakes. So, you figure out who the good guys and the bad guys are. We had a great gemologist here, Jim Brown, who really helped me learn the jewelry business part of it. He wasn’t such a watch guy, but watches weren’t necessarily our go-to thing in 1986. We did have some significant brands, but it wasn’t the rabid collector fever of watch purchasing that you see today. 

I had to listen to our clients, I had to deliver on what they wanted, and then we just grew. We had some great partners along the way. I no longer represent them, but one of my best mentors was Marie Bodman from Breitling. She was a fabulous mentor to me and really helped me grow our luxury watch business. That helped me with my other brands and so I guess you’ve just got to be open to learning and changing and growing, which is absolutely what we’re doing now with the new generation with Charlie. I don’t know all the social media ins and outs — I don’t really want to know it — so thank God he’s here doing that! If I said: “Oh, we didn’t do it like that, this is the way we’ve always done it,” that doesn’t fly. We have to be open to change and I’ve always been good about that.

WI: It’s a fine line, isn’t it? You want to tap into that history and some of the timeless expertise and practices, but without looking like a dinosaur.

TD: That’s exactly it. We have two outstanding young watchmakers, and we just hired an apprentice and the craftsmanship aspect of that is outstanding. We also just hired another young goldsmith and I feel good about giving these young people who are now really interested in the watch and jewelry trade work — it’s really fun.

We’ve got a really cool project going on with the Milwaukee Art Museum for the 25th anniversary of their Santiago Calatrava edition. We’re making these pins for their high dollar donors, and our young apprentice goldsmith has designed them. I’ve got a young kid who just graduated from high school, 18 years old. He wants to be a Rolex certified watchmaker and wants to go to [the Rolex Watchmaking Training Center in] Dallas. He’s not ready yet to do any of that, but my two watchmakers have really taken him under their wing to learn the trade and so that’s been really rewarding. I hope I’m around long enough to see all this grow and see them become full-fledged watchmakers and goldsmiths.

WI: When it comes to Rolex, how long has that relationship been going and what have you learnt from them as a brand?

TD: Interestingly, we have sold Rolex longer than Rolex has operated in the United States. We used to import them from Canada in the 30s. I have ads from the 1930s with Rolex Oyster, a Bubbleback, for $95. So, we have technically had that relationship since the 30s, which is approaching 100 years ago.

WI: And would you concur with other jewelers I’ve spoken to who say that Rolex makes the shop better, in terms of the training and the raising of standards etc.?

TD: 100%, and that’s store-wide. People are benefiting from Rolex, even if you just come in to get your ring cleaned. It’s the whole experience, top to bottom. We expect that from our tradespeople as well and our staff — we’ve elevated where we were 10 years ago to where we are today, it’s a totally different game and that’s why we’ve been able to hang in there.

Our business is crazy now, and it’s not just Rolex, it’s jewelry as well. One of our competitors, who was an official Rolex jeweler, closed last year and so now we’ve absorbed all of that. We’re one of the last high-end stores in Milwaukee and so we’re busier than ever. We’re a little stretched thin and I just bought a building next door, so in the next couple of years we’ll expand our footprint dramatically.

WI: Is that with Rolex in mind or generally to make more space for everyone?

TD: Just generally we need more space across the board because right now we don’t have the offerings that we need to have. We’re limited with space for other brands and we’d like to get into some of the cool micro brands we’ve had discussions with.

WI: To focus on Milwaukee for a moment, my knowledge is limited. How do you think the area that you operate in differs, if at all, from parts of the States like the tri-state area or Chicago? Do you feel you’ve got to be a different type of retailer in a less touristy part of the state?

TD: I think relationships here matter. We know generations of customers. I’ve sold three or four generations of people’s engagement rings and watches. I don’t know if that’s as important in a touristy place, but I think because of travel and social media and television, we are all kind of blended a little bit now, so the markets aren’t that much different.

The Midwest in general doesn’t have the high-flying economies that the East or West may have, or the South for that matter, but that also means that when it gets bad, we don’t get as bad as quickly either. I lived in Chicago for a while and it is a similar market — they’re only 90 minutes away from us. I mean, we’re borderline a suburb of Chicago as it is, and we have a lot of clients that drive up from Chicago to come here. That may be a function of sales tax, but they do also just have a good relationship with us. We know 80% of our clients — we know how many kids they have, when their birthdays are, and what college they’re going to. We are part of their family, so to speak.

WI: With it being a family jeweler, do you feel a responsibility to respect what went before you, while also trying to future-proof the company? Is that a fine balance to get right?

TD: Oh, 100%. I don’t know about other people, but we are an institution in Milwaukee — we have 127 years of legacy here. It’s important for me to keep that going, hand it off to the next generation a lot better than I got it. And it’s important for me to instill that in my son, that it’s his responsibility to make it better than I had it. That is a driving force for me, for him, and was for my father, that it’s important to keep this in the family and keep growing. It would be a sad day if we had to close for some reason and I don’t anticipate that at all.

We’re in safe hands but, over the years, there have been times that that responsibility has really weighed on me. It doesn’t so much anymore because I’m at the tail end of it and I see my son doing great, but there were times where it was not great. We’ve been through it all. Covid was scary the first two months but then who knew we would be the big beneficiaries of the Covid economy.

WI: You mentioned you’ve got a couple of watchmakers starting and an apprentice. In Milwaukee, how difficult is it to attract and then retain talent, whether that’s watchmakers, sales consultants, or goldsmiths?

TD: We have been very fortunate in that regard. We have almost no [staff] turnover. We’ve had a couple of people retire lately but we have one watchmaker who has been here 15 years and then when the other AD closed in town, one of their watchmakers retired and the other one came here. 

In terms of goldsmiths, we don’t seem to have those issues that other places have. People want to come here and work here because they’re working on quality repair work, it’s not junk. Our clients tend to have really nice jewelry and really nice watches, so it’s nicer for them to work on quality stuff. We’ve set them up with state-of-the-art equipment and spared no expense. We’ve got everything we need to have here.

It’s really a wonderful thing to be a real watch and jewelry store and I don’t think you can be if you don’t have the trade people with you. I don’t understand that model of selling watches and not having a watchmaker on site. People want to know their stuff is being done right here in this building and it’s not getting sent out somewhere. I feel very fortunate because I do talk to friends around the country who have trouble recruiting people and retaining them, but we do not have that issue. 

WI: You’ve talked about your son already. If you’re nearer the end than the beginning of your tenure as the decision-maker of the company, how would you like your legacy to be remembered and defined?

TD: That’s a tough question. I guess I would just say one thing: integrity. That’s my compass, just do the right thing all the time. Sometimes you make mistakes, just own up to it, make it right, and have a sense of integrity. I think we’ve lost a lot of that in our country, in our day-to-day dealings with people, in our government, in our media. It just seems there’s a real lack of integrity in today’s world. I try to instill that in my kids too. People really appreciate a straight shooter and somebody who’s honest with them. If I had to say what I’m about, that’s it.

WI: I think a lot of people will be nodding along with you on that one. Looking back on your time at Schwanke-Kasten, what do you see as the biggest missed opportunity?

TD: You know what? I don’t have any regrets about anything, I really don’t. I don’t look back so much as I look forward. We’ve had a lot of brands here and we have never had a brand leave us on their own. We have ceased business with brands because it’s no fun or their way of doing business has changed. We actually had to let a really nice watch brand go once, but we didn’t sell enough and we needed the space for something else that was more profitable. I don’t regret it — I feel mildly sad about it, but I don’t regret it. The real missed opportunity was waiting too long to make that change because they were really nice people and we tried to make it work and it just didn’t work as well as we needed it to.

We are who we are. I’ve got a great business here, I’m happy. I don’t have to be the biggest or the best. Our staff is like our family. As long as I can keep a job going for them and put food on their table, that’s what is important to us, and that’s why they’ve stayed here so long.

But somebody before me did have regrets. My dad told me that my aunt got all panicked about quartz watches and had a meltdown when they were being introduced in the 70s. So she severed her relationship with Patek because she thought that was the end of them! 

WI: What would you call that? A sliding doors moment, maybe?

TD: Yes, that was on her watch, not mine!

WI: You’ve already mentioned in this chat about your expansion into next door. Is that the only major change that you foresee in the next few years or do you think you’d open another location?

TD: No, I think building out the store next door, which is around 9,000 square feet, will be my focus. We had two stores for a long time. We closed the second one right before Covid, which was a really great decision. What I’ve learned, personally, is that I don’t want all these stores around. It wasn’t that hard to operate a second store, but your resources then are divided. When you can focus all your attention under one roof and under one staff, you can just do more. It was a good exercise and it was profitable, but when we made the decision to close, it was a relief.

We definitely need more room and that will get done in the next few years. I’ve got leases I have to honor, and so when those are expired we’ll be able to move into that space and it’ll be stunning. It’s quite a beautiful old building and it’ll be a special place in the Midwest. We’re going to make it fabulous. So that’s the game plan as of today, not multiple locations.

Watch Insider: When you do these expansions or refurbs, how much of that is coming from a vision that you have in your head versus inspiration you get from seeing your competitors?

TD: Well we’re definitely happy here as we are, but now with the advent of the other competitor closing, we’re getting squeezed for room. There were brands that they had that we should have here, but we don’t have room for, so that’s the main inspiration. I guess the inspiration is also just making this my last hurrah. I don’t have this big ego, I just focus on what’s going on here and what our clients are asking for. They’re asking for some other brands and I say: “Yeah, that would be nice, but I don’t have room for it.” So that’s really where it’s coming from.

This article was first published in the July 2026 edition of Watch Insider.