TALKING SHOP: Swiss Gallery on being independently minded

Relocating to Bond Street from its previous Park Lane address in 2024, Swiss Gallery has carved out a niche for championing independent watch brands and being a destination for Haute Horlogerie. Steering the ship is industry stalwart Nadeem Sarwar, whose previous retail experience includes working for the former famous Marcus store on the same street. Nadeem sat down with Daniel Malins to paint a grand vision for the future of Swiss Gallery.

Watch Insider: I want to start by asking you about the origins of this business. Who owns it, and what is your personal background?

Nadeem Sarwar: Swiss Gallery was established in the Middle East in 1986, but it was mostly for jewellery-based businesses and was nothing to do with watches. I met the owners of Swiss Gallery back in 2014, and at that time they told me that it was their dream to have a store in London. But that’s the dream of any Middle Eastern businessman, so I didn’t take it too seriously! I was working for Time Products at the time and then I left them around 2018 and I interviewed for a few roles.

But I thought there’s a gap in the market for independent watch brands, but none of these watch brands were ready to come on board at that time without seeing a space. So, we [Swiss Gallery] started with the jewellery store in JW Marriott [Grosvenor House], and then I had a really good relationship with Greubel Forsey because of my past experience. Then Arnold & Son joined. 

When you have one brand doing well, it starts building, and it was doing really well. But then Covid happened and totally changed the dynamics of the game because every brand was questioning what there was in working with us. They could sell their brand anywhere. Many brands I spoke to at that time had their own plan in London or elsewhere in the world, so some didn’t want to work with us at all. 

But the idea revolved around the fact that in the back of my mind I knew we could develop something, and there was a gap in the London market. London is such an important place in terms of jewellery and watch collecting, or anything luxury. It’s the only place you would meet the same people every summer every Christmas, from all over the world. 

I thought if we got to certain brands then more brands would come. We stayed with JW Marriott until 2024, and then it was around February 2024 when we found out about this place [45a Old Bond Street] that Roger Dubuis was leaving and we thought: “We should be in there and we should take this place.” The size of the store was not what we were looking for, but at the time we thought we needed to make a move because visibility is one of the most important things to all of these brands. And it has been amazing. Sales have been amazing, meeting collectors from all over the world, enjoying every aspect of it.

In terms of myself, I started way back in 2006/2007 with a jewellery brand called Damas. I really enjoyed sales at the time, and I worked with them until 2008/2009, but then the financial crisis hit and the store closed down. I started working for Mappin & Webb and I worked there until 2011 before I joined Time Products on Bond Street. And that was a time that I was introduced to a completely different world. The sales background I came from with Watches of Switzerland was very commercial—you would sell everything and anything.

But when I stepped into the world of Marcus Margulies’ Time Products, it was crazy. You had independent brands I’ve never even heard of. You name it and they had it. The type of clients you met were crazy too and I really enjoyed my time. But in 2016, Marcus Margulies announced that Audemars Piguet would be moving towards AP Houses and would not be issuing any new contracts for retailers, so we lost the brand at Time Products. The watch market was booming but I felt myself that it wasn’t the right place for me anymore so I left. It was then, when I was looking for jobs, that this opportunity came to me and Swiss Gallery started.

WI: The Marcus store that you mention, as well as Frost of London, are no longer around on Bond Street. Does that feel like a warning sign that there’s a problem with the business model of selling lesser-known independent brands, or is it a huge opportunity because you can be the sole UK stockist for a lot of these brands?

NS: If you look at the past 10 years a lot of things have changed. The two retailers you mention, Marcus and Frost, had some of the most exciting brands, but the concept of brands having their own boutiques is what has changed things for independent retailers. In London, if you want to open a boutique and enjoy the real London tourism or the luxury market, it has to be within a one mile radius of here [Bond Street]. You have SW1—Sloane Street, Brompton Road—or you come here. For instance, if a certain brand is with a retailer but then goes and opens their own boutique nearby, then where would the retailer go? A brand wouldn’t want to be somewhere on Kensington High Street, they want to be on Bond Street or in Harrods or Selfridges. They want to be in a destination, not just have a space. 

When you look at Frost of London, I think their biggest brand was Messika, and they went their own way and joined Selfridges. As a retailer, you work on and with brands but then sometimes those brands will want to go and open a boutique. As an example, we have Pasquale Bruni in our window and they just advertised their boutique opening soon and didn’t tell us. So it’s like, what can I do? They haven’t terminated their contract, they’re still happy to supply their product for now, but in three or four years maybe they won’t want to. 

WI: So how do you future-proof yourselves? Let’s say hypothetically this store breaks even or loses a small amount of money each year because of the exorbitant rental cost of Bond Street—for some brands that’s fine because it’s essentially marketing spend and they’re not expecting to sell much. But you’re not a watch brand, you’re a retailer, so if you are losing money you’ve got to presumably hope that the store is still worth it as part of the wider Swiss Gallery ecosystem, which very much includes e-commerce. 

NS: At Swiss Gallery in London, we work on two things: we have the physical store, and we’re working towards an online store. We can’t display every brand we have, but certain brands we have for e-commerce purposes and we’re developing a website. 

I think if it wasn’t for Covid, we would have been making huge profits, because during that time we didn’t have a fully developed e-commerce platform and Covid was a time where e-commerce did really well, even for pre-owned watches. So, we learnt that we needed to have a strong e-commerce platform, which we’re working towards and it has started showing results.

Things take time and we went for an organic way, rather than cheesy campaigns on TikTok or social media. Given the difficult economic times we are living in at the moment, I wouldn’t say that we have struggled. We’ve been doing quite well and we are where we want to be. We came into the market with a strategy for 10 to 12 years of what we want to do and how we want to perform, and we’re on track. 

WI: I assume part of that is because you have the backing of a bigger parent company? Swiss Gallery is an international brand, so it allows you to make decisions which are not constantly chasing the short-term dollar. 

NS: It certainly helps but, touch wood, so far we haven’t had to go to our parent company or a bank to get a loan to move forward. This is why I say that, although we’re not making millions of pounds of profit at the moment, the company is profitable enough to sustain itself.

WI: Even if you haven’t needed financial support, it must help to know that you would have that backing, otherwise there’s a danger that you operate with a day-to-day mindset.

NS: It’s a blessing, for sure. If something goes wrong or we are in a point where we need money or assistance, we don’t have to look externally. So, you’re right in terms of decision-making, it really helps. 

WI: When you’re curating your selection and offering of brands, how do you decide who makes the cut? How much do you lean on your experience of working at Watches of Switzerland — presumably more processes and more data-driven — versus what you learnt from working with an enigma like Marcus Margulies?

NS: Watches of Switzerland was very commercial. They look at things from the point of view that you need everything in stock, and you would have a probability that somebody would come and buy it, and the decision is taken by the team based on numbers. Time Products and Marcus Margulies was completely different. He always thought three ways: brands like AP where you need to keep everything in stock because a lot of people would come and say “Oh we heard you are one of the biggest retailers for this brand in the world;” then he would have independent brands where he would look into what would suit the richest of the rich; then the third way would be to ask what products he can design to offer the ultra-high-end watch collectors. He was ahead of the curve. Everything he used to select was through his eyes. You wouldn’t understand that until you have worked for that man or you have worked in that boutique, because he saw the industry differently to how other people saw it. 

Don’t get me wrong, he invested in a number of brands that didn’t work out. But working there really helped me to perceive the industry and to see what sells and what doesn’t sell. Every day, we meet maybe 10 to 12 clients, and they are all different in the way they think, the way they spend money, and their ideas about the brand.

WI: When it comes to some of the brands that fail, does that not represent the inherent risk with having a store that relies on those independents? Because when they’re hot, they’re very hot, but they can fall off of a cliff. How do you mitigate that risk? 

NS: What’s happening with most of these independent brands is that they’re coming up with a production plan for a year, so we know what’s going on and have insight into what we can sell and what we cannot sell. Back in the day they were not able to do that. It gives you an insight from the clients’ reactions of what will perform well and what will not perform well, and then you move on to the orders. You know that, for instance, in September this year, so-and-so brand is launching such-and-such product and we’ve sold six pieces. So, the business has become a little bit easier in that way, but I agree with what you’re saying that some brands will perform and others won’t. But that’s the beauty of a multi-brand store—if one brand is not performing, there will be another brand. That gives a balance into the financial fiscal year of how a brand and a store will go forward. If a brand is opening a boutique, we will take a hit on our turnover for that brand, so we keep an eye out for something else. 

WI: You’re on that journey of building up this unique reputation on Bond Street, arguably the most famous luxury shopping street in the world, but what if the success keeps going and then Tudor or Rolex come knocking on the door? Would you tell them to go away or would you entertain the idea of stocking brands like those, even though it’s not in keeping with the independent brand environment that you are known for?

NS: It would depend on the situation at the time. What is the situation with the company and with the shareholders? To be honest, if any mainstream brands come to the door, as long as we are not being compromised as a multi-brand store, we’d love to take them. I believe in one thing, which I tell my team all the time, which is that people buy from people. So, look at Tudor, Rolex, Patek—we would not look at these brands as cash cows, we would look at them as an opportunity to meet new people and bring more footfall through the door. For us, that would be completely different. If you take Watches of Switzerland as an example, they had the likes of Rolex, Cartier, and Patek, and then they got independent brands. So they had the easy part and then went to the hard part. For Swiss Gallery, I’ve done the hard part first, so we would see it as an opportunity to meet more people and bring more footfall to our door.

It would be really exciting and really challenging. With a brand like Rolex, it’s not just about money or turnover—you can learn a lot from them. The amount they spend on marketing, management, visibility, e-commerce presence, it’s crazy. As a retailer, it would bring a lot of worth to your brand. 

WI: Are pre-owned watches a route you’d ever go down?

NS: On our website we have a pre-owned section but it’s different, it’s a marketplace. The pre-owned market is not governed, so we don’t want to do it in a way that it becomes an integral part of Swiss Gallery. There’s another part of it where our own clients come looking for a specific piece and sometimes our brands are sold out or they don’t make it anymore, so we’d be happy to source those pieces for them and we do that as well. But we will never go out and advertise that we buy gold or we buy pre-owned watches, because that was never in our DNA. The danger is that you’d become too diverted towards it and we want to keep everything organic and not be greedy. We want to be part of the regulated industry, not the unregulated part. so we can keep in control as much as we can. 

WI: At a location like this on Bond Street with a footfall of maybe 10–12 clients a day, you’ve got to expect small sales volumes. So, do you ever use this space for something else, like VIP events? 

NS: We do events, yes. Back in 2021 when we were with JW Marriot, we did events. Most of the brands these days think that if we do an event or a launch in London then we will sell most of the pieces at the event, whereas for us the events are different. Most of the people will come to the event to enjoy the evening rather than thinking they have to buy something. But it’s still adding value. 

We had a really interesting dinner with the CEO of Parmigiani just before Christmas 2024 at the Arts Club, and last year we did an event in December with [Savile Row tailor] Huntsman, Parmigiani, and ourselves. So we do events but our focus is different. It’s not to be social media crazy, it’s where the brand meets the people who buy their watches. Whether people buy or not is not in the question, it’s to enjoy the evening and have the brands speak to end clients and get feedback as well. At the event with Parmigiani, a customer came and suggested something to them that could be an opportunity, and they took it seriously. So it’s a feedback thing as well. These brands come, meet people in different countries, and come up with ideas for what they should maybe launch next year. 

Apart from those events, what we have invested more money in with the brands, as part of our marketing budget, is taking customers to the manufacturers, because when the customers are there you can talk about the brand and the product, and you can show them different things. So many times in my life, if I cannot convince people to buy, I invite them to visit the Atelier, and they go and come back mesmerised. So we’re going towards that direction more where it’s one-to-one focus on the brand. 

WI: Nowadays there seems to be a big focus on developing and encouraging a community of watch lovers, which may only have long-term benefits for you as a store. But it doesn’t mean such softly-softly events don’t have significant value.

NS: I agree, but when you talk about money and collectors, now you have WhatsApp groups between collectors and dealers, and in those groups, during Watches & Wonders for instance, they will be doing their own events and their own meet-ups. The most knowledgeable person in the industry is the collector.

WI: The best jewellers have their black book of VIP contacts, with all the relevant information about that customer—their tastes and what they’ve previously bought for various birthdays etc. In a location like Bond Street, it’s great that you’ll get a lot of footfall from tourists, but does that mean that you have fewer repeat customers? What percentage of your customers that walk through the door are regulars?

NS: I would say it’s about 50–60%. The day I opened the store, I met a gentleman from Massachusetts, and he was here for some kind of family event. The journey started from there, exchanging WhatsApp messages, and he recently confirmed that he will be visiting London and he wants to buy a certain product. It’s a journey, but if you walk through that journey correctly, the client is yours and they won’t go anywhere else. Coming to Bond Street, what I’ve found is that the relationship is very strong. Sometimes you give a price, and they tell you that somebody else is discounting the price, but they’ll still buy from you.

People buy from people, that’s the most important thing. At Swiss Gallery, we don’t spend hundreds of thousands of pounds a year on client relationships with events every month. What we have is our clients. If you ask any of our brands about Swiss Gallery, they’ll say that their clients don’t go anywhere else. For me, whatever Swiss Gallery has achieved today, that is the biggest compliment. 

Recently a client from Turkey, who was an ex-CEO of Microsoft or something, met one of my colleagues and started talking about Swiss Gallery, and he went away and then came back and bought a watch from that colleague. They introduced me to him and he said, “I travel a lot and one thing I can tell you is that in the past seven or eight months I have heard so many times about Swiss Gallery, so when I was in London I had to visit.”

That’s part of the organic process, word of mouth. We don’t have brands like Cartier and Tudor, we have independent brands that take time to sell.

WI: I think those independent brands have benefited from the internet age as well.

NS: Absolutely, when Instagram was becoming famous, a lot of independent brands opposed the idea of social media. Maximilian Büsser [founder of MB&F] was one of the only people who said “If a guy comes to your store and takes a picture and has a million followers, then one million more people will know about your brand.” Maybe only three or four people would have the potential to buy, but that’s free marketing. I remember in a meeting he said, “I would never oppose social media, and brands shouldn’t because it’s free, you’re not spending anything on it.” There were many brands, I won’t say names, who would email and say “Someone came and took pictures in the store and posted it and we don’t like it.” They would complain! You always have to see the positive in things. 

WI: What would growth or expansion look like for Swiss Gallery? Is it moving to another bigger location in London, or expanding this store?

NS: A bigger location would be better because most of these brands are very small, so they don’t want to be spread across different locations. Swiss Gallery will definitely grow internationally, you’ll hear good news on that front in about a year. In terms of London, Bond Street is the location we want to be.

WI: Finally, do you have a favourite watch model or brand? Or is that an impossible question to answer in your position?

NS: If you asked me four years ago I definitely did have my favourites, but now it’s difficult to say. I think Greubel Forsey, or maybe Urwerk. I don’t know! Every brand we carry makes exceptional pieces. 

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