Watch This Space
Craig Hough talks to Luxury Watch Repairs Founder Oliver Pollock about his business and setting up a new home at Harvey Nichols in Manchester
Luxury Watch Repair is a family run business, what is the story behind the start and success of the company, and what is your involvement?
My family has worked in watches for generations on the manufacturing side. They originally started in watch straps and then I saw a gap in the market, a number of years ago, for repairs and servicing and Luxury Watch Repairs was born. I wanted to offer a watch repair service which is focused on exceptional customer service, competitive pricing and fast turnaround times. We also invested heavily into our service centre to ensure it is ‘Swiss’ standard and sought affiliation with a number of the leading brands, in order to become an official service centre. This ensures that we have unrestricted access to parts and materials and that our watchmakers can receive the most up to date training required for new calibres. For example, we are a Level 3 Omega service centre. This is the highest accreditation awarded by the brand and ensures that when your watch is being serviced, it receives the same treatment as if it was sent directly to the manufacture’s factory; all required parts are replaced, the seals and crowns are replaced, the case and bracelet are polished and re-finished and of course, a two year warranty.
We currently have nine watchmakers, a customer service team of eight, a dedicated refurbishment and polish department, a vintage department and our team is still growing. Our main service centre is based at 88-90 Hatton Garden in London where many clients choose to drop off their watches directly and we also have a unique postage pack system which is free to use and insures your watch to £25,000.
The company is well established in Hatton Garden in London, what was the catalyst to move up north, and why Manchester?
The reason we opened in Manchester was that we saw so many of our customers were from the city and the north-west. Harvey Nichols is an amazing partner for us and on-site we are able to replace and fit batteries, refills carry out re-seals, bracelet repairs and adjustments and many other types of repairs. More significant repairs or restorations are securely transported down to our main service centre in London and we have also recently opened up a workshop in Manchester so anything that can’t be done in-store can be sent to the workshop straight away. We were actually looking to open a stand-alone shop in the city. I went up to view some stores with our Operational Manager and decided to go for lunch in Harvey Nichols and thought ‘wow, what a beautiful store’. We loved it and found a really nice synergy so decided to speak to them and to see if they were interested. We had a deal confirmed within a matter of weeks. It works well for us as we get customers from Harvey Nichols coming over and Harvey Nichols also get to offer a new service to their customers. The very first day we opened we had customers coming over to us, offering a vast number of new clients, with zero advertising or marketing.
What services do you offer in-store?
We do everything from the smallest job (for example battery replacement, taking a link out or a basic repair) all through to the most extensive overhauls and services and complicated watches. We do restoration watches, meaning restoring watches that have been in fires. I actually did an article in the New York Times a year ago called “My watches were in a fire, Now What?”. Every day we have customers coming to us with rusted watches or ones filled with water! In Hatton Garden we have a vintage department where we have three watchmakers dedicated purely to restoring vintage watches. This is really rare as there’s only a handful of other places in the whole of the UK that offer this service and we are proud to offer services such as dial restorations and bracelet restorations also.
Where do you source your parts for these vintage watches?
We manufacture a lot of them, so we make them from scratch. We have a huge stock of brand-new old parts and if we don’t have them we say to the clients ‘these parts are obsolete they stopped making them 80 years ago (for example) but we can manufacture the part for you’. We then let the client know the cost and timescale as it can often take a number of months.
What should customers expect from a standard watch service?
You can expect the entire watch to be dismantled, so the case and bracelet get separated and then go to the cleaning department where they are steam cleaned, ultrasonically cleaned and polished and refinished where appropriate. The movement then goes to the watchmakers where it is ultrasonically cleaned. Then each individual part is checked (and we are most often talking a minimum of 100 parts), including the screws, each wheel and they’ll see what’s worn, what’s damaged and what needs to be replaced. Next, they separate what’s worn or damaged and they’ll replace them all with brand new parts. Then they will rebuild the movement, lubricate the movement, change all the seals and gaskets (which deteriorate naturally over time). They will then rebuild the watch, test it for a minimum of five days, test the tolerances and then place it on a watch winder which is a very cool piece of machinery which simulates the movement of the wrist. It typically stays on test for a number of days, making sure that the watch is powering up and keeping time. When that’s all done it’ll go through water resistance and pressure checks to make sure its waterproof again (if it was a waterproof watch originally of course). The watch then heads to our Quality Control team which check every aspect again and then can sign the watch out as completed and the customer is provided with a two year warranty.
As we come to the end of the year, what are the company plans for 2020?
We have three new confirmed stores for 2020 and we are exploring more expansion plans up north as we have so many customers travelling from all over the country to have their watches serviced by us!
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