Jewellery accounts for just 13% of group sales but this is the company's most important opportunity for growth

Despite its portfolio housing several historic jewellery retail marques: Goldsmiths, Mappin & Webb in the UK, plus Mayors and Betteridge in the United States, Watches of Switzerland Group, as its name suggests, is still heavily weighted towards prestige timepieces.

Its 2026 financial report reveals luxury watches generate 82% of turnover, with jewellery contributing 13%.

That 13% is far from insignificant, given the business reported group sales of £1.83 billion, but it points to a significant opportunity for growth at a time when supply of Rolex watches is constrained and other Swiss watch brands are struggling to excite customers.

Until relatively recently, watches and jewellery were natural bedfellows for any prestige jeweller.

This remains the case for the likes of Pragnell, Berry’s, David M Robinson, Prestons, Laings and many more multi-generational family firms.

Beaverbrooks, Ernest Jones, H. Samuel, Fraser Hart, F. Hinds and others do it at a national level.

Mappin & Webb is the equivalent retail marque in the UK for WoSG, but Goldsmiths, once positioned as a national jeweller, slewed heavily towards watches, particularly Rolex, over the past decade.

Watches of Switzerland does what it says above the door.

WoSG Group CEO, Brian Duffy, has used almost every financial reporting event to speak about the rising importance of jewellery to the group, but progress on rebalancing sales with a greater contribution from gold and diamonds has been slow.

In its 2020 financial year, luxury jewellery represented 8.5% of group sales, now it is up to 13%, which includes the north and central American business of Roberto Coin, which it acquired in 2024 for $130 million.

Today we report on a new retail concept in the United States, which demonstrates a change in approach to jewellery.

In a suburb outside Philadelphia, there is a new side-by-side, internally linked Watches of Switzerland and Mayors store.

Watches of Switzerland sells only watches, Mayors sells only fine jewellery. They have different facias and their own entrances, but customers and, importantly, staff can move freely between the two inside.

Sound familiar? Family jewellers have been doing this for centuries.

This is a significant development, which I believe will be rolled out across the United States and the UK.

It will mean women, treated as something of an afterthought by WoSG in pursuit of Swiss watch sales, will become much more important to the business. And, yes, I know women buy watches too!

I also believe this concept will displace monobrand watch boutiques, many of which are failing financially because they require full time dedicated staff, which all-too-often sit in stores devoid of customers.

Multibrand jewellery and watch showrooms give a broader range of clients myriad more reasons to enter, browse and shop.

More women in a store, is likely to lead not only to higher jewellery sales, but also improve the ladies watch business, something that brands are desperate to achieve.

And gross margins on gold and diamond sales are significantly higher than for most watch brands.

For now, this is a “watch this space” forecast, but my prediction is a strong shift back towards multibrand and multisector retail in the luxury watch and jewellery arena.