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ST. THOMAS — Breitling watch brand and Little Switzerland celebrated the grand reopening of the Breitling Boutique on Main Street in downtown Charlotte Amalie on Thursday, showcasing a whole new retro-modern vibe design concept instituted by the brand’s new CEO Georges Kern.
Breitling, first introduced in 1884, has restructured its product portfolio and design concept around the brand’s three historic pillars — air, land and sea. Designers from Italy and Switzerland conceived the store’s design and a furniture builder was brought in from Spain, according to store manager Reese O’Hanlon.
“It was quite an ordeal,” O’Hanlon said. “With the new design language, they really tried to tailor everything to people’s specific interests such as cars, swimming, surfing and our bread and butter, aviation. Breitling was always known as a pilot’s watch, a chronograph company, so that’s where our history and our DNA comes.”
The first Breitling Boutique on St. Thomas opened in 2009. After hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, the boutique was moved across the street before closing temporarily. The brand is now back in its original location adjacent to Little Switzerland’s Main Street store, but with added space, growing from 500 square feet to 1,500.
“We think the future is brighter than ever. It’s very different from any other store you’ll see on the island,” said Little Switzerland CEO Hal Taylor during his speech. “Brietling has about 120 boutiques in the world and we are proud and honored to be a part of that growth. We had the confidence to invest in this boutique because of Gov. Bryan and his leadership. As we all know, when we went through COVID, it was very scary operating in the tourist market, not knowing what was going to happen, but what he did post-COVID to bring tourism back quicker than any other market, because we operate all over the Caribbean, that gave us the confidence to be able to do this.”
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