During the late-20th century and into the 21st, Marcus Margulies has been, in the words of Jean-Claude Biver, “one of the main influencers of the Swiss luxury watch segment. At a certain moment he was the biggest and most important agent in the world.”
Endowed with a genuine love of watches and an understanding of the industry that few before or since have possessed, Margulies became chairman of the UK’s largest watch and clock distributor, Time Products, and the brand Sekonda in the late 1970s, after various stints in Swiss watch Manufactures. His knowledge, intuition and unrivalled business sense enabled him to gain traction for many Swiss watch brands such as Blancpain, Breguet, Vacheron Constantin, Piaget, Franck Muller, IWC and Hublot. His British-based company even took over distribution for Audemars Piguet in both the US and Switzerland.
By 2002, Margulies’s passion became public with the opening of his eponymous London boutique, which prided itself on having “the most important collection of watches in world”. Over the next decade, it became a dominant force in haute horlogerie, taking on UK distribution for independents from Richard Mille to Urwerk, MB&F and Greubel Forsey.
Margulies’s personal watch collection is one of the finest in existence. The vintage Piaget jewellery and cuffs in his possession rival those in the maison’s archives, and without Margulies’s Audemars Piguet collection – which he eventually sold to the company in 2016 – the new AP museum would be a fraction as impressive as it is.
With the watch world changing, Margulies decided it was time to leave traditional retail in 2017, closing his boutique and investing in one of the most prestigious addresses in London: 27 Berkeley Square. Following a three-year renovation, the six-floor townhouse is now an exquisite blend of private club – complete with gym, cinema room and magnificent wine cellar – and showcase for unique watches, jewellery and art that can all be acquired by a select group of invited clients.
*Written by Tracey Llewellyn
*On the occasion of GMT Magazine and WorldTempus' 20th anniversary, we have embarked on the ambitious project of summarising the last 20 years in watchmaking in The Millennium Watch Book, a big, beautifully laid out coffee table book. This article is an extract. The Millennium Watch Book is available on www.the-watch-book.com, in French and English, with a 10% discount if you use the following code: WT2021.
