Cortina closes almost all its watch outlets in Wisma Atria

Singapore

CORTINA Holdings has shut virtually all its watch boutiques in Wisma Atria in Orchard Road, after what is believed to be the local watch retailer's failure to renew their leases at lower rentals.

Both the SGX-listed Cortina and Wisma's landlord, Starhill Global Reit, declined to comment when approached on Thursday.

The affected shops, opened in 2012 to carry brands from the Swatch Group such as Omega, Breguet, Blancpain, Longines, Rado and Tissot, are no longer listed on Cortina's website.

The only watch boutique in Wisma Atria listed on the website is the Raymond Weil Boutique on the third level. Raymond Weil is not part of the Swatch Group.

When The Business Times visited Wisma Atria on Thursday, the Orchard Road-facing boutiques, which occupied a total of 4,700 square feet of space on the first and second level, were closed. The tenant of a shop opposite the boutiques said they have been closed since last week.

"It's super-high eyeball rates at this location," said a marketing executive at a rival watch retail chain, when told of the discontinuation of Cortina's boutiques in Wisma.

The watch shops still open on the front stretch of the mall were Rolex, TAG Heuer and Franck Muller - boutiques operated respectively by Hong Kong's Emperor Group, France's LVMH and Singapore's Sincere Watch.

BT understands the Swatch Group will take over from Cortina and continue to run the Wisma boutiques that carried the Swatch-owned brands until June this year.

A source close to Cortina said the retail chain has no immediate plans to open alternative boutiques. Staff who worked at the Wisma shops would be re-deployed to other existing Cortina outlets.

Despite the closures, Cortina's presence in Orchard Road remains significant: It recently opened a multi-brand watch store in Mandarin Gallery; its multi-brand boutique in Paragon has been refurbished and expanded; and there is also the Patek Philippe boutique in ION.

Cortina also has shops in Capitol Piazza, Raffles City, Marina Square, Marina Bay Sands and Chinatown Point. Beyond Singapore, the retail chain has outlets in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The closures at Wisma Atria come at a time when the luxury watch business is recovering from a two-year decline in sales.

Cortina's revenues for the nine months ending December 2017 jumped 17 per cent year on year to S$333.37 million. Profits after tax in the same period rose 77 per cent to S$15.09 million.

Three years ago, when the market went soft, Cortina went the opposite way - it pushed ahead with expansion plans, which included the opening of South-east Asia's biggest Rolex boutique in Marina Square. This came soon after it unveiled the world's largest Patek Philippe outlet in Taiwan.

Cortina's chief operating officer Jeremy Lim said then that the expansion reflected a more proactive and targeted approach to draw customers into its shops. "We can't just open the door and wait for them to come in anymore," he had told BT.

Cortina may now be singing a different tune. In its 2017 annual report, chairman Anthony Lim spoke of adopting a "prudent growth strategy".

"We will continue to review and evaluate the performance of each of our retail outlets so as to optimise same-store sales," he said.