Movado acquires UK watch and jewellery brand Olivia Burton

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jul 5, 2017

Watches giant Movado Group has acquired JLB Brands, which owns the Olivia Burton label, one of Britain’s fastest-growing fashion watch and jewellery names.

It paid around £60 million for the firm that was founded in 2011 by Lesa Bennett and Jemma Fennings. The company started selling fashion watches under the Olivia Burton name in 2012 and only moved into jewellery last year.

In the early stages of international expansion, the Millennials-focused label has a business model that depends on launching new collections every two months.

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The brand, which is inspired by fashion and vintage trends, is sold through a wide variety of multi-category and specialist stores, including John Lewis, Watchshop, Argento, Selfridges and Beaverbrooks in its domestic market, and has just debuted Nordstrom in the US.

With its HQ in vibrant Shoreditch, Olivia Burton also has a concession at Oxford Circus destination store Topshop.

Which is all very well, but what in particular appealed to Movado? That’s fairly obvious from the sales figures. Its revenue rose around 64% last fiscal year, to £15 million, and it’s predicting a rise to £25 million in the current 12 -month period, based both on UK expansion and that US debut. In fact, its availability at Nordstrom reached 117 doors as of January and more US growth is expected as it builds a direct-to-consumer business through its e-commerce platform.

With the move to Movado, international expansion is only likely to accelerate its and the US firm said the deal should be immediately accretive to its business, excluding certain one-off costs.

The brand will continue to operate under the leadership of Bennett and Fennings, who will report to Movado CEO Efraim Grinberg.