Victorinox: sharp as a knife

Think of Switzerland and a number of images may spring to mind. Cuckoo clocks, St Bernard dogs and private banking may be among them, but so will the products of Victorinox.

For those unacquainted with the name, this is the firm responsible for the Swiss Army Knife and the fact that this tool, beloved of practical types for whom style also matters, is capped up, indicates how iconic it is.

Indeed, for many, the Swiss Army Knife is as representative of the country from which it comes as any of the other visual cliches you might care to list, but unlike so much that is Swiss, it is also financially pretty much within reach.

Acquiring one is relatively straightforward - just head for the top end of New Bond Street and peruse the offer in the three-floor Victorinox store. So it has been since 2007, when the store opened (it was the brand’s first flagship store), but since last month devotees can benefit from wandering around a revamped shop that serves to show what can stem from extending a brand with care and how a good-looking store can add to perceptions of a product.

Sharpened offer

There is a lot more space, or the appearance of it, than prior to the refit. Yet the selling area is actually the same.

Victorinox global retail director Patrick Hardy says: “After the redesign, it’s a lot more accessible. In the past, the feedback that we got was that it was a bit museum-like and inaccessible. Everything was hidden and people didn’t even dare to go downstairs.”

All this has been changed and the first thing that will strike the visitor is how low key and discreet it is from the outside.

This is not about flashy bling and is entirely in keeping with the old-money ambience of Bond Street. Now head inside and the initial reaction may be to wonder where the knives are. The vista is of clothing and a large area to the left, with internally lit perimeter boxes, is devoted to watch displays.

There is the silver cross motif set on a red shield with the word Victorinox above it to inform you that you are actually in the right place when you look at the watch area. Apart from this, however, the floor looks like a swish Continental sportswear shop - the kind of place you’d enter to pick up something for those après-ski moments in a chi-chi Alpine resort.

The men’s and women’s clothing is Victorinox-branded and with wood floors, walls that are part rough-stone clad and part wood, punctuated by backlit floor-to-ceiling perimeter screens, this is an interesting, albeit somewhat anonymous, introduction.

That said, the watch department will probably have many taking a few moments to inspect a range that runs from under £500 to close to £2,000. The watches are made in Switzerland, important according to the store manager, and in addition to the glass-fronted, red-lined niches that are part of the surrounding white walls, there are two tables with sober, yet expensive-looking stools to sit on.

Both tables have mirrors on them, although why you should be incapable of working out how your wrist looks while test-driving one of the timepieces, without recourse to a looking glass, is a moot point. Nonetheless, as an area within the store, this is as upscale as any of the watch departments to be found in other luxury stores along New Bond Street.

Beyond the watch department is a see-through wall that houses the staircase to the first floor and basement. And here at last you see what you might most readily associate with Victorinox - a display of small, red knives. This is in fact piece of double-glazing with a matte metal frame - a screen that runs from the basement up to the first floor. Within it, there are identical Swiss Army Knives arranged in ascending lines with their blades extended in identical formation. The effect is a bit like a see-through Andy Warhol painting where the same image is endlessly repeated.

More to the point, it confirms that you are at last close to seeing the hardware and if you head downstairs, it’s welcome to Swiss Army Knife world. The basement is filled with knives, but even here it is a floor of two halves. The first thing the shopper encounters upon descending the stairs is a very efficient looking kitchen. Kitchen knives are a growth area for Victorinox and the floor’s layout reflects this.

At the heart of the kitchen space, which occupies around a third of the floor, is an ‘island’ of the kind that you find in posh domestic kitchens. This has stainless steel knives contained within Perspex cubes. But the real action is once more around the perimeter where kitchen knives are displayed in open-fronted wardrobe fixtures.

Cut to the quick

Finally, moving away from the scrubbed and Teutonic-looking kitchen area, the Swiss Army Knife department hoves into view. In spite of its basement location, this is the heart of the store and is a destination for shoppers - hence its in-store position.

The scene is set by a part of the perimeter wall that has been covered in shiny red to which the Swiss Army Knife logo has been applied. The same plain wood mid-shop fixtures are used to display knives that run from a simple pocket tool to “the champ” - a penknife almost as broad as it is long and which has 32 functions (blades to you and me - of the ‘getting boy scouts out of horses hooves’ variety). The edge-to-edge glass cabinets that fill the walls have every conceivable type of Swiss Army Knife with alternatives to the familiar red being available for the adventurous.

If, however, the knife of your outdoors dreams is not on view, there is a bespoke service that means you can specify which functions you would like your penknife to have. This is a while-you-wait service and the shopper is allowed to see the knife being assembled within the shop. The small area devoted to this service is akin to a workshop with benches and clamps.

And for those wishing to see how far brand extension can be pushed, it’s worth a trip to the top of the shop. This is the luggage department, filled with bags and suitcases that are of “ballistic” quality - they really are bulletproof. This too is a growth area for Victorinox and the fact that an entire floor has been devoted to the category indicates the importance that is attached to it.

This is a remodelled flagship for the Victorinox brand then - following the same line as the stores in Düsseldorf and Geneva. Hardy says that the shop is about making money, but its flagship status means that this is an advert for the brand as much as a cash generator.

It will undoubtedly have cost a considerable sum to create the new interior - Hardy declines to put a figure to the sum involved - but for fans of the brand, this is something of a must see if you’re in London.