Specialist jewellery tool supplier Cape Watch recently celebrated 50 years in the Central City.
Cape Watch has called the Central City home since it first opened its doors in 1962. Then the store was located in Burg Street and the mechanical watch industry was booming in Cape Town. In 1974 the LCD screen revolutionised the watch trade and Cape Watch started focusing more on the supply of tools and equipment to local jewellery makers. These precision tools, often miniature in size, soon attracted the interest of the local hobby and electronics markets and today Cape Watch is known as a specialist tool supply store as well as a specialist in diamond weighing and grading.
The store has relocated three times, from Burg Street to St George’s Mall and later to Long Street, before finding a home in its present location on Church Street where it has been operating for more than 15 years.
Ian Smith, otherwise known as Reggie, has been working for Cape Watch for 27 years. “Back when I started about 90% of our trade was for mechanical watch parts, we would supply watchmakers in many other parts of the country and in Africa too by postal order – sometimes we had to make three trips to the post office in one day. Today it’s different, everything is computerised and we mostly supply hobbyists. I have also seen town change a lot, when we were on Long Street it was much quieter then; now it is much busier.”