The Swiss luxury watch brand Romain Gauthier is a global brand with watches known for their eye-catching design, innovative internal workings and an extremely high quality handcrafted finish. The layout of their new point of sale in the Takashimaya Nihonbashi shopping centre in Tokyo and Nagoya was entrusted to CCHE which developed, custom-made furniture expressing the brand’s values through a very strong identity within a very tight timeframe.
Located in the prestigious Takashimaya Watch Maison in Tokyo, this sales area is the first space to be entirely dedicated to the Romain Gauthier brand. The challenge was to define a visual identity for the brand that could be applied to all its future boutiques.
Despite the fact the project is far from home, Romain Gauthier wanted to use Swiss companies to highlight the expertise of the brand's country of origin and to establish relationships with companies they can work with again for future boutiques in other parts of the world.
The brand's slogan, "the evolution of tradition", served as a guideline in the project’s creative process. Thus, the central table in macassar ebony evokes Louis XV furniture, simplified to just retain the essentials (removing ornaments, flush-mounting of various elements, etc.). It also features details borrowed from the brand's world. For example, theprofile of the edge of the tray can be found on the back of certain Romain Gauthier watches. The same approach is in terms of the techniques used: the wooden furniture is handcrafted using traditional processes, while the back wall, depicting a relief of the Vallée de Joux, is engraved infive blocks of resin using a patented CNC cutting process, creating a precision of 30 million points per block.
The culture of collaboration is part of CCHE's DNA and is based on the creation of multidisciplinary teams in which each actor brings his expertise at the right time and on the right scale. See the video « Workflow Rhino-ArchiCAD-Parametric-Rendering »
This shop, the second one created for Romain Gauthier, is located in the Hassin shop in Nagoya. It is a more compact version of the pilot shop in Tokyo. Only the wall element remains, but it has been reworked to integrate sliding shelves for displaying watches and includes integrated handbag hooks.
