Shopping for watches in Macau

Well this is not really accurate as I did not visit the entire Macao (aka Macau), but just the strip called the Cotai Strip. The Cotai Strip I believe is much like the strip in Las Vegas or the soon to be open Casino cum Entertainment strip in Singapore. I visited The Venetian at the strip. It was an interesting experience to say the least. The Venetian is a huge complex consisting of a casino, a hotel, a shopping mall, and everything else under the sun. They also have Cirque Du Soleil performing Zaia as a permanent feature.

However that is not our focus. Our focus is watches. Well, there are a huge number of watch shops or boutique there in The Venetian. I would love to be able to take pictures of all the shops there but some, in fact most of the shops there are very sticky about getting their shops photographs.

The first shop one comes across is the ever famous DFS (Duty Free Shop?). It is also known as The Galleria. They carry about 30 (if not more) well known Swiss and Japanese brands under one roof. It is a big store and have a large space for watches.

Then you have the fashion brands with their watches; Crocodile, agnes b., CK, Diesel, Esprit, Fila, FCUK (yes they have watches as well), Guess, Levi's, Nautica, Nike, Tommy Hilfiger amongst others.

Next we have the boutiques, and there are many. We can find the following:

Blancpain

Boucheron

Breil

Bvlgari

Carl F. Bucherer

Charriol

Chopard

Folli Follie

Fossil

Franck Muller

Glashutte Original

Jaquet Droz

Montblanc

Omega

Piaget

Rado

Richard Mille

Swatch

Tiffany & Co

Tissot

Toy Watch

U-Boat

That is plenty. Then we have the 'normal' watch shops that sells a number of brands like Tourneau, which carries amongst others, Breitling, Chopard, Gucci, Hublot, IWC, Jaeger Le Coulture, Leon Hatot, Milus, Movado, Panerai, Porsche Design and Ulysse Nardin. Then there is The Atrium Department Store that carries more main stream Japanese brands like Seiko, Citizen (and it's subsidiaries offerings like Valgary, Independent, etc) and Casio. They also carry fashion brands.

The 3 shops that I was interested in was Tourneau, Toy Watch and U-Boat. However, I managed to find Toy Watch and U-Boat (the place is huge, the mall has 3 canals with Gondola rides). The Toy Shop boutique was interesting as I wanted to see what all the fascination with the watch was about. I have to say that I cannot come to the same conclusion.

The U-Boat store was another story. I was reading an article about their watches being the current flavour of the Austrain Oak and the Italian Stallion. So getting to see the watches was indeed fun. They (U-Boat) carried almost all the watches in their collection. They also carry their sister brand, Welder. The store was very nice and the sales people was just as nice. Basically you can try all the watches they have there. I do like the U-Boat watches. Welder watches are not that bad either.

The U-Boat Boutique

Overall it was an interesting experience as you can see about 50 brands under 1 roof. You will need about half a day there just to visit all the watch shops as they are all over the place. As for prices, some offers 10% discount and others as much as 30% off. As for me, it was a good day out as my main intention of going to Macao was to watch Zaia.