Weston Jewelers has been serving its Fort Lauderdale customers with a blend of experience and expertise in fine jewellery and high horology delivered with the family-owners’ Floridian hospitality for quarter of a century.
Owner and CEO, Ed Dikes, grew up in the jewelry business working alongside his father, first on Long Island, NY, and later in Miami before opening his own store, with his wife Tracey, in Weston Town Center, a small outdoor shopping district to the west of Fort Lauderdale where the city butts up against the Florida Everglades.
The family, now joined in the business by daughter Danni and son Jesse, have expanded from a single unit mom and pop jeweler into a business running a Rolex-anchored watch and jewelry showroom across the street from their original Weston Town Center home, in addition to a second multibrand and a Hublot boutique inside the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, FL, – a local landmark built in the shape of a guitar.
Clearly a team unafraid to think big, the Dikes family have now unveiled a plan to build one of the biggest watch and jewelry emporiums in the United States, and possibly the world, with a 40,707 square foot standalone building housing 30,500 square feet of retail, the company’s corporate offices and a rooftop café. The project is set to open at the end of 2027.
How did you get started with Weston Jewelers? I understand you are not native Floridians, but moved there from Long Island.
Ed Dikes: Yes, that was back in 1980. I was working in the family jewelry business, first on Long Island, then in Miami, before opening Weston Jewelers in August 2001 with my wife Tracey. We started out as a jeweler with a few brands including Baume & Mercier, John Hardy, Chopard and Montblanc in Weston Town Centre in a small store that was just over 1,000 square feet.
Ed Dikes and wife Tracey
In time, we managed to convince some larger brands like Cartier to join us, which allowed us to expand the store. Within a decade we were working with watch brands including Baume & Mercier, Breitling, Bulgari, Cartier, Chopard, IWC, Hublot, TW Steel, Vacheron Constantin and Zodiac. Today, we have 5,000 square feet in Weston.
And you have expanded beyond Weston to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood resort, southwest of central Fort Lauderdale?
Ed Dikes: That was in 2019. We opened an 1,800 square foot multibrand Weston Jewelers store and then a Hublot boutique in 2022. Across Weston and Hard Rock we represent Rolex, Breitling, Cartier, Chopard, Gucci, G-Shock, Hublot, TAG Heuer, Michele, Mont Blanc, Omega and Tudor. And in jewelry, we have an amazing portfolio including the likes of Chopard, Chanel Fine Jewelry, Gucci, Marco Bicego, Messika, Pasquale Bruni, Rahaminov Diamonds and Roberto Coin.
Danni Dikes: Weston Jewelers was one of the first stores in Weston town center. It was a very new city at the time (its population was only 9,000 when Weston Jewelers opened, rising to over 72,000 today) and we have grown with it. That is why we have built such great relationships there. We have grown up together.
The City of Weston is described as a very affluent location, with some spectacular neighborhoods of multi-million dollar homes. Even so, you wanted to expand closer to the center of Fort Lauderdale?
Ed Dikes: It took us a number of years before we started to look at Fort Lauderdale for a flagship showroom while keeping our Weston showroom as well because it is such a great store and location. We decided to open in the Las Olas area in the heart of Downtown Fort Lauderdale because there is incredible growth there right now. There is going to be a huge St Regis resort and marina – a $2 billion project – that will begin opening next year right down the street from where we are building with a hotel, residences, luxury retail and restaurants. There are also homes valued at $20m to $40m or more cropping up all around that area.
Danni Dikes: We have noticed a number of our clients moving eastwards, and we want to make sure we are there to keep serving them along with everybody in Weston.
Children Danni and Jesse have joined their parents in the business
The sheer scale of what you have revealed on East Las Olas Boulevard is incredible. Can you describe what you are proposing to build?
Ed Dikes: The entire building is 40,707 square feet. It will include our corporate offices, a little over 30,500 square feet of retail over three floors and a 3,000 square foot café on the top floor and rooftop that will feel to customers like it is part of the retail experience. We want to make it a bit like the Dior Café you may have seen in the Miami Design District.
Rolex is going to have around 1,100 square feet on the first floor. The rest of the first floor will be a multibrand watch and area. Second floor will be all jewelry and we will have a champagne bar. The third floor is like a men’s floor where we will have a pre-owned watch area, an official Rolex CPO area, an accredited Rolex Service Center, a multibrand watch and jewelry service area, and we are also intending to show a bunch of microbrands up there as well.
You have locked in Rolex already. I guess you would not even have been able to contemplate a project on this scale without Rolex as an anchor brand?
Ed Dikes: One thousand percent. We have been working with Rolex for a number of years and it has been an incredible partnership so we are excited to be working with them in Fort Lauderdale and with all the brands we are bringing onboard.
When WatchPro first broke the news about this project, you said it would be two years before it is complete. Given that length of time, there will invariably be plenty of negotiations about which brands will be joining you, but are there any others you can tell us about right now?
Ed Dikes: I can tell you we will definitely also have Omega and a few Richemont brands, but I would rather not mention any others at this stage. I would prefer to wait until I have agreements in writing. David Yurman, which I would describe as the Rolex of jewelry brands here in the US, is also confirmed for the first floor.
How would you describe the watch and jewelry scene in Fort Lauderdale? I know you have the Aventura Mall to the south of you, and you are not that far from Miami and Palm Beach.
Ed Dikes: There is really not that much competition in this area. It is a really untapped market and growing at an incredible pace and it is now being described as the Florida Riviera. We are kind of in the middle of the region that stretches from Boca and Palm beach to the north and Miami to the south. They just built a huge marina that can take boats of up to 300 feet, so you can imagine the wealth that will be bringing in. We have Jeff Bezos and all those other billionaires parking their boats there.
I did notice from your architectural renderings that you will have a jetty outside your store so people can arrive by boat.
Danni Dikes: Yes and no. You do need to go under a bridge to get from the marina to our store so it will not allow a very tall boat, but a Riva boat will fit perfectly underneath. I see us providing our own boat so that a romantic couple can arrive that way or go for a cruise.
Tell us a little more about how this project is coming together. Are you building it yourself and will you own the building?
Ed Dikes: Yes, we will own it. Our project manager Michael Harrison, who is a brilliant guy who I met about five years ago, told us you have to own. He convinced us that is the right thing to do and I am more than happy to take that advice so that Tracey and I leave a legacy for our children.
Are you aiming to create a showroom with several branded boutiques connected together, or more of an open space where Weston Jewelers is the primary brand?
Ed Dikes: Each floor will have a different look and feel, but we want it to feel like an open, harmonious space that flows from one area to another and is not overwhelmed by each brand’s identity.
How are you going to create intimacy within such large spaces? It must be important for your clients to have a level of privacy when they come into a store like this.
Ed Dikes: We will have a lot of private rooms and smaller intimate spaces.
Weston Jewelers Hard Rock boutique
Danni Dikes: We really want it to feel comfortable and homely, not like walking into a mall. People can come in and sit at a bar to chat with one of our associates or go into a VIP room. There will be so many options.
The terraces you have all around the building look great and will take advantage of the year-round sunshine you have. It is valuable to be able to look at watches and jewelry under natural light, and your customers will be able to do this in secure spaces.
Ed Dikes: Exactly. We are really thinking about the experience in everything we are doing with the design of the building. That is what people want today. People will pay a little bit more if they are getting an incredible experience. They travel all the time creating memories, and that is what we want people visiting us in Fort Lauderdale to enjoy doing with us. This is true for people who live in the area and the explosion in tourists that are coming here now. We want it to be an iconic destination.
Do you have a special name for the project or the building when it opens?
Ed Dikes: To be determined. We have a couple of ideas, but for now it is Weston Jewelers Las Olas.
Have you broken ground yet?
Ed Dikes: Not yet. We completed the purchase of the land a few months ago. We hope to break ground at the end of March. Then we will be working towards the whole project being open by December 1, 2027.
You must have confidence that Rolex will still be working with partners for the long term. There is a lot of chatter right now about expanding its own retail through Bucherer. I do not personally think that is going to happen, and Rolex has said it is not going to happen, but I know of a lot of retailers that are still nervous about their future relationships.
Ed Dikes: I do not believe it will go that way either. There may be fewer doors, but I think they believe in working with the best ADs long into the future. It is an incredible brand. We invest in them and they invest in us.
How are you navigating the current uncertainty around tariffs on Swiss watches and other goods like jewelry coming from other European countries?
Ed Dikes: I just received a shipment from Italy and could not believe the cost, and that is a country where the tariff is only 15%. I also received a piece of machinery from Germany, again at 15%, but it is pretty sobering to see that tariff on top. What we have seen is that a lot of brands are absorbing some of the cost and I expect this to be the same for Swiss watchmakers, whether we are at 39% or 15%. As a jeweler, the tariff is not the only thing we watch. There is the gold price and exchange rates. It is an interesting time.