Victorinox sharpens its fashion focus in China

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Despite the brand's premium classification, many of its products still represent a sizable investment for the average shopper. One winter Parka jacket with a fur-lined hood prominently displayed at the Shanghai store retails for around 8,880 yuan.

Karl Elsener launched the company with his mother Victoria in the Swiss town of Ibach in 1884 as a cutlery maker handling orders for the Swiss army. He renamed it in 1921 by adding the suffix "inox" - derived from the French word for "stainless" - to all but the last letter of his mother's name.

The brand's Swiss army knives - identifiable by their red sleeve and iconic cross and shield logo - took a huge hit after 9/11 because a large share of sales came from duty free shops.

When security protocols tightened at airports around the world in the wake of the New York incident, sales plummeted 30 to 40 percent. They have since recovered and the knives are often given as "a valuable gift" in China, Robertson said.

The company churns out almost 30,000 of the knives a day, exports around 7 million to the US alone annually and generates annual sales of 500 million Swiss francs ($560 million), according to a 2011 report by Bloomberg.

Since acquiring rival Wenger SA in 2005, Victorinox again ranks as the sole supplier of multipurpose knives to the Swiss army, with one given to every new recruit. It also supplies the German and other armies.

The fashion line was introduced in the United States in 2001 at the brand's first store in Soho, New York. It took another seven years before it opened a clothing store in London following a series of strategic takeovers from 2003 to 2005.

To ramp up the profile of its fashion line, British designer Christopher Raeburn was brought on board in 2011 as its artistic director.

"At the moment the market in China is very skewed toward our knives, but I want to balance our portfolio more in favor of fashion," said Robertson, adding that 70 percent of its stores in Japan now focus on clothing.

Part of this "balancing" in China entails tapping into social media, a local phenomenon that sits well with the size of Victorinox's operations.

"We're a small brand compared with these luxury groups, so we need to be very focused," she said. "But because we're smaller we can move much faster. For example, we recently conducted a global design test for Swiss army knife covers using local micro-blogging sites."

She said Chinese customers appreciate such localization gestures - some parts of the watches they sell are sourced in China. The company also makes huge efforts to seek out the best materials, for example sourcing wool from Peru.