Uhren-Bijouterie B & S Portoyan

Uhren-Bijouterie B & S Portoyan sits in the middle of Richterswil, on the left, or eastern, shore of Lake Zurich, exactly the kind of small-town shop this category exists to surface. Bedros and Seta Portoyan took over an already-established jewellery business on Poststrasse 29 in 1998, a shop the site itself names as previously trading under Grünenbach, and have run it together ever since. They are of Armenian descent, speak 6 languages between them, and had run a watch and jewellery business of their own in Beirut for 17 years before that. In Switzerland Bedros first worked as an employee before he and Seta made the jump into self-employment again. In 2018 the family marked the shop's 20th anniversary with a client tennis event, a small but concrete sign of how long this particular ownership has actually been trading.

Bedros Portoyan is a diploma-qualified watchmaker with 50 years in the trade, including 7 years as technical director of a Swiss watch factory before he and Seta took over in Richterswil. Seta trained commercially, then added marketing and business-management education specific to jewellers along with advisory seminars on gems and watches. The shop's own pages credit her with a particular skill at pearl knotting and with regularly redesigning the shop window. Their sons help with the more modern parts of the business: Nishan handles IT and Steve does the graphic design, a detail worth knowing given how dated the public-facing website itself still looks.

What you get

The shop runs on two sides that meet in the middle, watches and jewellery. On its own site, the watch side displays Rado, Tissot, Certina, Citizen, Zeno, Charriol and Maurice Lacroix. That undersells the actual reach a little: OMEGA's own official store locator and Tissot's own official service-centre finder both list Uhren-Bijouterie B & S Portoyan in Richterswil directly, and Maurice Lacroix and Hamilton both list it as an authorised retailer on their own store-finder pages too, independently of anything Portoyan's own website says. For a shop this size, that is an unusually wide spread of international brand relationships to have earned and kept.

The jewellery side runs under three headings on the shop's own product page. HAPPINESS Trauringe is a dedicated wedding-ring line, linked straight out to the brand's own site at happiness.ch. Solitär is the shop's term for single-stone diamond rings, the natural starting point for anyone here shopping specifically for an engagement ring. Memoiren is a third, memorial or keepsake jewellery category the site doesn't explain any further. Sitting alongside these are separate Diamanten and Perlen categories, the pearl side broken down into freshwater, South Sea and Tahiti pearls plus clasps, a useful detail for anyone repairing or restringing a knotted strand rather than buying new.

What stands out

The real differentiator here is the shop's own watch atelier. By its own description, it's one of the few jewellers on the left shore of Lake Zurich to run one, fitted with what it calls modern testing equipment, so watches are adjusted, serviced and repaired on the premises rather than shipped away to the manufacturer. The shop also keeps a customer file specifically so a repeat fault doesn't have to be re-diagnosed from scratch, offers free written quotes for larger repair jobs, and handles small ones, a battery or a strap, on the spot. It also takes in inherited pieces for appraisal, valuing an unusual heirloom and, where it makes sense, getting an old watch running again or repairing a delicate piece or a pearl necklace rather than simply pointing a customer toward a replacement.

How it's organised

The website itself is a legacy design, a fixed 800-pixel table layout with image-based navigation and no mobile viewport tag anywhere in its code, so on a phone it renders at full desktop width rather than adapting to the screen. The main navigation runs Über uns, Team, Produkte, Dienstleistung, Events and Kontakt, with Produkte splitting into Uhren, Schmuck, Diamanten and Perlen, plus an external Diamantkunde, or diamond-knowledge, link. That last one currently returns a bare PHP fatal error rather than any content, evidently an old WordPress install nobody has patched since a PHP version upgrade broke it. None of the product pages list prices; each one closes with the same line inviting a non-binding inquiry by contact form, email or phone. There's no shopping cart or checkout anywhere on the site, so any purchase here starts as a conversation rather than a transaction.

What an international buyer should know

The site itself is German only, with no English toggle on any page. Given the Portoyans' own background, Armenian heritage, 17 years running a business in Beirut, and 6 languages between them, English service is plausible, but the website simply doesn't say so either way, so it's worth confirming by phone or email before booking a consultation if German isn't an option for you. Because no prices, lead times or resizing terms are published anywhere on the site, this isn't a shop where you can compare figures in advance: everything from a commission's turnaround to a duty question on shipping a piece abroad has to be asked for directly. The shop's own working method, an in-house atelier that already handles delicate repairs and pearl work, suggests a ring resizing request would sit comfortably within what it already does, even though the site never spells that out as a service on its own. There's no online store to order from either, so anyone buying while living in or just visiting Zurich would need to collect in person or arrange something by email first.

The shop itself is at Poststrasse 29, 8805 Richterswil, with a direct line on 044 784 03 23 and email running through info@portoyan.ch. Richterswil sits on a direct train line from Zürich Hauptbahnhof, well under an hour away, which makes a single afternoon visit realistic without a car. It's closed Mondays and Tuesdays, open Wednesday to Friday from 9:00 to 12:00 and 14:00 to 18:00, and Saturday from 9:00 to 16:00, hours that suit a weekend trip better than a weekday lunch break.

How it compares

Several shops in this Lake Shores and Oberland grouping are one-person, appointment-only ateliers, which is part of why the category exists separately from the city centre in the first place. Portoyan is a different shape of business within that same category. It keeps regular posted store hours rather than working strictly by appointment, and its brand relationships, an authorised OMEGA and Tissot service point, an authorised Maurice Lacroix and Hamilton retailer, give it a wider name-brand footprint than a solo goldsmith is likely to carry. It also isn't a fourth-generation business the way some neighbouring shops in this group are. This is the second generation of one family, with Bedros and Seta as the founders of the current era and their sons Nishan and Steve now supporting it from the IT and design side rather than the bench.

Who it suits

This fits someone who wants a normal walk-in shop rather than a private, appointment-only atelier, and who might want a watch serviced or an heirloom appraised at the same visit as buying a ring. It also suits someone comfortable emailing or calling ahead for specifics, since almost nothing about cost or timing is published anywhere on the site. It's a weaker fit for someone who wants to compare prices online first, or who needs guaranteed English service confirmed in writing before making the trip out to Richterswil.

The verdict

Uhren-Bijouterie B & S Portoyan is a real, long-running family business with more outside validation than its own dated website lets on. The couple has run it since 1998, marked 20 years there in 2018, and its watch-service credentials are confirmed directly by OMEGA and Tissot rather than just claimed on its own pages. The HAPPINESS Trauringe line covers wedding rings, and Solitär is a straightforward starting point for an engagement diamond, backed by an in-house atelier that can also handle the servicing and small repairs that follow a purchase for years afterward. The site's age, a broken diamond-guide link and no mobile layout, is a fair caveat, but it's a caveat about the website rather than the workshop behind it, and a phone call or a visit during its Wednesday-to-Saturday hours resolves it easily.