Sahak Fine Swiss Jewellery

Sahak Fine Swiss Jewellery is an independent goldsmith and watchmaker at Limmatquai 24, in a building the company's own history page calls the Haus zum Finken, on the river-facing side of Zurich's old town. It designs and makes custom engagement rings and wedding bands on site, rather than selling pieces cast elsewhere and stamped with its name after the fact. It isn't a chain outpost or a licensed brand grafted onto someone else's workshop. The goldsmith whose name is on the door, Sahak Demirci, owns the business and still designs in it: the team page credits him with 20 years of professional experience as a goldsmith and designer, and he officially founded the company in 2010, a year after he had already opened a small first atelier in Winterthur, in 2009. He's also co-president of the Verband Zürcher Goldschmiede und Uhrmacher, the VZGU, Zurich's trade association for goldsmiths and watchmakers, which is a small but real sign that this is someone embedded in the city's craft trade rather than a designer label that rented a good address.

That double identity, goldsmith and watchmaker, is written into the shop's own tagline ("Ihre Goldschmiede & Uhrmacher") and shows up in the range on the shelves. Alongside bespoke jewellery, Sahak retails Aerowatch, a family-owned Swiss watchmaker that has built watches since 1910 out of Saignelégier in the Jura, across ladies', men's and pocket watch lines. If you and your partner want to leave one appointment with a ring commissioned and a watch chosen, this is one of the few workshops in the category set up for both in the same visit. Worth knowing before you go: nothing on the Aerowatch pages here mentions repair or servicing, only sale, so treat the watchmaker side of the business as a retail line rather than an in-house repair bench unless you confirm otherwise by phone.

Who actually does the work

A commission here isn't handed to an anonymous design team. The site names the people at the bench. Anicia Bombo runs the workshop as its lead goldsmith. Mario Zimmermann is a goldsmith who also sets stones, engraves, and trains apprentices as the shop's Lehrmeister. Anja Bänninger combines goldsmithing with sales advice. Marketing is run by Sophie Guermann, who also carries gemology credentials from GIA and SFGZ, useful if you want someone in the room who can talk precisely about a stone rather than just its price. There's an apprentice too, Ilyas Garulin, learning the trade on the job. And in a detail that says something about the size and tone of the place, the team page also lists a "Chef Entertainment Officer": a dog named Ace von der Saanefelsen. None of that is filler. It tells you a custom order here moves between a handful of named specialists rather than a rotating, anonymous staff.

The process itself follows the shape you'd expect from a workshop that makes rather than assembles: a first conversation about what you want, a sketch, then the piece is worked at the goldsmith's bench on site. Engraving is done either by hand or by laser, and stone setting and polishing happen in the same workshop. What the site doesn't publish is a price list or a typical turnaround time for a custom ring, so if you're working toward a proposal date, bring that constraint to the first appointment rather than assuming an answer from the website.

Fifteen years on one street, after several others

The business moved more than once before landing where it is now, and the company's own chronicle spells out the route in detail rather than leaving it vague. Demirci opened his first atelier in Winterthur in 2009, then registered the company as a sole proprietorship, Faktor S Design & Goldschmiede, opening a shop-floor location in Winterthur-Seen in April 2010. Two years later, in November 2012, the workshop moved again, to Obergasse 7 in Winterthur's old town. In September 2015 it rebranded as Faktor S Goldschmiede & Chronometrie, and around the same time launched a dedicated line, Sahak Unique Pink Jewellery, which the company describes as the first jewellery collection in Europe made specifically for same-sex couples, and frames on its own page as designable "without needing to explain yourself, regardless of gender pairing." A second, Zurich old-town location opened on 25 August 2016 under a restructured entity, Sahak Jewellery AG. After rebuilding the Winterthur shop following a fire, the business added Aerowatch to its range in 2017, and put a website and online shop live in 2018. In 2020 the two locations were merged into the single Limmatquai 24 address, and in 2025 the company marked its 15th anniversary since that 2010 founding with a rebrand. That's a longer and more specific history than "family business since [year]," and you can trace it step by step on the workshop's own site rather than take it on faith.

Rings, watches, and everything else on the bench

Engagement rings and wedding bands sit inside a wider catalogue: earrings, bracelets, necklaces, men's jewellery, and heraldic jewellery, meaning signet rings engraved with a family crest or monogram. That last category matters if you're bringing a stone, or a coat of arms, over from another country and want it reworked into something wearable rather than kept in a drawer. Beyond bespoke work, the site also organises 15 named in-house collections (Alice, Arcade, Blossom, Heritage and Masterpieces among them) that you can browse as finished pieces while a custom order is still on the bench. On materials, the workshop's own craft page says it works in precious metals and gemstones from what it calls a sustainable background, without naming a specific certification scheme, so treat that as the workshop's own standard rather than an audited one. The blog runs longer explainer pieces on individual gemstones and where they're mined, tanzanite and imperial topaz among the ones profiled, which is more editorial content than most single-address goldsmiths bother to publish.

What an international buyer in Zurich should know

The one real caveat here for someone new to the city: the website is German only. There's no English version (the /en/ path returns a 404), and no page states whether English is spoken in person, so if your German is still shaky, it's worth calling ahead on +41 44 260 88 80 to say so before you book a first appointment, rather than finding out at the counter. The shop itself is easy to find, on the Limmatquai in the old town, open Tuesday to Friday 10:00 to 12:15 and 13:30 to 18:00, and Saturday 10:00 to 17:00, closed Monday, so plan around the midday break rather than a straight-through lunch hour. Nothing on the site addresses resizing after you've left Switzerland, import duty if you're shipping a finished ring abroad, or what happens if you relocate before a commission is collected, so raise all three directly at the first meeting rather than assuming an answer either way.

None of that undercuts what's actually on offer. This is a small, named, long-running workshop that still makes its own pieces on its own bench, with a gemologist and a trained engraver on staff, and a founder who has spent 20 years in the trade and now sits on the local goldsmiths' and watchmakers' association board. For a ring you want made rather than picked off a shelf, that mix of longevity, in-house production, and a real name behind the vise is exactly what this category exists to find, and a German-only website is a small enough hurdle to clear with one phone call before you book.