As of it acquisition by Fossil (East) Limited on April 2, 2012, Skagen Designs, Ltd.operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of Fossil, listing, as of May 1, 2015, Charlotte Jorst as Co-founder and President, Henrik Jorst as Co-Founder, and Steen Albrechtslund as Group Managing Director.
The company began in the home of its co-founders in New York, moving first to Lake Tahoe, then Reno, Nevada. Its current operations underFossil are overseen from Richardson, Texas, near Dallas, in the United States. As of May 2015, the company is reported to have additional U.S. offices, as well as ones in Denmark and Hong Kong, and concept stores in Japan (Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya) and Taiwan (Taipei).
Founded in 1989, the company was the brainchild of Henrik and Charlotte Jorst, who had moved from Denmark to New York in 1986 when Henrik was appointed U.S. sales manager for Danish brewery. The couple decided to establish their own business as U.S. representative for a Danish manufacturer of corporate branded business gift watches, and for exclusive Jacob Jensen designer watches.
After locating the Danish-owned clock and watch manufacturer, Comtech Watches, a supplier that could manufacture watches at a lower price through its Hong Kong factory, the Jorsts began designing their own corporate watches, which they showed at a corporate gift fair in New York 1991. At that fair, they were encouraged by several retailers to market the watches under their own brand, which they chose as Skagen Denmark,Skagen (/’skeɪ-ən/) for the Danish fishing village (and peninsula) of that name. The company logo symbolizes the meeting of the Skagerrak and the Kattegat bodies of sea water at Skagen, Denmark’s northernmost settlement and port, in Jutland.
Watches 