The art of watch collection is a booming passion that blends craftsmanship and heritage, and provides the ability to express personal style. These complicated machines embody art, engineering marvels, and become heirlooms; yet, despite the rise of collectors, a bigger nagging question remains: where can they be kept? Too often, watches could end up in dresser drawers or in an exposed winder on the wardrobe, leaving them open for theft by anyone ranging from household staff to a burglar. The traditional storage alternative would be a hulking free-standing safe located in an out-of-the-way location in one’s home, like the basement, solving for security but killing the joy of easy accessibility when dressing for the day, and the ability to readily admire one’s collection.
It’s in this gap between protection and practicality that BlumSafe, founded by Robert Blum, found its purpose. Blum spent his career in law and then finance, and began BlumSafe as a hobby. After losing a watch to theft by a housekeeper in his own home ten years ago, Blum set out to reinvent the idea of a safe. Based in North Carolina, BlumSafe designs and manufactures in the U.S. a range of built-in safes, drawer winders, and related concealment furniture, seamlessly blending them into everyday life, turning security into something convenient, customizable, and even beautiful. Several of BlumSafe’s products are patented or patent-pending.
“When your safe is not accessible, you’re not going to change your watches every day,” he says. “But if it’s in your dressing room or bedroom, conveniently located at torso level, it becomes part of your wardrobe. It becomes an intimate part of your life, as a watch or jewelry is intended to be.”
Unlike large free-standing safes, BlumSafe’s major differentiator is its built-in design. The company offers secure safes that fit seamlessly into walls, cabinetry, or closets, making security more ergonomic and discreet. “Steel is obviously important to security. But a thousand-pound free-standing safe can still be cracked,” Blum says. “The offsetting benefit of a wall safe is its concealability – if they can’t find it, they can’t touch it. That safety can be unbeatable.”
Initially, BlumSafe offered its products online to a higher-end clientele of watch and jewelry collectors, but over time, BlumSafe has also attracted luxury homebuilders, cabinetmakers, and closet companies who see the product as solving a problem no one else in the market has addressed.
Having started with conventional steel door safes five years ago, he introduced a new, somewhat counterintuitive product, the display door safe. This product evolution came from an unexpected source, his son, who gave him the insight, “Dad, people like to look at their stuff and show it off.” Initially, Blum pushed back. “I said that defies the whole idea of security, but decided to give it a try, provided we could still offer a level of protection.”
BlumSafe introduced display-door safes, crafted with tough, half-inch polycarbonate windows, the same material often used in bulletproof glass – far from the thin, easily breakable acrylic sheeting typically seen in most display cases. These safes can allow collectors to admire their pieces while still ensuring protection. Additionally, clients can also opt for “smart glass” or switch film doors that shift from opaque to transparent with the press of a button, giving them the choice for when they wish to keep their collections private. “Today, approximately half our sales are display doors,” Blum shares.
Drawing on its roots, BlumSafe also offers clever concealment accessories for its safes, like hinged or sliding mirrors and smart boards. One of their designs is a custom wood cabinet that conceals a BlumSafe that rises out of the cabinet by electronic command on a modified TV lift, which Blum notes is straight out of an action-spy film. This degree of concealment helps to establish unwavering peace of mind and security.
And for those watch collectors who don’t have the room for a safe, BlumSafe now offers a patent-pending watch winder array for concealment in a drawer.
All BlumSafe products are modular and user customizable with interchangeable watch winders, drawers, and shelves. According to Blum, “When I started this company, I had only six watches, but knew that over time, my collection would grow and my needs would change. We designed our products to accommodate that requirement.”
And unlike many competitors, BlumSafes are made in the US. All this comes at a fraction of the cost of traditional high-end watch and jewelry safes, which often prioritize luxury finishes over practicality. “We focus on giving you attractive functionality at a reasonable price, but not necessarily with all the leathers and wood finishes of usually Chinese-built competitor products, which often sell for multiples more in price,” Blum says.
Ultimately, Blum’s mission is less about selling steel boxes than it is about reshaping how people interact with their valuables. Safes, once hidden away, can now become part of daily life, secure, accessible, and even enjoyable. “People come to BlumSafe for several things, and protection is part of it. What we are doing is making it easier for people to live with their most treasured possessions, stress-free.”
