LOS ANGELES — It can be tough for any small business to think outside the box, let alone about the box itself.

That's how Simon Wolf's fifth-generation family business began in Germany 172 years ago. His great-great-grandfather, Philip Wolf, struggled as a silversmith until he realized that the presentation boxes he made for his metal work were what his customers really wanted.

Now, West Los Angeles-based Wolf Designs is thriving at the edge of another market. The company is capitalizing on resurgent sales of expensive and complicated automatic watches that can cost more than a luxury car.

But Simon Wolf isn't selling watches. It's all about the box again. Wolf's containers cater to the special needs of fine timepieces — the kind that aren't powered by batteries.

Such watches usually run on an interior rotor that converts arm and wrist motion into the energy that winds the mainspring. Take the watch off, however, and it stops, usually within 24 hours — a prospect that makes watch aficionados wince. That's because the intricate contraptions could be ruined by clumsy winding. Such watches can also be difficult to restart.

Many owners prevent stoppages by using a winder, a small box with a rotator that spins the watch enough to keep its mainspring charged. Wolf noticed that most had a flaw: They never stopped rotating, which could damage the timepieces.

"The watchmakers figure you go to sleep at night or you'd go mad. You lie down or take it off for 12 to 15 hours," Wolf said. "Watches cannot be overwound that way. I thought, 'Let's design our own module, develop our own technology and give it a sleep cycle.' "

Wolf's designs use a patented work-sleep cycle, enabling the mainspring to wind down as watchmakers originally intended.

Wolf decided to enter the watch-rotator market in 1999 even though he was doing well selling jewelry boxes and other gift accessories to department and jewelry stores. But, Wolf said that business was being squeezed by the shrinking gap between the cost of making a product and its potential sale price. What he wanted was a product that would be insulated from those challenges, at least for a while.

"Business is all about what is new and what is just around the corner. You can't see it yet, but you figure it's there," said Wolf, 43, who was born in the countryside south of London. He attended a boarding school until the age of 17 but gave up on college after six months, having determined "that they were trying to teach about business but didn't know a thing about running one."

His first venture into the winding business was a flop. The third-party motor he tried was so unreliable that he was forced to refund the cost of each winder, he said. They were also basic motors with only an on and off switch.

By 2002, he had patented a winder, called Module 2.0, that operated on a 24-hour cycle. It did 600 turns over a six-hour period to mimic a typical day's use and then shut down for the next 18 hours. He also signed a contract with a Chinese manufacturer that agreed to work solely for Wolf Designs, ensuring that his business wouldn't be shared with potential competitors.

Wolf's timing was impeccable. The U.S. market for ritzy devices that do nothing but tell time is thriving, and there is even faster growth among emerging middle- and upper-income consumers in countries such as China and India, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry.

"There has been an awful lot of growth in self-made entrepreneurs, people learning how to be wealthy as they go. One of the hallmarks of that, besides expensive vehicles and fashion, is a fine, handmade watch with a lot of history behind it," said Andrew Clayton, group director of research for CurtCo Media Labs, publisher of magazines including Worth and Robb Report.

The value of Swiss watch imports in the U.S. grew more than 7 percent from 2005 through 2007, according to the Swiss watch federation, to $261 million from $243.4 million.

Sales to China rose nearly 31 percent, from $50.6 million to $66 million during the same period, and climbed nearly 55 percent in India, to $8.3 million from $5.3 million. The rise was nearly 28 percent, to $1.7 billion, among the 30 nations covered in the watch export report.

Sales of Wolf's five rotator models, which include a modular form that can add winders to fit the size of the watch collection, have grown to more than 90,000 in 2007 from 2,000 to 3,000 in 1999, he said. A typical retail price for one of his winders is $195. In 2007, company revenue totaled around $30 million, he said, up about 10 percent from the previous year.

Wolf said his company has about 30 employees in California, New York and Hong Kong, with most based in a newly acquired 5,000-square-foot design studio and showroom in West Los Angeles.

Wolf provides private-label watch rotators for Raymond Weil, Corum, Movado, Neiman Marcus and other expensive watchmakers.

But jewelry stores say the watch rotators they sell to customers aren't the only reason they do business with Wolf Designs.

"Their customer service makes us look good. If there is a problem with one of their boxes, they just come and replace it," said Beverly Hills Watch Co. owner Armen Eskijian, who sells high-end watch brands ranging from $5,000 to $650,000.

When Chronologic, a Beverly Hills watch and jewelry store, received a request from a television producer for a custom closet display and rotator set for his collection of 48 timepieces, owner Aaron Grunberg said he called Wolf Designs.

"They are so accommodating. Wolf and one of his engineers drove to the producer's house and did the measurements and the design and built it on short notice," said Grunberg.

"He has accounts that are a lot larger than ours, but he did that for us."

Wolf says he does that to build loyalty, no matter what the size of the account.

"If I make it easier for them," Wolf said, "they will always come back to me."