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T of et EN ze rk ES l si ma PR ea ss r i e w Th e S th

Chapter

From Mars to Venus, Europa Star magazine delivers premium information about the fascinating world of watches. Its two folios Time.Business & Time.Keeper are circulated in more than 170 countries.

Europa Star is made possible by a team of passionate people and a network of incredible contributors.

Philippe Maillard Pierre Maillard Serge Maillard

TIME.BUSINESS

Joe Thompson Fabrice Mugnier Olivier Müller Fabrice Eschmann David Chokron

Dominique Fléchon

Pierre-Yves Schmid Oliver Williams

D. Malcolm Lakin

Piers Schmidt Ollivier Broto

Joël A. Grandjean Mr. E

Laurence Janin

Marianne Bechtel

Nathalie Glattfelder

Winston Chesterfield

Véronique Zorzi

Jocelyne Bailly Catherine Giloux

Jill Metcalfe

Alexis Sgouridis

Illustrations: ‘Britain In Space’ documents Britain’s thriving space industry and history.

James Ball aka ‘Docubyte’ is a photographic artist living and working in London. Using subtle post-production techniques his works fuse technology, history and colour. www.docubyte.co.uk

Adidas 21 Apple 10, 18, 21, 24, 25, 34, 52, 65 Armani 10, 14, 21 Audemars Piguet 51, 52 Bell & Ross 4 Bering 21 Blancpain 4 Breitling 52 Bulgari 14 Burberry 21 Casio 14, 33, 51 Cartier 51, 52, 66 Chaps 21 Citizen 51, 52 Concord 21 Cluse 21 Coach 12, 21 Corum 66 Daniel Wellington 10, 17, 21, 51 Diesel 21 DKNY 21 Dolce & Gabbana 48 Ebel 21 Esprit 10 ETA 15, 30, 32 Eterna 66 Fitbit 21, 52 Flik Flak 10, 32 Fossil Group 8, 9, 10, 18, 21, 28, 34, 35, 36, 37, 51, 52 Frédérique Constant 19 Garmin 52 Gc 21 Gucci 14, 28, 29, 42, 44, 45 Guess 21, 28, 46, 47 H. Moser & Cie 52, 56 Hamilton 4 Hublot 14 Hugo Boss 10, 12, 21, 28, 41 Ice-Watch 21 IWC 52 Juicy Couture 21 Karl Lagerfeld 21 Kate Spade 21 Komono 21 Laco 4 Lacoste 21 Locman 4 Longines 4, 51, 52 LVMH 55, 56 Marc Jacobs 21

TIME.KEEPER Maurice Lacroix 13 Michael Kors 21, 35 Michel Herbelin 4 Michele 21 Misfit 21 Montblanc 18 Movado Group 9, 12, 21, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 51 MunichTime COVER III MVMT 10, 21 Nautica 21 Nixon 21 Oris 4 Omega 4, 52 Opex 21 Patek Philippe 51, 52 Piaget 51, 52 Rebecca Minkoff 21 Relic 21 Richemont 51 Rolex 4, 14, 51, 52, 64, COVER IV Roskopf 10 Salvatore Ferragamo 21 Samsung 10 Scuderia Ferrari 21 Seiko 4, 51, 52 Sellita 8 Skagen 21, 35, 36 Swatch 10, 21, 28, 30, 31, 32, 52 Swatch Group 18, 30, 37, 51 TAG Heuer 4, 17, 51, 52, 59 Timex 21, 28 Timex Group 21, 42, 43, 44, 45 Tissot 5, 10, 52, 59 Titan 10 Tommy Hilfiger 12, 21 Tory Burch 21 Triwa 21 Tudor 4, 52 Urban Jürgensen 11, 17 Vacheron Constantin 51 Versace 21 Versus 21 ViennaTime 57 Welder 49 Zenith 4 Zeon 14, 37

A. Lange & Söhne 66, 68 Ab Aeterno 78 Armin Strom 61 Ateliers deMonaco 49 Audemars Piguet 24, 32, 33, 74 Blancpain 42 Breguet 43, 68, 88 Breitling 22 Bulova 22 Bulgari 46, 62 Carl F. Bucherer COVER I, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 Cartier 41, 68, 74 Casio 24, 25 Century 51 Chanel COVER II, 3, 48 Citizen 22 Corum 90 de Grisogono 36, 37 Delma 18 Dior 38 Eberhard & Co 66 ETA 16, 20 Fabergé 14, 15 Fendi 39 Frédérique Constant 50 F.P. Journe 22, 71 Girard-Perregaux 22 Gucci 47, 90 Harry Winston 14, 40 Hermès 14 HKTDC 63 Hoptroff 18 IsaSwiss 20 Jaeger-LeCoultre 24, 34, 73, 74 Junghans 18, 20 Kerbedanz 44 Kerbholz 78 Laimer 80 Longines 18, 66, 71 Louis Vuitton 5 MB&F 71 Moritz Grossmann 45 Omega 66, 73, 88 Ovi 81 Panerai 73 Patek Philippe COVER IV, 22, 35, 66, 68, 69, 70, 73, 88

Piaget 24 Promotion 59 Richard Mille 7, 71 Rolex 65, 66, 70, 75 Ronda 20 Seiko 18, 24 Swatch 20 Swatch Group 20 TAG Heuer 66, 71 Tamawa 81 Tense 79 Timeshapes 77 Tissot Titoni 23, 27 Traser 21 Tudor 71 Vacheron Constantin 66, 68 Van Cleef & Arpels 14 Vicenzaoro COVER III Vincent Calabrese 85, 86, 87, 88 WeWood 80 Zenith 28, 29

LESSONS OF

VOLUME BRANDS

We shed some light on the watchmakers who produce the vast majority of the 1.2 billion watches manufactured every year worldwide.

| ON ITI ED AL OB GL T AP CH 017 3.2 ER

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FOLLOW THE SIGNS:

CASE STUDIES & INTERVIEWS They adorn the wrists of many: what can we learn from brands such as Swatch, Fossil, Guess, Timex, Hugo Boss or the pioneer of the fashion watch Gucci?

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PAST PRESENT FUTURE

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THE TRUE SIZE OF THE SWISS MARKET Everything you always wanted to know about the Swiss watch trade: a recent survey lifts the veil on this crucial market for the industry.

50 54

“THE WINNERS ARE INDEPENDENT HIGH-END BRANDS” Interview with René Weber on the latest Vontobel watch report.

DEALING WITH PROTECTIONISM Has protectionism been globalised too? And does watchmaking have the wherewithal to fight back?

SUBSCRIBE TO EUROPA STAR MAGAZINE www.europastar.com/subscribe | SUBSCRIBE TO THE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER www.europastar.com/newsletter | CHAIRMAN Philippe Maillard PUBLISHER Serge Maillard EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Pierre Maillard CONCEPTION & DESIGN Serge Maillard, Pierre Maillard, Alexis Sgouridis PUBLISHING / MARKETING / CIRCULATION Nathalie Glattfelder, Marianne Bechtel/Bab-Consulting, Jocelyne Bailly, Véronique Zorzi BUSINESS MANAGER Catherine Giloux MAGAZINES Europa Star Global (Europe & International) | USA | China | Première - Switzerland | Bulletin d’informations | Eurotec EUROPA STAR HBM SA Route des Acacias 25, CH-1227 Geneva - Switzerland, Tel +41 22 307 78 37, Fax +41 22 300 37 48, contact@europastar.com Copyright 2017 EUROPA STAR | All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of Europa Star HBM SA Geneva.

The statements and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily Europa Star.

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It’s not just a trend, it’s become practically an obligation. At Baselworld, you could count on the fingers of one hand the brands that weren’t launching a “vintage” model. Or more accurately, ‘neo-vintage’. I’m exaggerating, of course, but only slightly.

Here is a quick selection: Rolex Sea-Dweller, Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, Omega Trilogie 1957, TAG Heuer Autavia, Longines Heritage 1945, Tudor Heritage Black Bay, Hamilton Chronograph B, Zenith Pilot, Seiko First Diver 1965, Bell & Ross Vintage Br V2-94, Blancpain Tribute to Fifty Fathoms, Laco Vintage Fliegeruhr Erbstück, Locman 1960, Michel Herbelin Inspiration 1947 and Oris Diver Sixty-Five. I’ll spare you an exhaustive listing of all the anniversary watches, reissues, inspirations, and other assorted tributes to a mythologised past.

But what is this ‘vintage’ craze all about? What does it mean? What does it tell us about the times we’re living in?

The question is certainly not a new one (you can read a historical analysis by Dominique Fléchon on page 74 of the Time.Keeper folio of the current issue of Europa Star). In fact, the first signs of the most recent manifestation of ‘retro mania’ were already visible at the turn of this century, and they have a great deal to do with the millennial generation and their hipster tendencies. There are also some interesting parallels between the vintage vogue and the recent surge in the popularity of facial hair. In his recent book Of Beards and Men – The Revealing History of Facial Hair (University of Chicago Press), researcher Christopher Oldstone Moore explains that the beard-wearing trend is mainly observed among urban men who are typically disconnected from nature, who spend all day at their computers, and who are thus led to question their masculinity. “’We’re going to dress like we are in nature, like we cut down trees, and we’re going to grow handsome long beards.’ And that’s a way for them to at least symbolically connect to the natural world.”

The popularity of all things vintage is symbolic, as is the popularity of beards. In the face of ever-more abstract jobs, a growing disengagement from the real world, ubiquitous marketing-speak based around a story-telling strategy that is increasingly perceived as an unconvincing artificial construct cynically designed to hide its true aims, a vintage product and, more specifically for our purposes, a vintage watch, ‘tells a real story’, as a vintage watch aficionado explained to me recently. It is anchored in reality; it has genuine historical weight.

The fact that it has survived through different eras, the fact that it was once avant-garde, that it subsequently became old-fashioned and passé, and that it spent a good few years in the back of a drawer before finding its way into my hands, gives it a certain nobility. Time has knocked it around a bit, softened its edges, given it a patina, but it’s still here, with its obsolete mechanical innards still ticking like a resuscitated heart.

And that’s why what we might call ‘neo-vintage’ – the movement that is attempting to hitch a ride on the wave of enthusiasm for true vintage, and share in the spoils – is perhaps slightly pathetic, because people will always prefer the original to a copy.

But, as we know, give it time and a copy will gradually acquire its own authenticity. A few generations hence, the bearded youth of the future will probably pounce upon these watches from the early decades of the 21st century, which bear such an uncanny resemblance to those from the mid-1900s.

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At the start of the year, Europa Star devoted a feature to the issue of the price of Swiss watches, which soared between 2000 and 2013 before experiencing a sudden slap-down – especially last year.

This spring, we took a look at the fate of mid-range watches – a category crucial to the future of the industry.

In this third chapter in Europa Star’s anniversary year, we’re going down yet another level, quitting the watchmaking stratosphere – basically that of Swiss luxury watches – to shed some light on the watchmakers we call “the 99%”. That is, those who produce the vast majority of the 1.2 billion watches manufactured every year worldwide, most of them in China, but very often bearing major fashion names when produced by sub-contractors or under licence or a private label.

What can they teach us that might also serve the 1% of the industry in whom most of the value is bundled and on whom the spotlights are focused? Below are the lessons of the 99%, who sometimes serve as a laboratory or even as the vanguard of what will (or will not) be adopted by the watchmaking cream.

Goonhilly © by Docubyte

S UO TE Q “The Swiss watch industry is primarily about volume. It’s volume that keeps the hundreds of small subcontractors going. And competitive pricing is a function of volume. If there’s too much dispersal, if the brands all go off and do their own thing, the subcontractors will be starved out, and they’ll disappear. And that’s a risk, even for the biggest brands.”

(Miguel Garcia, CEO of Sellita, Le Temps, 8 May 2017)

“Many luxury brands have assigned their name to products which are not commensurate with this concept of luxury.”

(Winston Chesterfield, Wealth-X)

“The number one trend right now in fashion is technology, and we’re going to bring it to market. We’re going to be injecting technology into the traditional watch business and injecting fashion into the wearables business.”

(Kosta Kartsotis, Fossil CEO)

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“While competition is often noted in the increasingly saturated luxury market, many fail to identify competition from non-luxury brands as a serious impediment to growth.”

(Oliver Williams, WealthInsight)

“The stage is now set for an epic battle for control of a $45.5 billion market. That’s the size of the combined wrist devices and fashion watch businesses, according to Dennis Secor, Fossil’s chief financial officer.”

(Joe Thompson)

“Where once there was the intimidation of having to go to luxury and purchase on its terms, digital has brought luxury into the bedroom where invisible consumers purchase in the comfort of their pyjamas.”

(Piers Schmidt, Luxury Branding)

“A 200-euro fashion watch has to have a perceived value of 1,000 euros.”

(Xavier Gauderlot, Movado Group) Gamma Engine © by Docubyte

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...but not a new ‘Proletarian Watch’ This is not about millions of watches but well over a billion timepieces produced every year (to be precise, 1.2 billion according to the Swiss horology federation (FH); 1.4 billion according to the Japanese horology federation). The unknown hey are the ones we tend to ignore. ‘They’ are the Chinese giants will be covered in our next issue. Regular readcheap watches that make up the 99% of the vol- ers will also remember our analysis of the Indian market and ume of watches sold worldwide, usually for less its all-powerful local player, Titan (see our previous issue). than 300 dollars, mainly Chinese-made, often The more nostalgic readers among you will also have debearing a famous, non-watchmaking brand or voured our last Archives section, which was devoted to an unknown logo, or simply fake...

Roskopf’s ‘Proletarian’ watch. But it would be inappropriate It’s an opaque, dense, ephemeral world, with innumerable in these politically correct times to talk of watch ‘proletarinewcomers swelling the ranks while innumerable others ans’ in this latest chapter. All the more so since today, lines are consigned to the graveyard of the watchmaking industry. are becoming blurred and the well-ordered pyramid of val“They” are the watches bought on impulse at the beach or ues now looks more like an Impressionist painting: the wellin a suburban shopping mall, light years off do not necessarily care about buying a away from the relative stability of the 1%, valuable watch (an Ice-Watch will someIt’s an opaque, dense, whose smallest acts and gestures are distimes do just as well); and people on only a ephemeral world, with sected under the microscope of the spemodest income might well save up for the innumerable newcomcialist press. Proof of this is how difficult watch of their dreams (Swiss, of course). it was to find contributors to this feature The internet has naturally had a hand in ers swelling the ranks with any knowledge of the prolific world this, triggering a horizontal communiwhile innumerable of “high-volume” brands. cations hierarchy – Facebook, the great others are consigned equaliser – and scrambling codes big time.

But the sudden emergence and frenzied to the graveyard of the First steps to watch ownership... dance of these myriad accessible brands watchmaking industry. is also, paradoxically, affecting the fate of But take a look at the wrist of your waitthe grand old watchmaking names. Not er, vet, hairdresser, sister-in-law, or that well-dressed busi- directly, but by impacting the behaviour of buyers who can nessman tapping away at his smartphone in the departure be less easily assigned to any specific category. lounge of any major airport. Maybe it’s a Daniel Wellington, a Fossil, an Armani, a Hugo Boss, an Esprit, an MVMT – or Renewed interest in entry-level products? maybe even an Apple Watch or a Samsung...

These watches are important, not only in terms of volume, but also because they often represent the first step (and As watchmaking climbed to the high end of the market, sometimes also the last) towards watch ownership for the there was a tendency to ignore the more accessible categovast majority of people all over the world; people who are ries of watch as their total proportional value in the industry neither fascinated nor obsessed by watches but who buy one declined. But now we’re seeing a return to democracy, manout of necessity, for convenience’s sake or simply by chance. ifested mainly in lower prices for a considerable number of There’s one notable, Swiss, exception in this affordability middle to upper-range timepieces. ball: Swatch (and its little sister, Flik Flak), which has suc- That’s one more reason to look at the lessons to be learned ceeded in maintaining its place at the top of the fashion from the low end of the market, the precursor segment for world in a market which is ephemeral by nature – and over certain phenomena which might one day affect the luxury several decades. What are its secrets? We reveal some of market. Our non-exhaustive aim here is to learn six lessons them in our portrait on p. 30. And then there’s Tissot and its from the emergence of these watches, today fostered among four million watches sold every year and, on a more general other things by crowdfunding. Lessons which, we hope, will note, the worthy ambition of the Swatch Group not to cut benefit everyone. itself off from its ‘grassroots’ – its industrial origins and the welcome legacy of Nicolas Hayek, which we recounted in great detail in our previous chapter.

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1. Attacking perceived values

Starchaser Rocket © by Docubyte

In a world where the correlation between price and perceived value is increasingly blurred we seem to be entering a ‘post-luxury’ era of consumerism, as two articles by Winston Chesterfield and Oliver Williams set out (see pp. 22 and 24). In the clothes and accessories segments, for example, design has been democratised to the point of debunking the notion that “good design is always costly”, writes the former. This is the wager of innumerable new, cheap watch brands that are being launched on the internet: they are playing the card of contemporary, sober, pared-down and original design rather than simply copying the major brands – in short, whatever the fashion of the moment is – in an attempt to win over a customer base which is actually well able to afford fine watchmaking.

When he declares that “a 200-euro fashion watch has to have a perceived value of 1,000 euros,” Xavier Gauderlot, President for Europe of Movado Group, which produces under licence the brands Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger and Coach that sell by the million, is stating virtually the same thing. Sufficient perceived value, at any rate, to win over customers drawn firstly by a design, a name or a state of mind and who do not stop to reflect on the watchmaking legitimacy of the traditional brands.

On this point, we have to be clear that the interest of the new middle class in tracking down the latest ‘exclusive’ brand seems to have more to do with the originality of a concept than with the price of that concept. By substantially lowering the price of entry-level watches, by allowing new brands to be launched at a reasonable price via crowdfunding or platforms such as Kickstarter, the internet has accelerated the fragmentation of the watchmaking landscape and the scrambling of codes. These brands rarely succeed in making a permanent mark – but their repeated assaults might, one day, have a real effect. And even so, they are already shifting the exclusivity barrier between a small, newly created but well-designed watch brand that produces 5,000 items at 200

dollars each, and an established brand producing more than a million watches costing 2,000 dollars each.

The internet has exponentially increased the number of possible pathways to achieving ’perceived value’ in watches.

New brands have benefited from this cut-price entry ticket, as well as from the craze of young buyers for elegant, classic, and ultimately simpler, designs; as for the fashion brands, they have flooded the market with names from the world of luxury at prices far below those of the horological ‘pure players’, thereby scrambling the codes of value even further in the minds of the consumer.

Are these brand usurpers making the most of their fresh approach, in the case of some, or their marketing power, in the case of others, to turn consumers away from more legitimate brands? Might they also help convert young – and otherwise virgin – wrists, ultimately benefiting the entire ecosystem? The tension is palpable between a desire to reject this kind of competition out of hand and that of making a closer, more holistic reading of the market.

As Piers Schmidt underlines on p. 26, the internet has been a game-changer, reducing entry-level prices while raising the number of products in the marketplace and blurring the codes of luxury: “In the past just being considered ‘luxury’ was enough to instil trust – that barely spoken promise of quality and excellence. However, with the democratisation of luxury, trust of a consumer is no longer a given. We all want to double then triple-check if something is generally considered good, enjoyable or reliable by others.”

The lesson to be learned is that at a time when the traditional brands are simplifying their lines and, very often, reassessing their entry-level prices, the high-volume brands, exploiting the democratisation of the codes of luxury and the proximity to each and every consumer (and their suppliers) made possible by the web, are reshuffling the cards of perceived value and posing one heck of a challenge to the entire industry.

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2. ‘Less formality!’: the dictates of fashion As we saw during the American and French presidential elec- tion is under way, with the traditional brands starting to cut tions – and observing the debates of today and yesterday is back on the number of items they offer – just the opposite of fascinating in this respect – formality of language is on the what the high-volume brands are doing. way out, familiarity is in. You see it in marketing, when Ikea Because the corollary to this quest for fashion is the requireaddresses every customer, whatever his or her age, gender or ment to always come up with something new. That is the risk respectability, in the same casual way. And the watchmaking when you try to ‘fashionise’ an industry that otherwise proworld is no exception: how many brands are trying to get motes the timeless value and durability of its products. It is a dicloser to their customers, embrace their new codes, reinvent lemma from which only the brands which defend their values themselves, rejuvenate? After all, luxury is ageless... most intransigently will emerge unscathed! Because we know One of the best examples of this new, informal spirit and the limitations of throwaway consumerism, which is ephemrenewed youth is without any doubt eral and insatiable at the same time – and in Gucci, under the influence of its designer, which very often, paradoxically, everything For the more traditional ends up looking the same (for more on this, Alessandro Michele. Gucci is none other brands on the other than the inventor of the fashion watch read the comments by the boss of Zeon and consequently of the convergence Watches on p. 37)! hand, one of the keys of fashion and horology that turned the “Fashion means understanding new trends consists in getting a industry’s landscape upside-down. For very fast,” says Fabrizio Buonamassa, who rapid grasp of new the director of its watchmaking division, heads up watch design at Bulgari. “But Piero Braga (read the interview on p. 46), it’s also changing and renewing yourself trends – without that company, which is present with sassy all the time. Now that is not luxury. The succumbing to them! designs in virtually every range, is the new challenge facing us is to find new forms favourite luxury brand of the famous ‘milof joie de vivre, to understand the world’s lennials’ – the same, indefinable millennials who are bring- changing aspirations, without succumbing to hysteria.” The ing the whole pyramid of values into question by taking most difficult exercise has to be understanding the new custhe liberty of combining a Zara T-shirt with a Rolex, or an tomers: “The paradox of young people is that they are growArmani jacket with a vintage Casio watch. ing up in a globalised world while looking for something Casual communications for casual products – unless a brand unique. Today, the spirit of luxury has to be more about lays deliberate claim to the codes of formality almost as a laughing and having fun for some segments of our clientele. distinguishing characteristic. The crucial thing is to distance We’ve got nothing left to prove, and that’s why we can play yourself from three foes: seriousness, synonymous with bor- around with the brand.” ing; jumping on the bandwagon, synonymous with boring; That means that the most legitimate brands are the best and immobility, synonymous with… boring. Rapid turnover equipped to change codes and trends in a lasting way, for exof stocks, continuous self-questioning, a never-ending rein- ample by integrating innovations from players from outside vention of image: there are clear signs that virtually the entire the field. But they are also the ones who need to avoid fallwatchmaking industry (not just the high-volume brands) has ing prey to the language of facility and using informality as fallen prey to the sirens of fashion – or rather its pace. So much a purely marketing gimmick; they have to keep the greatest so that today there is a risk of saturation due to the diktat of distance between themselves and these new trends. novelty imposed on an industrial product that, by its very na- A new, less formal and more accessible kind of luxury (accesture, calls for a certain inertia. Moreover, the counter-revolu- sible in spirit, not necessarily price) has been emerging in the past few years. The success of a brand like Hublot, which is continuously integrating new materials and communicating in a whole new way is largely due to that; it transposes the codes of fashion into watchmaking.

For the more traditional brands on the other hand, one of the keys consists in getting a rapid grasp of new trends – without succumbing to them!

Rolls Royce RZ2 © by Docubyte

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3. The ‘S**** word’ – Swiss-made: from legitimacy to uncertainty

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STOIC Test with Silencer © by Docubyte

People do not generally associate high-volume brands with of Swissness were victims of their own success, travestied to ‘Swiss-made’, the latter being reserved for the horological adorn a maximum number of wrists. Boasting Swiss origins elite. Except that the recent debate about the label, which by any means was the order of the day. resulted in a toughening of the legislation So much so that today the legitimate Swiss (a reform considered insufficient by some, industry is faced with a dilemma: should In other words, too restrictive by others), was largely trigit or should it not bear this once glorious authenticity when gered by an influx of brands that succeedtitle? Will the new law alone suffice to reed in obtaining it at little cost during the the label which is assure consumers? And do they actually golden decade of the early 2000s. Added care? Because the internet era is also one meant to define it to this is the issue of counterfeit goods, of paradox: on the one hand, the web has has been overused. another favourite topic of the FH and a helped scramble the codes of luxury, therehuge generator of volume, which allowed by adding to the confusion about what it those who could not afford the famous label to at least buy means to be an elite label, while on the other hand, the glut an imitation. of information it has spawned is engendering calls for greater The ‘Swiss’ brand was bandied about, losing its lustre and its transparency and product traceability. legitimacy in the process, due not only to very permissive Many brands launched through crowdfunding state their inlegislation but also to pirating pure and simple, as well as to tention to ‘let their community share’ in the creation and sucwannabe watches that looked very similar to Swiss models cess of their watches – a process which should logically unfold and labelled ‘Swiss origin’ or ‘Swiss movement’. The codes transparently; yet they are careful not to mention the origins

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or means of productions of their innovative products. They tell us everything about the design, nothing about the origins!

This – the ambiguous requirement of transparency which is so keenly reflected in the debate on the ‘Swiss-made’ label – is the challenge facing the traditional brands. Many of them have been pirated: in that case, can they afford to display a label that allowed so much excess, so much misrepresentation?

And not only the label, the language itself is being called into question: words like ‘DNA’, ‘codes’ or ‘legacy’ are today used so frequently in the marketing of any watch brand that you might well ask if they still have any meaning. If they are squandered like that for the purposes of ‘storytelling’, would it not be better to ban them altogether?

Since fashion took over the tools and linguistic elements of luxury, luxury itself has been forced to evolve. Søren Petersen, CEO of the high-end watch brand Urban Jürgensen, believes that we are at a turning point where luxury is concerned, and rails against the kind of baseless storytelling that is so rife: “We’re entering the age of transparency! Paradoxically, this

new era will bring us back to sound values.” He feels that behind the plethora of overblown discourse, potted histories, inconsistencies and pseudo-marketing, a purification of the definition of luxury watchmaking is already under way.

According to the entrepreneur, the salvation of ‘true luxury’ lies in artisanal production, patience and limited output: “I have no doubts about the survival of historically authentic brands based on artisanal know-how who take the time to perfect their costly choice of skills.”

The sole value of a true luxury brand, its name, should suffice to legitimise it regardless of any other label: “I like the attitude of Rolls-Royce. When you see their 15-minute YouTube video the first thing they show is that the aluminium chassis arrives from Germany! So what? It’s a Rolls-Royce. It is highly likely the best aluminium chassis in the world. It is confidence in the brand itself that counts.”

In other words, authenticity when the label which is meant to define it has been overused.

Another overused word, but we’ll let it pass!

4. The importance of the strap Let’s take a detour outside the dial. With the explosion of a model costing several tens of thousands of Swiss francs – watch offerings in the past 15 years, just about everything much to the dismay of purists who demand durability not there is to be said and done has been said and done with only inside the watch but also outside it! regard to watch cases; consequently many high-volume As for smartwatches, it’s worth mentioning that Apple has brands are focusing on another aspect: never produced so many versions of any the strap. Easily interchangeable to create product as of its Watch: multiple straps Changing the strap several looks for the same watch, in NATOmean multiple accessories and even more rather than changing style nylon, Milanese mesh or rubber, they potential profits. TAG Heuer rounds out have made brands like Daniel Wellington this concept by making the strap a central the watch – that’s a hit with younger buyers. Changing the element of its Connected Modular, the a concept that strap rather than changing the watch – smart (or ‘eternal’, to quote Jean-Claude satisfies the younger that’s a concept that satisfies the younger Biver) case of which is interchangeable. consumers’ hankering for something new Ultimately, both the strap and the case consumers’ hankering while saving money at the same time. Also, are modular, maximising choice for those for something new they prefer not to go to a retailer to change who hate choosing or are simply unable to while saving money the strap of a watch they ordered online. choose!

Luxury watches too have moved massiveInterchangeable wrist straps is a theme at the same time. ly into this new playing field. At the last which is likely to gain importance. It also Baselworld, the choice of wrist straps had demonstrates how high-volume brands, grown exponentially and it is now increasingly easy to person- whether smart or not, can influence the habits of the youngalise straps online (see our article on p. 60 of Time.Keeper). er customer, whose new expectations end up instilling And today it is no longer surprising to see a denim strap on new practices in an entire industry...

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5. Obsolescence – a new branch in the watchmaking tree

Qinetiq Ion ThrusterT6 © by Docubyte

So what is the place of smartwatches in all this? We have not which with its new Summit watch has incorporated non-watchseen the sudden flood of products predicted by some, nor making technology into the world of luxury watches. Think out the total flop announced by others. Nevertheless, the digital of the box! you might legitimately say in its case. ambitions of giants such as the Fossil Group suggest that nu- So will the vast majority of watches in the future be smartmerous developments lie ahead for this embryonic market. watches? Possibly. Will they comprise at least one smart modIn a nutshell, it is not a new tree in itself, ule? Probably. According to René Weber of but a new branch in the tree of horology – Vontobel bank, one-third of quartz watchSo will the vast and one that is already exercising a strong es will have a movement equipped with a influence on the fashion brands, which are chip within five years. A vast reconfiguramajority of watches the most strongly affected by this competion is taking place affecting first of all rein the future be tition (for more on this read the very degions outside Switzerland (the famous 1.2 smartwatches? tailed analysis by Joe Thompson on p. 34). billion watches produced worldwide).

During his presentation of Apple Watch 2, But while the entry-level and middle rangPossibly. Will they Tim Cook, the boss of the California-based es seem to be on the fast track to conneccomprise at least giant, tried to legitimise their watchmaking tivity, handcrafted luxury watches might one smart module? pedigree by citing a study by Vontobel bank, well be able to do without it! which places his brand as the world numProbably. ber two in the sector (see p. 52). Although the sales volumes – which Apple did not reveal – are no doubt disappointing compared with the surge in sales of iPhones or iPads, they are high in relation to the size of the industry.

Although smartwatches are still in their infancy – tribute is due here to the Swatch Group for its pioneering spirit, with its Paparazzi and Access watches – and restricted to entry-level and high-volume brands, the epidemic, albeit taking a tortuous path, is beginning to spread. Take Montblanc, itself an outsider,

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Airbus Satellite Three © by Docubyte

6. E-commerce laboratories “The watchmaking industry set up a strict system for controlling its distribution decades ago. But the internet is causing massive leakage from distribution channels, which is affecting everybody. Today, the World Wide Web is more like the Wild West – the ecosystem is still in the making.”

Aletta Stas, of Frédérique Constant, could not have summed the situation up more succinctly.

The digital revolution may eventually result in smartwatch supremacy. But online sales are happening now. And so the luxury brands are faced with a number of thorny questions: how to sell online without denting your image? How to reproduce the experience of a luxury boutique on the web? How to handle the logistics of such a total upheaval? In this configuration, what will be the new profit margin? Who will control customer data? Where can we find the right partners for a successful transition? The potential list of questions is long.

The more affordable brands are a laboratory that is already providing some answers, because they have had to adjust to their customers’ new purchasing habits for a number of years. The latter will not necessarily travel to purchase a

product that costs no more than the shoes that they already buy online....

Some have the ‘technological’ advantage of having been born on the web and the social media and of using only them for promotion purposes and, consequently, for sales.

No need to transform their whole commercial set-up.

Others make full use of all channels and distribute as much through retailers ‘abandoned’ by the traditional brands as over the internet. The retailers too, it has to be said, are also seriously turning to online sales – although this is far from being the promised panacea!

There are multiple channels ranging from direct sales from an e-boutique and those of specialist partners right through to giant platforms like Amazon. For luxury brands, their conquest of the web could be achieved by first of all analysing a few case studies of the brands operating in the under-500-dollar niche, mainly in the United States and Asia, which are at the forefront in this business segment. Needless to say, we will be coming back to this in a future feature entitled The uberisation of retail!

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LAM XY

H ES pu ere w t o ar or v e ld er a w al fe id l w w e in atc figu to h re pe pr s t rs od ha p e uc t w ct tio il ive n l .

LU

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1.2 billion Number of watches produced annually worldwide

EXPORTS IN 2016

652 million

from China

241 million

from Hong Kong

25.4 million

from Switzerland

17.5 million

from Germany

10.4 million

from the United States

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Over 50% of global watch value is concentrated in Switzerland, with an average export price of 708 dollars (compared with 4 dollars for China)

21.1 million

Number of smartwatches produced annually worldwide – including 11.6 million Apple Watches

22.3 million

Annual production of the world’s leading producer of activity trackers, Fitbit

11 million

Estimated annual production of the largest manufacturer (by volume) of Swiss made watches: Swatch

Fashion Planets

Timex Group: Timex, Guess, Gc, Versace, Versus, Salvatore Ferragamo, Nautica, Opex

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Fossil Group: Fossil, Michele, Misfit, Relic, Skagen, adidas, Armani Exchange, Burberry, Chaps, Diesel, DKNY, Emporio Armani, Karl Lagerfeld, kate spade new york, Marc Jacobs, Michael Kors, Tory Burch

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As well as a few new faces worth mentioning which have experienced a breakthrough (sometimes short-lived) in the past ten years: Ice-Watch, Daniel Wellington, Nixon, Komono, MVMT, Bering, Triwa, Cluse...

Movado Group: Coach, Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger, Lacoste, Scuderia Ferrari, Juicy Couture, Rebecca Minkoff Not forgetting, of course, in a different watchmaking register, Movado, Ebel and Concord.

Sources: Swiss horology federation (FH), Vontobel

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TH

ER

PO E L C U ST O X N U SU R M Y

Today, individuals in higher income categories no longer feel the need to consistently upgrade into luxury as income and wealth rises. It’s a concept known as “post-luxury”.

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D, IEL -X RF H TE ALT E S WE

Luxury is in a state of flux; whilst there are many opportunities for the industry, there are also many threats to growth.

In their Global Powers of Luxury Goods study, professional services firm Deloitte highlighted four ‘horsemen of the luxury apocalypse’; reputational risk, regulation and stakeholders, external events and inertia.

Whilst valid and certainly points for consideration, these issues reflect the underlying problem with the luxury industry – much in the same way that an ostrich thrusts its head in the ground, luxury tends to relate only to itself.

One thing that the report does not address has been an elephant in the room for the An elephant in the last decade – how luxury relates not just room for the last to itself but also to non-luxury. Luxury ordecade – how luxury ganisations can no longer ignore that the relates not just to itself age of high-low consumption is actually a long-term threat to luxury. but also to non-luxury.

Luxury’s connection to exclusivity and price relates most closely to income and wealth dynamics. The original ‘luxury price’ concept relates to the income-upgrade phenomenon; in other words, whenever income and wealth increases for a particular consumer, likelihood to spend on luxury in more categories increases.

However, whilst it is broadly true that greater income leads to greater spend on luxury, increasingly there is a trend that luxury is not upgraded to in all categories – and that non-luxury goods are relied upon instead.

RAL Chamber © by Docubyte

Post-Luxury

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This is the post-luxury concept, which relates to the decline of the income-upgrade phenomenon. The post-luxury consumer no longer needs to upgrade as they progress through income categories – therefore, select categories remain non-luxury.

There is a trend away from the income-upgrade phenomenon associated with the luxury market. Some of the most important examples are the ready-to-wear and soft accessories categories, where design has been democratised and has devastated the perception that good design always costs money. What this means is that individuals in higher income categories no longer feel the need to consistently upgrade into luxury as income and wealth rises.

Luxury goods are sold on promises of improvement over mass-produced goods. This is backed up by the process through which they are made and the value of materials used. However, many luxury brands have assigned their name to products which are not commensurate with this concept of luxury.

The upgrade cost relative to income can force individuals to els of investment, such as the Tyrian purple dye for Roman relegate that category to non-luxury – particularly in an in- imperial clothing. flationary market, where luxury goods prices are reflective And before man-made materials and mechanisation of a global rather than local audience of luxury consumers. changed what was possible in terms of manufacture, it was Shoes are a common category for cutting back, due to the not only the materials but also the handiwork of skilled sheer cost of buying the very best luxury brands – which craftsmen that defined luxury; their work, such as Gillows then often require as much repair and care as non-luxury. furniture in the 18th century, was noticeably different. Only Similarly, obsolescence and generational irrelevance can make the wealthiest individuals could afford these pieces and they some core luxury categories subject to downgrade; some con- became their own symbols of exclusivity. sider Swiss watches to be on the brink of this, having been a Currently, luxury is defined by the brands that offer goods core category of luxury product for so many generations. in the price category associated with luxury. They are comWhen consumers flirt with luxury brands, mercial organisations, many of which tread a sense of no-improvement or disappointa fine line between providing lower tiers Some of the most ment can result in permanent downgrades. of access to the brand based on spending important examples Additionally, lower-end, non-luxury brands ability, and maintaining supply side conhave improved their credentials in areas trol and therefore the rarity and integrity are the ready-to-wear once exclusively owned by luxury brands. of the products. and soft accessories Zara is the most devastating example of However, in recent years, luxury brands, as categories, where this in ready-to-wear and accessories like commercial organisations, have needed to scarves, where even members of the royal balance the cost of production with excludesign has been family such as the Duchess of Cambridge sivity, using materials which are more democratized and has are noted for wearing the brand. commonplace than those historically asdevastated the percep- sociated with luxury.This is partly because the success of globalisation and capitalism tion that good design Post-luxury consumers has made what were once rare resources always costs money. are harder to impress more available through international trade and economies of scale, but also because, The result is that good design has been democratised – and as businesses, they have had to ensure that the manufacture is no longer the exclusive domain of luxury brands. Luxury of these products is profitable. And so instead of materials brands now need more than just design credentials to sell in defining luxury, skilled manufacturing processes and fine key categories, as style has begun its domination of fashion finishing often defines what is and what isn’t luxury. trends. Post-luxury consumers are wearing a variety of styles Though the future is uncertain, the structural changes in inspired by different eras; they’re happy to replace one trend the global economy, slower growth and the maturation of with another quickly because the cost of doing so is low. dynamic economies as well as the availability of informaAdditionally, social media, particularly Instagram, has in- tion on a global scale and the saturation of the market with creased exposure to new and smaller luxury brands due to the luxury branded goods all point towards a crash diet of true low-cost-high-impact of creating brand awareness through exclusivity, which could involve use of ever rarer materials such mediums. This has made the market more competitive, or higher entry prices into luxury. particularly for loyalty. As a consequence, luxury brands have Brands and branding will still likely be very important. A to be more careful in how they communicate their story. rare resource without a brand signals nothing to others, which will limit luxury consumption to those who only value it internally. External recognition of exclusivity will be A return to luxury’s true value? crucial for consumers – as history teaches us.

Over time, the intrinsic value of luxury and the external effects this provides have remained largely the same. Rarity is the driving force for valuable resources and is the driver for the luxury principle; the social effect of this is exclusivity, which is consequently the most resilient external quality of luxury.

Historically, luxury has been fundamentally rare and therefore exclusive due to the use of rare materials, imported goods which only a few could afford, dyes, stones and fabrics that were either produced at great cost or required great lev-

Courtesy of LuxurySociety.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Winston Chesterfield is a Director at Wealth-X Custom Research. He consults a wide range of clients and brands across the luxury sector.

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EA IN LT G H IE ST

N OW O L IS U N TH S X E EDU U R W C Y

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O BY

, MS IA T LL IGH WI I N S ER T H L I V E AL W

The luxury industry has been showing signs of slowing down for some time. A look at how non-luxury brands have been taking advantage of the situation, using mass marketing, to win-over High Net Worth Individuals.

Nike, Apple and Amazon blurring the boundaries of luxury Non-luxury brands have slowly snuck up on the luxury sector, robbing them of HNWI wallet share (HNWIs – high net worth individuals – are the luxury market’s main clientele).

Last year Nike overtook Louis Vuitton as the most valuable apparel brand in the world according to a Forbes ranking. And for the first time in 27 years a non-luxury car – Kia – topped J.D. Power’s quality car survey in the US. The electronics sector no longer exists in the luxury domain since Apple and Samsung levelled the playing field between buyers of all incomes.

Shopping habits mirror this trend towards the non-luxury sector: HNWIs visit department stores more often than branded boutiques, surveys have shown, and that’s when they are not buying all their brands from Amazon. When asked their favourite brands, Nike or Apple can crop up more often than big watch or jewellery names.

There are a myriad of reasons to explain this trend towards non-luxury. Most agree that the luxury sector has been too slow at introducing e-commerce. Now giants like Amazon and Alibaba sell everything on a level playing field without differentiating between what is luxury and what isn’t.

Equally plausible is the opinion that many items are better coming from non-luxury brands. Smartphones and sportswear are much better bought from Apple or Under Armour than any alternative that the luxury industry has to offer (Vertu, the only luxury phone manufacturer, has just been sold for the third time after reporting serious losses).

Helen Sharman © by Docubyte

The global luxury market has plateaued. After years of double-digit growth, the market saw an increase of 4% in 2016 according to Bain, though other analysts report a complete flat-line compared to 2015. Even optimists expect a growth not exceeding 2-3% in 2017. Some sectors would be happy even with that – Swiss watch exports fell 9.8 percent in 2016, the steepest drop since 2009.

The causes of this slowdown are not new – they have been undermining the luxury market for many years as growth rates wane from their double digit high six years ago. China is one: its corruption crackdown is now in its fifth year and showing no sign of letting up. Many also point towards geopolitical uncertainty: far fewer wealthy tourists are travelling

to Europe on shopping trips in the wake of terrorist attacks.

However, while competition is often noted in the increasingly saturated luxury market, many fail to identify competition from non-luxury brands as a serious impediment to growth.

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The limits of segmented social media marketing But one of the core reasons why non-luxury brands have snapped market share away from their real luxury rivals has simply been the reach of their marketing efforts. Nike and Apple do not care who has money and who doesn’t, so long as they’re prepared to spend it on their products. This ties in with their marketing machines, which are designed to target all consumers, everywhere, not just those of a particular segment. In other words, they aim for mass marketing.

Luxury marketers, on the other hand, often plan the exact opposite. Armed with knowledge and data on their consumers – the high or ultra high net worth individual, who is worth over $1m and $30m respectively – they plan their marketing accordingly.

Segmentation is the word of the day. Divide your audience and rule their cash flow is the prevailing assumption in marketing. Targeted adverts delivered via programmatic and social media ad-buying can reach wealthy audiences where they spend their time – on the web. Social media strategies complete with influencers and premium content is deployed at specific times of day and night. Buyers deemed ‘loyal’ are invited to sponsored ‘exclusive’ events, often on the racecourse, polo pitch or trackside.

But this very segmentation has led to luxury’s falling sales figures. Focusing marketing efforts solely at today’s wealth ignores tomorrow’s. As many as 12,396 HNWIs are created every week according to WealthInsight. Between now and 2020 there will be another 1.8 million HNWIs globally joining the ranks of the HNWIs (73,000 in the UK). These individuals may not be worth $100,000 or even $100 today. In fact, statistically, there is a likelihood they could now be striving entrepreneurs struggling to make ends meet.

Most of these newly created HNWIs will only be familiar with non-luxury brands, having rarely been exposed to luxury. On the other hand, non-luxury has been with the nouveau riche since before they were rich. These new HNWIs will probably see little reason to purchase luxury goods, instead finding comfort in the non-luxury brands they know. This is reversing the age-old assumption that higher incomes lead to increased spending, personified by the Duchess of Cambridge’s taste for Zara outfits.

A more intelligence-led approach to marketing is needed.

Consider where the next luxury customer will hear about your brand. Time-poor entrepreneurs will pay little heed to advertising and even less time will be spent on social media, but they will digest media in a way that adheres to their cultural or professional norms. Financiers may pick up the FT or Wall Street Journal and techies may subscribe to Wired, but otherwise media consumption barely differs between income earners. Cunning content marketing can therefore attract target audiences without ostracising swathes of potential consumers.

Consistency is more important than segmentation. A Harvard Business School alumnus is more likely to recognise a watch brand over many years of seeing it advertised in the Harvard Business Review than if it flashed up in his Facebook feed once he came into significant wealth.

Moreover, he probably has little interest in ‘engaging’ with the brand over social media or clicking on its pop-up adverts. This latter behaviour is at odds with many ROI measurements employed by marketing directors.

Millionaires are not so different Sponsors of events might consider the sports favoured by HNWIs, which rarely take place on the polo pitch or trackside: WealthInsight’s data shows golf and football to be the most popular sports among HNWIs, both ranking at first place on a global level (sailing and polo were in 11th and 20th place respectively). Of course, within this there are regional differences – Swiss HNWIs prefer skiing for example – though throughout the wealth spectrum, from newly minted millionaires to wizened billionaires, the picture is largely the same. To misquote F. Scott Fitzgerald, the rich are not so different from you and me.

The frontier of the luxury industry is no longer in new markets, but the newly wealthy. The battle for their wallet-share will be played out in digital and print space. Adjusting marketing strategies will not be a quick fix, but rather a longterm strategy that brands should invest in for future growth.

After all, what is a luxury brand if not something of heritage and timeless? Probably a non-luxury brand.

Courtesy of LuxurySociety.com

Targeting the future riches This presents a pressing problem for the marketer: how can a luxury company ensure its brand is known by at least some of these 1.8 million individuals by the time they come into significant wealth? Surely not by segmenting and focusing only on today’s 19 million HNWIs. And yet marketing directors understandably don’t want to spend their entire budgets on mass marketing campaigns imitating the likes of Nike or Apple.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Oliver Williams was the co-founder of WealthInsight, a leading wealth consultancy that provides intelligence on HNWIs to the wealth, luxury and non-profit sectors. A recognised expert in the field who is frequently interviewed by the world’s press, Oliver advises companies on content marketing to high net worth audiences. Oliver is also a regular contributor to Spears and New Statesman magazines.

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D

I E LU M GI XU O T RY C R A L AT IS E

O W

D D

H

, DT MI G CH D I N S S AN ER R PI Y B

BY XUR LU

Luxury today is open to more and more people, with digital technology having had a huge impact on this change.

Piers Schmidt reports on how he believes the luxury industry has become democratised by digital.

I wish to propose the paradoxical motion that ‘luxury’ has become democratised by digital, which is the product of three main reasons that can be categorised as the three “A”s.

Where luxury is discreet and discerning, digital’s way is often intrusive and always agnostic. In fact, the only characteristic valued in both domains is the appetite and ability to deliver experiences that are personalised. So, it’s this set of dichotomies that explains why there’s always been an uneasy relationship between luxury brands and digital.

Availability The second reason is availability. Luxury brands, which were once reserved for informed connoisseurs, are now freely available to an unvetted nouveau riche lurking anonymously behind a computer screen.

Where once there was the intimidation of having to go to luxury and purchase on its terms, digital has brought luxury into the bedroom where invisible consumers purchase in the comfort of their pyjamas. And let’s not forget the huge increase in availability opened up by e-commerce channels, especially those like Net-a-Porter’s The Outnet, where luxury brands can distribute and monetise their unsold inventories discreetly online.

Accountability

The third element of democratisation is arguably the most powerful.

Accessibility The term “democracy” has its origins in two Greek words: dēmos, meaning ‘the people’ and kratia ‘power or rule’ and Firstly, luxury today is open to more peoyes, democratisation is shaping a world ple, in part due to a growing middle class in which the people do rule and in which In the past just being but mostly because digital has delivered their opinion counts for more than the considered ‘luxury’ was stellar reputation of the luxury brands. something that was once distant right to the doorsteps of many. But this new and Brands are constantly being judged by all enough to instil trust greater accessibility creates a problem for of us, but none more so than luxury brands – that barely spoken luxury brands whose distinctive allure is that command higher prices, create greatpromise of quality and supposed to be ultra-exclusive: scarce, eluer expectations, and for whom the stakes sive and mysterious, especially in terms of are higher. With the advent of Amazon, excellence. However, price. Since their inception, luxury brands Yelp and their like, in the online court with the democratihave existed to elevate and distinguish the of public opinion, we’ve reached a point elite from the tastes and trappings of the where popular reputation outweighs insation of luxury, trust proletariat. sider brand image. of a consumer is no Conversely, the fundamental tenet of digThe third reason, therefore, is accountabillonger a given. ital is that it’s welcoming and relatively ity because online reviews, posted by ordiwealth-blind. Digital tries to reach as many nary people, have become one of the most people as possible, allowing them to connect and interact. powerful disruptive forces of the information age. With 70% Where luxury is divisive, digital is inclusive. of us consulting online reviews before purchasing, producOne luxury brand that has notably embraced the appeal ers and their brands have had no choice but to become wholof greater reach, however, is Burberry. In September 2015, ly accountable for who they are and what they do.

Burberry debuted its Spring/Summer 2016 collection on Let’s examine this principle of accountability in the world of Snapchat ahead of its formal catwalk show during London luxury hospitality. Being a 24/7 service business, hospitality Fashion Week. The online event reached 100m people creat- is one of the most advanced industry sectors for integrating ing a huge boost in brand recognition, but how many new customer feedback into its operational management. As customers were gained and what was the true ROI? we’ve seen, this democratisation of opinion, fuelled by the

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Isn’t it fascinating how our decision-making as consumers has been changed by the internet? Somewhere along the line our capacity to make a selection for ourselves has been critically compromised. Our default setting is to Google, to establish if there are any reviews and then to ignore any businesses that receive poor ones. It’s a new human condition, which illustrates the huge shift in consumer behaviour that has resulted from the phenomenon of digital democratisation.

What makes this particularly challenging for the world of luxury is that in the past just being considered ‘luxury’ was enough to instil trust – that barely spoken promise of quality and excellence. However, with the democratisation of luxury, trust of a consumer is no longer a given. We all want to double then triple check if something is generally considered good, enjoyable or reliable by others.

Courtesy of LuxurySociety.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Piers Schmidt is the founder of Luxury Branding, an agency that provides consulting, creative and communications services to the global luxury industry from offices in London and Cape Town.

Reaction Engine Hot Lips © by Docubyte

rise of peer review sites, has aggregated and amplified the consumer’s voice to such an extent that the hard-built reputations of brands like Four Seasons and The Ritz-Carlton are being recalibrated by real-time ratings.

So, although word of mouth has always been the marketer’s holy grail, digital has enabled that word of mouth to grow in influence from a private whisper to a public broadcast shared with millions of people in minutes. In the last five years, despite having initially been rejectors of TripAdvisor and other review sites, most luxury hotel brands have come to terms with the simple fact that they have lost control over who says what about them. The new reality is that luxury hotel brands are now being fabricated in the minds of their customers contemporaneously, rather than being the product of a tightly curated myth.

Whereas General Managers would once have simply turned their backs and hoped the clamour would die down, they are now using TripAdvisor and other digital feedback mechanisms not only to implement continuous improvement but to build community and demonstrate responsiveness with their customers. And that makes good business sense because it’s been shown that if a luxury hotel increases its online reputation by 1%, then its Average Daily Rate will rise by 0.9% and its occupancy by 0.5%. These are hugely significant incremental gains.

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ST SE IN U TE DI E RV S IE & W S

C A

They adorn the wrists of many: what can we learn from brands such as Swatch, Fossil, Guess, Timex, Hugo Boss or the pioneer of the fashion watch Gucci?

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Gucci G-Timeless collection

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H O NG TL , UL Y D

S C W BR ON A TH E S T E AK TA C M I N

B FA BY

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CH MA NN Nearly 35 years on from its launch, the little plastic watch is still proving an unprecedented hit. The reasons behind this success story lie in the very foundations of its creation, where technology, production methods, marketing and design came together to form a perfect quartet.

“This project was supposed to last 5 years and produce 5 million watches, but we had absolutely no idea of what was about to happen!”. At the other end of the line, Elmar Mock bursts out laughing. For nearly 35 years, Swatch’s co-inventor has had a front-row seat as this little plastic watch has become a global phenomenon. It got off to a flying start, with 4 million watches sold in the year following its launch, but it is the brand’s longevity that is really striking today. Far from running out of steam, Swatch made a turnover of more than 700 million francs in 2015 according to the annual report on the watchmaking industry by the Swiss bank Vontobel, a leading authority in this field. The brand’s success is explained not only by its unwavering dynamism, but also, and above all, by the very foundations of what at the time was a completely disruptive innovation.

To demonstrate the continuing extraordinary obsession with Swatch, we need only recall the prices fetched at auction by several collections in recent years. In Hong Kong in 2011, a collection of 4,363 models built up by a Swiss couple sold for 6.6 million dollars. Four years later, again in Hong Kong, a Swatch lover paid nearly 6 million francs – four times the pre-sale estimate – for the 5,800 watches lovingly collected by a seller from Luxembourg over a 25-year period.

That same year, in Geneva, the 4,000-odd items accumulated by the two designers behind Swatch, Bernard Muller and Marlyse Schmid, went for 1.3 million dollars.

But it’s not just the vintage watch market that’s booming.

Swatch is sold in some 700 retail outlets worldwide and is currently proving a big hit in France, Italy, Switzerland and, of course, China. The Swatch Lab in Zurich continues to create new models with the help of renowned designers, graphic designers and artists from around the world. Its resolute-

30

ly young and cosmopolitan style is a hallmark of the more than 240,000 members of the Swatch Club, which was set up by the brand. “As well as connecting with them directly via social media, we also regularly meet them in person at our local events,” explains Creative Director Carlo Giordanetti.

“We organise unique biannual events for the Gold & Pioneers group, which brings together our most passionate and loyal fans, and explore the world with them!”

A painful birth This success story is unique in the history of the fashion industry and has its roots in the circumstances and developments that led to the birth of this truly disruptive innovation. It starts with the economic climate at that time: in the early 1980s, the Swiss watchmaking industry had, for over five years, been facing the most serious crisis in its history.

The 1973 oil crisis, followed by the increase in the value of the Swiss franc and, of course, an influx of low-cost quartz watches (largely from Japan) onto the global markets, plunged the industry into a catastrophic situation. Between 1974 and 1983, the number of movements produced fell from 84 to 30.2 million.

Bankruptcies and redundancies were rife. Some brands were sold, while other companies, particularly movement manufacturers, merged. 1978 saw the start of a series of mergers involving the movement manufacturer ETA, which continued until 1982. A year later, and under the leadership of a certain Nicolas G. Hayek, the Société Générale de l’Horlogerie Suisse or ASUAG (which owned ETA) and Société Suisse pour l’Industrie Horlogère (SSIH), both of which had taken a financial battering, merged to form the Société de Microélectronique et d’Horlogerie (SMH), which was renamed “Swatch Group” in 1998.

A technological revolution This tough climate paradoxically proved fertile ground for the emergence of new visions and it was against this backdrop that the conditions for success gradually fell into place. In 1979, ETA’s Micro Crystal division became the first European company to mass-produce quartz movements. A young watch engineer named Elmar Mock was tasked with developing plastic insulators using an injection moulding machine. History was being made. Mock became hooked, even going so far as to study plastics technology. What he learned would prove decisive in coming up with a brandnew concept.

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By Swatch With Limitations

The key challenges at that time were clear to everyone: only a watch made cheaply in Switzerland would be able to recapture market share in the low-end segment. Without being asked, Elmar Mock and his colleague Jacques Müller set about designing a brightly coloured plastic case. They were soon called upon to sell their idea to the CEO of ETA, Ernst Thomke, after being hauled up to explain themselves for ordering an injection moulding machine costing half a million francs. Unbeknown to them, the two men had hit the jackpot. In his book, La fabrique de l’innovation, Elmar Mock recounts how Ernst Thomke exclaimed “I’ve been waiting for this for over a year!”

Between 1980 and 1983, Elmar Mock went on to adapt plastic machining techniques, particularly those used in the automotive sector, to watchmaking. For example, his idea of using ultrasound to weld a transparent polymer (the crystal) to a coloured one (the case) was inspired by the way in which vehicle indicators are manufactured. This solution made the watch irreparable as the case was made from a single piece of plastic.

A stroke of marketing genius Although the use of plastic and ultrasound welding may not seem like much, they paved the way for a whole new era in Swiss watchmaking: automation. Up until that point, no watch had ever been mass-produced. In addition to this, the production lines that were subsequently set up required practically no operatives, meaning that production costs were very low.

Although this was a revolutionary idea at the time, in terms of the use of a new material, the watch’s structure (the movement was fixed onto the back of the case and the plate removed) and the cost price, it alone does not explain Swatch’s success. After all, the market was flooded with cheap watches. It was Franz Sprecher who would completely transform how it was perceived. At a time when marketing was not yet the selling machine it is today, Ernst Thomke tasked this independent designer with turning the little plastic watch into a fashion accessory. “Its classic, simple shape means that you can put whatever you want on it,” explains Xavier Perrenoud, the founder of the Atelier XJC design studio and professor of design at the Ecole d’Art de Lausanne (ECAL).

“It’s not a watch; it’s a concept – one that can be constantly refreshed and renewed. It’s timeless.”

Twelve Swatch (a contraction of “Swiss Watch”) watches were launched on the Swiss market on 1st March 1983. In the initial weeks, they were seen as a sacrilege by the industry and the brand struggled to find retailers. Professionals in the field were particularly horrified by the idea of a “disposable” watch.

However, consumers soon took an interest and Swatches started flying off the shelves. “The concept was also underpinned by the idea of the ‘Second Watch’,” Carlo Giordanetti continues. “This notion revolutionised the watchmaking industry and created a market that didn’t exist before.”

Up until the end of the 1970s, a watch was an expensive and often one-off purchase in a person’s life. Swatch did away with

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this approach. With its focus on ever-evolving design, the idea of owning a second – and even a third or fourth – timepiece propelled the little plastic watch to global stardom. Although there are no official statistics, it is estimated that some 600 million Swatches have been sold since the brand’s launch.

“It’s a Prolex,” explains Elmar Mock, who has gone on to become an international expert in the field of innovation.

“A Swatch is a Rolex for the people: it’s beautiful, easily recognisable, sturdy and works well. You don’t have to worry about taking it on holiday, losing it or having it stolen. It doesn’t convey a downmarket image; it’s a watch made for everyone and no one is committing a style faux pas by wearing one. It has an understated strength...”

It remains to be seen whether the 21st century will mark the end of this success story. “The 20th century was the era of coordination,” Mock reflects. “Organisation was based on time, a schedule and specific locations. These days, with smart devices, people can see each other where they want, when they want! It’s a paradigm shift and I’m not sure that our lives will continue to march to the beat of our watches in the way they used to. Time is still there, but the pace is picking up, moving from classical music to jazz. Swatch has to follow.”

FLIK FLAK: THE EDUCATIONAL WATCH Swatch’s worldwide success soon gave Swatch Group another idea. 1987 saw the launch of Flik Flak, a children’s brand based on the model of its older sister. It was designed with three objectives in mind. Firstly, it was made to boost sales, with products that were specially designed for children aged between 4 and 10, particularly in terms of safety. It was also intended to be educational and offer a fun way of learning how to tell the time. Finally, it served a strategic purpose, as kids brought up wearing Flik Flak watches would grow up to become customers.

Flik Flak was the very first brand targeted exclusively at children when it was launched on the markets. As well as being waterproof and shock-resistant, these plastic watches were also subjected to a whole host of quality tests, focused in particular on the robustness of the materials and whether the chemicals from which they were made were harmful.

But Flik Flak went further. With the help of experts, the brand developed an educational concept for learning how to tell the time based on two characters – Flik and his little sister Flak – and a colour code that made the watches easier to read. All of this came packaged in themes dear to children, from princesses to pirates and explorers.

The educational principle therefore relates not only to understanding how to read a watch, but also to becoming accustomed to wearing one. As they grow up, buoyed by their good experience with Swatch Group, children may be tempted to buy a Swatch, then a Tissot, a Longines, etc...

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has played a disruptive role in the fashion watch category,” Movado Group President Ricardo Quintero told financial analysts on the company’s fiscal-year-end earnings call in March. (Illustrating the point, Movado announced two weeks later that it was eliminating Quintero’s position in a cost-saving restructuring.)

Fossil, a business leader at a critical point

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PS ON Technology is clobbering the fashion-watch business. Can it also save it? Fashion-watch leader Fossil thinks so.

The fashion-watch business is hurting. Industry executives cite a bouillabaisse of problems, including the decline of department stores, the rise of e-commerce, reduced mall traffic, changing tastes of the millennial generation, and, for U.S. companies, a stronger dollar. The biggest problem, though, is the surge in sales of smartwatches over the past two years. It began in April 2015, when a certain $234-billion maker of smartphones decided to dive into the tiny pond that is the mid-priced watch market.

The Apple Watch, which debuted at an opening price of $349 (reduced to $299 last year) made a big splash whose ripples have shaken watch firms that compete in that price range.

Apple does not release sales data for the watch, but research firms estimate annual sales of about 12 million units in 2015 and 2016, amounting to around S6 billion each year. “Apple

For Fossil Inc., the leader in the fashion-watch segment, Apple’s arrival was particularly disruptive. Fossil, with 18 brands (six of its own and 12 licensed brands) had been the big gorilla in the fashion watch world for years. Suddenly, it was competing with a King Kong 67 times bigger than it was (measured by revenues). “Prior to that, we were clearly positioned as the competitively advantaged leader in a growing category,” Fossil CEO Kosta Kartsotis told financial analysts in February. “However, with the introduction of technology into wrist devices, traditional watches came under pressure and we were disadvantaged. We didn’t have the technology capabilities to compete with smartwatches, leading to a decline in our market.”

Fashion-watch sales shrank. So did Fossil’s revenues and profits. Over the past two years, net sales have dropped 13% from a record $3.51 billion in fiscal 2014 (ended Dec. 31) to $3.04 billion in 2016. Net income has plummeted 79% from $376.7 million in 2014 to $78.8 million last year. (Watches, which account for 77% of Fossil’s total revenues, were down 6% in 2016.)

Fossil has responded by fighting fire with fire. In a dramatic shift, Fossil has adopted a new strategy that it calls New World Fossil. The top priority is to embrace wearable technology. “Wearable technology has quickly emerged as a meaningful segment within accessories as consumers con-

THE APPLE WATCH IMPACT: AS APPLE WATCH SALES ROSE IN 2015 AND 2016, FOSSIL’S FELL Fossil Group Net sales ($ billions) 2.8 3.3 3.5

Fossil Group Net income ($ millions) 343

2012 2013

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2014

377

2015

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220 79

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3.5 3.3 3.1 2.9 2.7 2.5

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For fiscal years ended Dec. 31 – Source: Fossil Group 34

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The different faces of the Fossil Q tinue to be drawn to technology-enabled products that complement their connected lifestyles,” the company said in its 10K filing for 2016. “We believe there is a major opportunity to combine fashion and technology, important attributes to consumers wearing these devices.”

“Our thesis [is] that wearable technology can be the catalyst to drive growth in the watch category,” Kartsotis told financial analysts in the February conference call.

“The number one trend right now in fashion is technology, and we’re going to bring it to market,” Kartsotis said. “We’re going to be injecting technology into the traditional watch business and injecting fashion into the wearables business.”

Over the past year and a half Fossil has put its money where its mouth is. In December 2015, it spent $260 million to acquire Misfit, the maker of wearable fitness trackers and smartwatches. In 2016, Fossil launched 100 new wearable products in eight brands and 40 countries, led by models like the Fossil Q series, Skagen Connected and Michael Kors Access smartwatches. It sold more than 1.5 million pieces worth $170 million, it says.

This year, Fossil will roll out another 300-plus new wearables in most of its brands. They will hit the market in the second half of the year and be “much improved even from last year,”

Kartsotis says, with “more innovations in function and design, more vibrant screens, better software and apps, and they are slimmer and sleeker, which will attract even more females to the category.” (Women account for 70% of its fashion watch sales, Fossil says.)

The stage is now set for an epic battle for control of a $45.5 billion market. That’s the size of the combined wrist devices and fashion watch businesses, according to Dennis Secor, Fossil’s chief financial officer. In 2014, the total fashion watch market was roughly $35 billion, Secor says. “Since then, the traditional watch market has been declining in the low to middle single digits, driven mainly by the disruption of technology.”

However, “We’ve always viewed the wearables and traditional watch markets as converging,” Secor says. The market is now “30 % larger than it was in 2014 and growing.”

For Kartsotis, what’s happening in the fashion watch sector is more like a collision than a convergence. “It’s two businesses colliding,” he told the financial analysts. “We feel with our new technological capabilities, we are positioned to gain share as the two businesses of watches and wearables collide. Our objective is to disrupt the watch business with connectivity, and to compete in the wearables business with style, branding and story-telling.”

Two years ago, Apple disrupted the fashion-watch business with technology. Now Fossil wants to return the favour. “We are disrupting [the smartwatch] category with our fashion brands,” Kartsotis says.

“We have turned what was once a headwind to our business into a tailwind that should only continue to get stronger,” Kartsotis told the analysts.

Not everyone is convinced. The next day, Fossil’s stock dropped 21% to a 52-week low of $18.10. (That’s down from an all-time high of $138.30 in April 2012.)

Michael Kors Access Hybrid Swartwatch

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Skagen Hald and Hagen Connected hybrid smartwatch

E-tailing, another critical issue

Skagen Jorn Connected hybrid smartwatch 36

The problem is that smartwatches are not the only headwinds afflicting Fossil and the fashion-watch segment. There are other problems. A big one is e-tailing, another new technology. The company says it is grappling with “a significant decrease in traffic in many of the shopping malls in which our stores are located.” Traffic is likely to continue to decrease as consumers turn to e-commerce, Fossil says.

Fossil is dealing with the sales slowdown by closing stores (40 last year), reducing watch SKUs (stock-keeping units) and cutting jobs. Meanwhile, sales and profits continue to be battered by the strong U.S. dollar. Between 2014 and 2016, it eroded sales by $250 million and operating profit by $150 million.

It all adds up to a tepid forecast for 2017. Fossil presumes that its traditional watch business will continue to deteriorate.

It predicts that net sales for the year will be within a range of -6.5% to flat (on a GAAP accounting basis) or -4.5% to +2% (non-GAAP basis).

Inevitably, some industry observers and analysts are skeptical about Fossil’s strategy. Ike Boruchow of Wells Fargo downgraded Fossil’s stock from “market perform” to “underperform” in February. Boruchow said that he had increasing concerns about “a business caught in the cross-hairs of an evolving category amid shifting consumer preferences.” Boruchow noted that Fossil plans to lower prices on its smartwatches this year to drive volume and gain market share. (Kartsotis calls it “ultra-competitive” pricing.)

“Fossil’s attempts to drive wearables at all costs likely means they will continue to siphon sales from their high-margin traditional watch business,” Boruchow wrote.

Fossil needs aggressive pricing because it intends to enter a new channel of distribution, consumer electronics stores, “a channel not previously available to our fashion brands,” Kartsotis said, which will boost sales. Traditional-watch executives, like Swatch Group CEO Nick Hayek, consider this a risky move for a watch company. “The smartwatch producers and the fitness trackers all went with a consumer electronics distribution,” Hayek told me in March. “This is not watches, it’s consumer electronics, with discounting, bringing new models, quick cycles. They have no margins. Nobody earns money. This is a mistake.”

Moreover, the real problem with the fashion watch business, some industry executives say, is not so much competition from connected watches, as a lack of newness in the category.

“You go into any department store today and it’s a sea of sameness,” says Charles Kriete, president of Zeon USA/Ingersoll

MOVADO: MAKING THE CONNECTION Like Fossil, the Movado Group, the world’s second-largest seller of licensed-brand fashion watches, thinks smartwatches are a smart move for fashion-watch companies. “We will begin to enter the fully connected smartwatch space,” stated then president Ricardo Quintero in March. (Quintero was laid off in April.)

The company launched 47 wearable models in seven brands in more than a dozen countries between November 2016 and January 2017, the fourth quarter of its fiscal year. This summer it will launch Movado Connect, one of the first watches designed specifically for Google’s Android Wear 2.0, powered by the new Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. It will consist of 5 men’s styles with prices starting at $495. There will also be two styles in Tommy Hilfiger and Hugo Boss. (In addition to Hilfiger and Boss, the group’s licensed brands, which accounted for 48% of total group revenues last year, include Coach, Juicy Couture, Lacoste, and Scuderia Ferrari. It will add Rebecca Minkoff watches this summer. The company owns the Movado, Ebel and Concord brands.)

The moves are a response to what Movado Chairman and CEO Efraim Grinberg called “a very difficult retail market, especially in the United States.” In a call with financial analysts to review the company’s results for fiscal 2017 (ended January 31), Grinberg noted, “Over the last several years, the watch category has been impacted by the decreased traffic to our retail partners combined with the introduction of wearables,” which

1892 and the former head of Kenneth Cole Watches. There is an unusual lull in the fashion watch market now, Kriete says.

“There are no hot designers to drive the business, as we had with Kenneth Cole and Fossil had with Michael Kors. There are no hot fashion looks like the pink bracelet craze in ladies’ fashion a few years ago.” Fashion runs in cycles, he says. “It’s not that people aren’t buying watches. They are. Even millennials are buying watches. But they are not buying designer brand watches.” Kriete cites the success of MVMT, an e-commerce watch brand founded by two millennials in 2013 that reportedly had sales of $60 million last year.

Fossil hears the criticism, of course. But they are busy creating the fashion-watch future, where connected watches are fashionable and fashion watches are connected. “There’s a lot of moving parts,” Secor told the analysts. “We’re flying at 1,000 miles an hour here.”

he called “disruptive to the fashion category.” The solution is for the Movado Group to compete for that market. “In the smartwatch space, there is a continued opportunity as technology improves and consumers are able to get the creative designs they desire to deliver the functionality they are looking for,” Grinberg said.

The Movado Group’s net sales for fiscal 2017 dropped 7.1% to $552.8 million. Net income fell 22.2% to $35.1 million. The main problem was softness in the fashion and affordable-luxury markets in the United States. Total U.S. watch sales priced $3,000 and under declined 11% last year, the company said. One silver lining was the Movado brand, the U.S. leader in the $300 to $3,000 segment with a 21% market share, according to the NPD market research group. It outperformed the market and gained significant share in the fourth quarter, the company said.

Movado expects another difficult year this year, with net sales ranging from $515 million to $530 million, down 4% to 7% from last year. As a result, the company is reducing its workforce in the U.S. and Switzerland, which will save $12 million this year.

The Movado Group’s move into smartwatches is a response to what the company calls “the current challenging conditions of the U.S. fashion-watch category.”

It does not indicate a shift away from conventional watches. “We’re big believers still in traditional watches,” Grinberg said, “and believe that the category will stabilise and begin to grow again. But there is an opportunity for wearables.” (JT)

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Xavier Gauderlot, President Europe, Movado Group

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Manufacturing and distributing the Hugo Boss and Tommy Hilfiger brands under licence, the Movado Group is a world giant when it comes to fashion watches. Its President for Europe, Xavier Gauderlot, provides some keys to understanding this market.

The Movado Group operates a large number of fashion brands under licence: Coach, Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger, Lacoste, Scuderia Ferrari, Juicy Couture and Rebecca Minkoff, models that are assembled in Asia and therefore do not bear the ‘Swiss-made’ label. This business, which has enjoyed strong growth in the past ten years (Hugo Boss sales rose from 4 to 80 million dollars between 2005 and 2012), represents half the group’s total turnover. It is also the proprietor of watch brands Movado, Ebel and Concord.

One of the largest watch licence operators together with another American giant, the Fossil Group, it withstood the 2015 crisis better than many of its rivals, posting growth of 1.4%.

Even so, its sales were down 7.1%, at 552.8 million dollars, last year. It reacted with cost-cutting measures, including redundancies, but also by developing its online presence in the face of a traditional American retail network where sales of fashion watches are flagging.

The Movado Group has also entered the smartwatch arena, both for its proprietary brands and for those under licence, in collaboration with HP Inc. It also recently announced a partnership with Google.

How is the fashion watch market faring compared with that of ‘traditional’ brands?

ket, the fashion watch market is not yet very highly developed in Asia; as for the American market, that’s difficult for everybody because the retailers are having a tough time. But in Europe at least, the market is still profitable, especially in the UK and in Germany. We’re posting good sell-out figures, which is far from being the case of everybody currently in the fashion segment.

Where are you positioned in this tough and relentlessly competitive watchmaking ecosystem?

We try to input high perceived value. A 200-euro watch has to have a perceived value of 1,000 euros. That’s the key to fashion. Moreover, we operate clear segmentation between our brands, our products and our collections. Lastly, we’re very selective about distribution: some competitors went into overkill and distributed everywhere. But it’s a wellknown fact that over and above 5,000 points of sale worldwide you’re not going to find quality stores.

It’s striking that some major fashion names, such as Dior, Chanel, Hermès or Ralph Lauren, opted to develop an exclusive, high-end watch product, while others seem to view it as no more than an ‘accessory’ and entrust production and promotion of it to a third party...

If we look back at history, Gucci launched the first fashion watch. And at that time, the brand positioned its products towards the top of the range (editor’s note: see interview p.

46). Then the Fossil Group proved a game-changer with its entry-level Armani watches at 200 euros. Personally, I do not believe that the high-end fashion watch model is really profitable. This is mainly because new players launch their products on the internet, like Daniel Wellington for instance, which drags prices lower and lower. I feel that the best price position for a fashion watch is between 100 and 300 dollars.

Over 500 dollars, it’s more difficult.

Are you yourself feeling the competition from companies like Daniel Wellington?

Of course we’re feeling it, even if Daniel Wellington targets a much younger customer base, millennials who are less loyal than mature customers and might move onto a traditional Swiss brand like Tissot or TAG Heuer, or a fashion brand like the ones we represent under licence. We prefer to view these newcomers as a ‘springboard’ for targeting the millennials, in the same way as smartwatches. Gateways exist between these different worlds.

The situation is highly contrasted, with marked geographical differences. This is because unlike the luxury watch mar-

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Even so, how can you assure your long-term future in the face of the never-ending assaults by new brands – such as the very recent example of MVMT or Cluse who have made a commercial breakthrough?

We’ve learned to live with this continuous outbreak of new brands. Every two or three years some newcomer enjoys a roll on the back of some trend, which might be a bling-bling product, or a more conventional one as we’ve been seeing recently. But the success of those brands is usually shortlived. Moreover, Daniel Wellington made the same mistake as many others: over-distributing, which in the end erodes any notion of exclusivity and wearies those consumers who are sensitive to changing fashions. But it’s true that we’re engaged in a constant battle. We’re always having to develop, reinvent ourselves. We’re not in the luxury segment, where stock turnover happens once a year. In the fashion world, boutiques have to turn stocks over at least three times a year.

Which trend is forcing you most to change at the moment: electronic sales or the advent of the smartwatch?

Online sales by a clear margin – which are incidentally much more highly developed in the United States and Asia than in Europe. That is a major change. People are always talking about the Chinese consumer who comes to see the watch in the shop and then buys it over the internet. Young people are doing exactly the same thing. In the UK, one-third of watches are already sold over the internet. We have a large presence on the web. Can luxury watches allow themselves not to venture there? I can see that consumers are increasingly engaging with the internet. Regrettable as it may be, there’s no getting away from it.

Would you be prepared to host new brands under licence?

Yes, moreover we’ve just added Rebecca Minkoff, a particular favourite of the millennials, to our portfolio. But we’re very selective about adding licences. We turn down applications every week! There are always new opportunities, because brands are always being created. But our primary criterion is that the partner has to have a global presence. When it comes down to it the number of applicants who meet our criteria is quite limited. But all our brands under licence have high potential for growth, so we prefer to focus on developing them.

Especially, we were slower than our competitors in developing into Europe – five years ago we were present only in Switzerland – but today most of our growth there comes from fashion watches. Our group philosophy is to build the brands over the long term, cautiously and without over-distributing. That’s also what sets us apart from the very fast-changing fashion market.

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Hugo Boss chronograph

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ILL AR D Founded in 1854, the Timex Group produces Timex, Guess, Gc, Versace, Versus, Salvatore Ferragamo and Nautica, either as proprietary brands or under licence. Headquartered in Connecticut in the USA, the group employs more than 5.000 people worldwide. Interview with the new President and Chief Executive Officer of Timex Group, German-born Tobias Reiss-Schmidt, who details in an exclusive talk with Europa Star the capacities of its diverse entities to face a rapidly changing market.

The watchmaking industry is at a crossroads, after experiencing a difficult year in 2016. Where does the Timex Group stand in this delicate context?

There are obviously things that we need to improve upon to face the situation in the industry. At the same time for Timex Group this economic climate is an opportunity: we have evaluated our assets, set clear priorities and increased investment in strategic initiatives. We focus on what we do best: be better than others and grow market share!

What were the best performing brands in your portfolio in 2016?

The brand that grew the strongest in 2016 was actually Versus. It is from a small base, but we see a huge opportunity for this brand. Our power brands are Guess and Timex. Both of these are strong brands with long and rich histories that we intend to capitalise upon in the years to come. We are very optimistic for the future and we are also excited about the outlook for our more luxury brands Versace, Ferragamo and Gc. Our design teams have done an amazing job taking the collections to a new level.

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Our diverse product portfolio of strong brands across a wide range of price-points, our watchmaking know-how and innovative capacity as well as our manufacturing base are obviously major strengths. For both Timex and Guess, we have decades of fantastic archives that we can explore, as you will see in new collections that will soon be hitting the market.

We need to show the world that with Guess, we still are the authority in fashion watches. To do this, we want to offer a richer experience and to be more relevant and engaging in our communication and at point of sale.

Another of our strengths is the diversity of our distribution channels: our established retail partners which give the consumer a great brand experience. We are successfully building new distribution in fashion retail and consumer electronics and are investing in our e-commerce presence, but it is in our established brick-and-mortar stores that we have the greatest possibility to make a difference. It is by having a good brand presence in the marketplace that we can also grow online.

What is the structure of your consumers? How do they differ between brands?

This is actually our focus this year and an area in which we are investing in research, as it is very important for us to really understand the consumer of each of our brands. Who is our true target? Our most loyal customers? Our potential customers? With this information, we can segment our brand offerings accordingly.

We believe so strongly in this that for Timex we have realigned our whole organisation in this way, segmenting the team into business units of experts dedicated to the Business Units of Market, Boutique, which is more premium, and Sports & Advanced Concepts. What makes Timex special in the watch category in which we evolve is being a true watchmaker brand with a 160 year history at a very affordable price point. We even make our own movement parts in France – it’s the real deal. We are creating a buzz around the brand through collaborations with Todd Snyder, Mr. Porter, and Carhartt. The consumer response has exceeded our expectations and we have a lot more in the pipeline.

Where are the main markets for each brand?

If we are speaking of our top brands Guess and Timex, then the US and North America is not surprisingly the number one market, but Guess is also strong in Western Europe and Asia.

Tobias Reiss-Schmidt, President and Chief Executive Officer of Timex Group

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Besides Guess and Timex, you also operate Swiss made brands. How are they faring and did you have to make extra investments in light of the new regulations?

We are very satisfied with the brands that we have and positive about their future. Versace and Ferragamo are dynamic brands with a great deal of room for growth and Versus by Versace also offers new opportunities for the non-Swiss side.

For Gc, we have both Swiss made and an offering in Swiss Movement as an answer to the market demand for further segmentation and a broader customer target.

So as to adhere to the new Swissness laws, we decided to internalise a lot of our operations and now have our own assembly in Lugano for example. This not only helped us to comply with the new regulations but also to improve quality. For both Swiss and non-Swiss we have very strong manufacturing and assembly capabilities and we are now opening our infrastructure to other brands in the industry.

Are you also open for more licensing business?

Yes, we are open for discussion.

New players are rapidly coming and others disappearing in your price category, especially with the new tool of crowdfunding... Does this new competition eat into your market share? How do you react to this?

In my view, new players can also be seen as an opportunity. The watch industry is very traditional but many new players have been very successful. We can look at their ways of working and learn from them and, if it makes sense, apply these to our business. For me in the end, these brands bring new consumers to our industry. You can reach out to people who might have never worn a watch before. It is the same for smartwatches. It broadens the market and this can only be a good thing.

Do you envision, in a few years, at least one connected module on all watches in your price segment?

Perhaps the idea of everyone being connected is a little extreme, but certainly smartwatches will play a role and it is important to understand this market, to be present in it and to learn. It is a new market and we are in a better position than a lot of others, due to our tech know-how: we already have our own connected IQ+ movement; we propose connected/analogue products that look like a normal watch as well as the Guess and Gc Android Wear products. With these, we can learn how the consumer is using the watch and adapt accordingly. In an ideal world, you come in the end to a watch that gives you all the functionality of a smartwatch but without any compromise on the design – the new face of the fashion watch, which is what we do best.

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Guess chronographs

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But remember that Gucci was the first fashion brand to move into watches in 1972, with Severin Wunderman. Naturally we want to take back the lead in the young, fashion watchmaking segment while not changing the average price of the collections.

Basically, I would say that the new Gucci spirit is ‘infecting’ all the other categories of products. That’s due to the fact that there is only one designer for all these categories. It’s a daring move to rejuvenate the brand, but we can see that it has already worked for our fashion business. Now we’re applying it to watches.

Do you view yourself today as an affordable or a luxury brand?

Gucci is undergoing a revolution! Their new designer, Alessandro Michele, is now making his mark on the brand with the bee logo which was the first to bridge the gap between fashion and watchmaking. Its goal now is to be the brand closest to the heart of the millennials. And watches are the vector. Piero Braga, President and CEO of Gucci Timepieces, explains.

A golden shooting star, a purple planet Saturn, a rainbow-coloured lunar phase, bees on a black dial, a joyful constellation that contrasts sharply with the formal austerity typical of the big luxury brands...

The new G-Timeless by Gucci is a good illustration of the influence of its new designer-in-chief Alessandro Michele, who is unusual in making his models wear not only clothes but also watches and jewellery on the catwalk. He evidently has a taste for watches; but this is part and parcel of the world that the artist is now creating for all the lines of this Italian fashion house, which is owned by the Kering Group.

His is an off-beat style that is completely repositioning the brand in a bid to charm the millennials.

We operate at the entry level, mid-range and high end of the market. But we’re consistent about it. In every case, what we highlight are the brand emblems. We have the capacity to produce fine jewellery and sell expensive products. Let me say it again: this is not a repositioning of price.

We have segmented our offering. You’ll find ‘peace & love’ cats rubbing shoulders with fine jewellery! First and foremost, we don’t want to be boring. The process of revamping the collections completely took three years before they came to anything. We had to recreate the dream. 2016 was a year of transformation for all of Gucci. Today, all the planets are aligned.

What about the distribution of your watches?

We’re always wide open to new partnerships outside our own boutiques. We’re interested in multibrand watch retailers and department stores, but also online sales via new concepts such as Mr. Porter. In short, we’re open to all distribution channels.

You get the impression that Gucci watches are undergoing a revival in 2017 with a revamped, somewhat provocative image...

When do you hope to harvest the fruits of your new strategy?

In charge of design across the entire Gucci range, Alessandro Michele has dramatically lowered the average age of its customers since arriving in early 2015. This is very young-looking design: today you can legitimately say that Gucci is the luxury fashion brand of the millennials.

We’re waiting to see the results for the second half of 2017.

The road is already mapped out in the fashion sector, where we saw the impact of repositioning nine months after presenting the collections. Today, the Gucci bee is an emblem that the public recognises.

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Piero Braga, President and CEO of Gucci Timepieces 47

RI A

D O G G A LC TO RA B O A D B E RO L UA A & LO TA TE N A G E M D. BY

CO AL

LM

LA KI N Don Carlo

Having divested themselves from the D&G fashion watches that were manufactured by the Binda Group, Dolce & Gabbana have moved into the high-end sector with watches designed and styled in-house and the manufacturing and assembly of the watches along with their movements is completed in Switzerland.

The brand’s standard collections are inspired by classic elegance combining refined watch design with or without innovative gem-set indices using diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds and the movements are COSC approved.

However in the exclusive setting of Basel’s Three Kings Hotel the brand presented four creations based on Giuseppe Verdi’s

48

operas that were unlike anything else to be found during Baselworld or anywhere else for that matter: Don Carlo, Nabucco, Otello and Macbeth.

Each of these unique pieces was hand made in Switzerland using 350 grams of 18-karat gold and crafted using the most sophisticated techniques of Italian goldsmiths. The Swiss movements were specifically made for each timepiece.

Don Carlo is a flying tourbillon and minute repeater set into an 18-karat gold case. The dial is partially hidden by an open-work cover set with 11 emeralds and opens up to reveal a superb jade dial with inlaid gold numerals and tourbillon aperture.

Nabucco is an automatic 18-karat gold hand-engraved watch with a flying tourbillon. The dial is dominated by a miniature sculpture of the Archangel Michael sitting atop the engraved bezel, covering the Roman numerals XI, XII and I. Otello is an 18-karat gold watch with a vintage manual mechanical movement. The mother-of-pearl dial set with Roman numerals sits centrally in a beautifully hand-engraved case reminiscent of an antique frame with the winged lion of Venice at its base.

Macbeth is a tourbillon monopusher chronograph with an engraved dial with second and minute counters and a power reserve indicator with the tourbillon at six o’clock. Arabic numerals are engraved around the bezel and the engraved Roman numerals are on the inner ring between the dial and the bezel.

These magnificently elaborate and unique timepieces have elevated Dolce & Gabbana into the Haute Horlogerie firmament and their prices, which range from 95,000 euros (Nabucco and Otello) to 275,000 (Macbeth) and 575,000 euros (Don Carlo) are up there with them.

Nabucco

Otello

Macbeth

A O EL N O D D D BO Y E R LD

Italo Fontana

W M

With their oversized cases and crowns and pushers on the left of the case (a signature design element of the brand) the Welder Moody unisex collection comes in various colours with a photochromic glass that subtly changes colour depending on the angle of the light. Models come in three sizes – 38 mm, 42 mm, 45 mm – in either a three-hand or chronograph version and with IP-plated cases in yellow or rose gold, bronze, black or Welder is one of this season’ s surprises. The deep blue with leather straps ranging from watches come in two collections, Welder The burgundy and petroleum blue to light pink Bold and Welder Moody at attractive prices and saddle brown. that range from 160 to 450 dollars, ensuring As the brand’s CEO Ramadan Kaya states, they slot comfortably into the category of “Welder addresses itself to the generation Welder Moody the 99% of manufactured watches referred and people who live by the motto ‘You only to in this issue of Europa Star. live once’, who are constantly in search of Designed by Italo Fontana, the brand’s watches have that dis- new experiences, wanting to be free of the establishment tinctly Italian sparkle comprising colour, originality and pro- and ready to express their individuality to the fullest. And vocativeness. They are bold in both appearance and concept, Welder offers that with its watches, they are intended to help moody through their colour variations and adventurous be- you escape boredom, live a way of life that is not imposed by cause of both the bold statement they make and the creation others, let you stand out in a crowd. They’re designed to ask of a timepiece for a young, liberal and itinerant traveller. the question: Why not?” (DML)

49

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Not all market players experienced the same “crisis year” in 2016: while Swatch Group and Richemont have been strongly impacted by their exposure to Greater China, independent brands like Rolex, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet have coped well with a difficult economic environment. These are just some of the key findings of the latest report by Vontobel’s René Weber, which forecasts a market turnaround this year.

You expect a – relative – turnaround in watch sales this year and predict a +1% growth in 2017. What are the conditions for this change?

There are two main reasons for the improvement. First, we believe the Chinese tourist will come back to Europe and we expect a double-digit increase in the number of Chinese visitors. Second, Hong Kong, which remains the most important market for Swiss watch exports, still has a high inventory level, but after a decrease of 25% in 2016 in Swiss watch exports, the decline will clearly slow down in 2017.

Nevertheless, the overall value of Swiss watch exports was still declining at the beginning of the year, and Hong Kong still seems to be on the decline.

A symbolic evolution that you observe is the fact that Rolex is now bigger than the whole of Richemont Group.

How do you explain this?

Rolex did not experience a decline in sales in 2016, whereas in Richemont some brands had double-digit declines and the inventory buybacks had an impact on sales as well.

Independent brands like Rolex, Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe seem to fare better than multi-brand groups like Swatch Group and Richemont Group. Are they more resilient in times of industry crisis, and if so why?

The three mentioned brands have a smaller exposure to Greater China and therefore felt the negative impact from Hong Kong less than Swatch Group and Richemont. At Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet, there is also limited production and therefore some watches have waiting lists and make the brands more desirable.

The Japanese brands Casio, Citizen and Seiko also gained market share in 2016.

How?

René Weber, Vontobel

“It is the first time for more than 10 years that the Japanese watch producers are doing better than their Swiss counterparts.”

The turnaround started in March: it also benefits from an easy comparison base as this month was in 2016 one of the weakest (-16%). This phenomenon is valid throughout the coming year, for example June 2016 was also -16%...

Who were the winners and who were the losers of 2016?

The winners were mainly the independent high-end watch brands like Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe, but also Rolex was gaining market share. Also mid-end brands like Longines and TAG Heuer were gaining market share. On the other hand, watch brands with a high Greater China and especially Hong Kong exposure were the losers. Therefore it was no surprise that Richemont brands like Piaget, Vacheron Constantin and Cartier saw a restructuring.

The market share gains were mainly due to exchange rates, but they also benefitted from a local market which was less negative than the global watch market. It is the first time for more than 10 years that the Japanese watch producers are doing better than the Swiss counterparts.

You very much focus on high-end brands or groups. But what developments have you noted in the affordable range, be it with Fossil Group, Movado Group, or newcomers like Daniel Wellington which seem to do especially well with younger generations?

Beside the high-end brands, we saw already in 2016 that the upper-end segment (Longines, TAG Heuer) was doing better than the overall Swiss watch market. Whereas total Swiss watch exports declined 9.7% in value, this represented just -3.9% at the upper end, but -11.6% at the very top. The over-proportional decline in the high end was mainly due to a strong decline in gold watches (-19%). The affordable range had an impact from smartwatches, with some of them,

51

especially Fossil, pushing this segment strongly. In the Swiss watch industry, the low end (Swatch brand) was -10.1% and the mid range (Tissot) -9.5%, whereas Fossil’s sales were –4% in stable currencies.

In terms of new products again, you point out the conservatism of the brands at this year’s fairs of SIHH and Baselworld. Still, are there any interesting strategic developments that you would emphasise on the product side?

I would point out one in particular: for me, an interesting move As we pointed out in our recent dossiers, all brands seem was the cooperation between Breitling and Tudor, with Tudor to be very careful with pricing. Do you share this obser- using the Breitling chronograph movement and Breitling invation and what are the most interesting troducing the Tudor three-hand movement examples of this evolution in your view, into their watches.

“We believe that in five in terms of affordable new watches?

years’ time, around one third of quartz watches will have a chip in their movement.”

We have seen in 2016 for the first time a decline in the average price for the highend segment, which was driven again the decline in sales of gold watches. At the SIHH and Baselworld you could see that most of the brands have pushed their launches at the entry price level of the brand and there were more steel than gold watches. We also saw that brands like TAG Heuer pushed their prices down and Longines was introducing new quartz watches at Baselworld. Also, some high-end brands unveiled for the first time a collection in steel (Piaget, H. Moser & Cie).

You also point out that smartwatches essentially “bite” into the market of traditional affordable quartz watches. As mentioned, Longines recently launched a new highly precise quartz collection.

But is there a future for non-connected quartz watches?

I believe a lot of quartz watches will have a smartwatch feature in the future; there will always be quartz watches which just show the time, but as it is getting easy to include smartwatch features, we believe that in five years’ time, around one third of quartz watches will have a chip in their movement.

GLOBAL TOP 15 WATCH / SMARTWATCH / WEARABLE BRANDS IN COMPARISON (SALES 2016, IN CHF MN) Rolex

4,700

Apple Watch

4,000

Fitbit

2,148

Omega

1,880

Cartier

1,450

Garmin Outdoor/Fitness

1,350

Patek Philippe

1,300

Longines

1,210

Citizen

1,100

Fossil (own brand)

1,050

Seiko

1,000

Tissot

940

Audemars Piguet

850

TAG Heuer

805

IWC

765 -

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

4,000

4,500

Source: Vontobel Equity Research

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WATCH MARKET: MAJOR COMPANIES AND CORRESPONDING WATCH SALES (2016, IN CHF MN) Company

Country

Watch sales (in CHF mn)

Watch sales share

Worldwide market share

Swatch Group

Switzerland

6,600

87%

18.3%

Rolex

Switzerland

4,900

100%

13.6%

Richemont

Switzerland

4,800

47%

13.3%

Fossil

USA

2,307

77%

6.4%

LVMH / Bulgari

France

1,788

5%

5.0%

Citizen

Japan

1,529

53%

4.2%

Patek Philippe

Switzerland

1,300

100%

3.6%

Seiko

Japan

1,256

53%

3.5%

Casio

Japan

901

30%

2.5%

Audemars Piguet

Switzerland

850

100%

2.4%

Movado

USA

589

100%

1.6%

Chopard

Switzerland

520

60%

1.4%

Breitling

Switzerland

370

100%

1.0%

Kering (Gucci/GP/UN)

France/Switzerland

370

4%

1.0%

Citychamp

Hong Kong

360

96%

1.0%

Folli Follie

Greece

360

25%

1.0%

Franck Muller

Switzerland

265

100%

0.7%

Richard Mille

Switzerland

225

100%

0.6%

Festina

Spain

200

100%

0.6%

Victorinox

Switzerland

180

20%

0.5%

Frederique Constant

Switzerland

180

100%

0.5%

Morellato Group

Italy

174

100%

0.5%

Hermès

France

172

4%

0.5%

Fiyta

China

134

30%

0.4%

Chanel

Switzerland

110

NA

0.3%

Parmigiani

Switzerland

100

100%

0.3%

C.F. Bucherer

Switzerland

100

NA

0.3%

Raymond Weil

Switzerland

95

100%

0.3%

DKSH (Maurice Lacroix)

Switzerland

80

1%

0.2%

Titoni

Switzerland

70

100%

0.2%

de Grisogono

Switzerland

60

50%

0.2%

Oris

Switzerland

60

100%

0.2%

Mondaine

Switzerland

50

100%

0.1%

Technomarine

Switzerland

35

100%

0.1%

De Witt

Switzerland

25

100%

0.1%

Edox

Switzerland

25

100%

0.1%

Junghans

Germany

25

100%

0.1%

F.P. Journe

Switzerland

25

100%

0.1%

Chronoswiss

Switzerland

20

100%

0.1%

Others

4,792

Total Market E

36,00

Exchange rates: EUR/CHF: 1.09 | USD/CHF: 0.99 | JPY/CHF: 0.91 | CNY/CHF: 0.149

13.3%

Source: Vontobel Equity Research

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The increased taxes on watch purchases by Chinese tourists in Switzerland rank high on the list of the industry’s current woes. In Brazil and India, highly protectionist measures still prevent major national markets developing in this sector. To cap it all, a whole series of champions of “economic patriotism” have recently come to power.

Be it economic or cultural, protectionism always hampers the international growth of watchmaking exports. The subject tends not to come up much in years of plenty, but at a time when some sources of revenue appear to be dwindling, it has become a hot topic once again. Has protectionism been globalised too?

And does watchmaking have the wherewithal to fight back?

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rump in the White House? Unthinkable. As was Brexit. Surely the Front National could never manage to outperform both right and left in France? Could Viktor Orban’s Hungary conceivably harden under the influence of neighbouring Russia, itself taking a harder line these days? What about the regional economy of the Middle East? That downturn’s only a blip, isn’t it? The price of oil is sure to pick up again…

Certainties are definitely in short supply today. The above examples show just how expectations can be defeated in record time – in a matter of just a few weeks or months. The goalposts of international politics seem to be moving as fast as the changing seasons. Where does watchmaking fit into all of this?

From the USA to China

Mere hype or real risk?

Vincent Subilia, deputy managing director of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Services, takes a more reassuring line: “We need to pay attention to actual facts rather than hype,” he says. “For the time being, the ‘double whammy’ of Trump plus Brexit has not resulted in any actual measures. So far, none of all that has had any direct effect on Swiss watch exports.”

There may be an element of spin, but in some countries reality has been biting for some time now. Mexico has long had high customs duties – which can be as much as 11.5% – while Brazil has long restricted the use of ATA Carnets, which facilitate the international watch trade; its customs duties and VAT rates are still very high, too.

All rights reserved

Watchmaking is just a drop in the bucket of world trade: watch exports from Switzerland accounted for less than CHF 20 billion in 2016. By comparison, Migros, the country’s leading food retailer, notched up domestic sales worth over CHF 27 billion that same year. The fact is, though, that Migros operates on a local market, whereas Swiss watchmaking lives solely thanks to exports – which are now struggling amid the return of protectionism.

Protectionism comes in many forms: higher customs duties, antidumping taxes, subsidies, investment restrictions, and more besides. The Global Trade Alert reveals just how widespread the issue is: the USA has more than 1,000 protectionist measures, 377 of which have been implemented since 2008.

Between 2008 and 2015, Russia and India adopted some 500

measures, Brazil a further 281, and China 222 more. Worse still, all these markets are prime targets for Swiss watchmaking, which has to deal with this state of affairs as a result. Just imagine how different things would be if giants such as India (editor’s note: see the analysis of this market in our previous issue) or Brazil were to become more favourable towards luxury watch imports! Meanwhile in China the government has hiked “domestic” taxes targeting purchases made by Chinese visitors to Switzerland, despite the two nations having a free trade agreement.

People have long argued that the current watchmaking crisis is due to turbulence in local economies. But what if the real enemy were protectionism? Are we failing to see the wood for the trees? “The rise of protectionism poses a risk to the global economy,” warned Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH, last April.

55

All rights reserved

“Emerging countries typically engage in protectionism,” with China – one that has led to a gradual but significant rereckons Joëlle de Montgolfier, Senior Director at Bain & duction in customs duties on watches.”

Company, “but sometimes it goes too far. Luxury – including Jean-Claude Biver, head of watchmaking at LVMH, takes watchmaking – is wrongly targeted. Luxury really ought to be a similar view: “The Swiss industry has always been able seen as a source of revenue and growth in the most closed to count on its politicians, ever-ready to serve the nationof nations. The fact is, though, that until now, Swiss watch- al interest. Without their ability and political willpower, making has got along as a self-supporting industry – without Switzerland would not be one of the world’s top ten counasking itself the right questions.” tries in economic and financial terms today.”

The prevailing protectionism affecting watchmaking is flour- Bilateral agreements, then, can open up a breach in protecishing largely in reaction to the perception of a “symbol of tionist walls – and watchmaking, a relatively small part of the luxury”, brandished like a banner at the gateglobal economy, can slip in through the way to markets that were unprepared for it, cracks. Some barriers do, however, remain.

Just imagine how either commercially or culturally. This has In India, for example, a 50-50 partnership different things would been especially true in China: “The actions with a local trader is required to open a of some firms resulted in clients becoming watch business. Brands seeking to remain be if giants such as acquainted with luxury goods before much in control of their distribution fall at this India or Brazil were more basic items,” says Joëlle de Montgolfier. first hurdle.

“A degree of readjustment was inevitable.”

What workarounds might there be? Not to become more And when it came, the readjustment imeveryone is able – or willing – to open subfavourable towards posed on watch exports turned out to be drasidiaries or relocate. Other options do exluxury watch imports! conian. Fortunately, barriers are now coming ist: “One of the easiest short-term solutions down in certain places, from both cultural often consists in outsourcing part of the and economic standpoints. “I remain confident that barriers production chain, or engaging in disguised transfer pricing,” will continue to fall,” said Davide Traxler, former CEO of the explains Edouard Meylan, manager of the H. Moser & Cie Corum and Eterna brands. “It wasn’t luxury per se that was be- brand. “Entry-level brands have already gone down this road, ing targeted in China; rather, it was conspicuous consumption. producing or even assembling the product abroad, while Those are two different things. The suspicion of corruption is multinationals use their subsidiaries to implement transfer gradually receding. The fashion industry has already managed to pricing. However, such an approach is more complex and less get its rates lowered; Shanghai now has its own free trade zone.” appropriate for brands such as our own.”

Meylan’s response to economic protectionism? Brand protectionism: “The way forward for us is to engage in protecDecisive bilateralism tionism for our brand, by which I mean strengthening our distinctiveness and exclusivity, even as we increase the apTo encourage this trend, Switzerland can make use of one of its peal of our products.” most effective weapons: bilateral agreements. “Switzerland has more commercial agreements than almost any other nation,” explains Vincent Subilia. “For instance, it’s the only country in continental Europe to have a free trade agreement

56

www.viennatime.at

Am Hof 2, Vienna

B7E .R N

Watch Exhibition at the ancient Beletage of the Hotel

A. Shorokhoff

Carl Suchy

Habring²

Mediapartner

Hanhart

Sinn

2200 1167

1 SM N 1 1O. VBEI

Park Hyatt Vienna

AWATCH NN

EEK W

VIE

© Park Hyatt Vienna

November 10th to 12th 2017

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M FT U A H E RK E S E T SW I Z IS E S

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Everything you always wanted to know about the Swiss watch trade but were afraid to ask: a recent survey, published by The Mercury Project, created by Thierry Huron, lifts the veil on this crucial market for the industry, setting out the number of sales outlets, the most widely distributed brands and the principal retailers. So many potential signposts as to which path to take for Swiss retailers who no longer seem to know which way to turn.

58

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aradoxically, Switzerland is one of the least wellknown and most opaque watch markets since, for obvious reasons, it is not included in the Swiss horology federation’s export statistics.

Moreover, as Thierry Huron underlines, “in our country there’s a kind of traditional culture of keeping figures secret. Not to mention the very strong pressure about confidentiality that the brands exercise on the retailers.” This former TAG Heuer marketing director who honed his skills at statistics agency Nielsen is now setting out to reveal all about the Swiss watchmaking market.

Heading up a new consulting structure called The Mercury Project, Thierry Huron intends to do this in two stages. The first stage had him travelling through Switzerland with the help of two assistants to gather as much information as possible about the 978 watch retail outlets that he documented, representing a total of 396 brands. Based on this initial “big picture” of watch retailing he will complete the second stage: a periodic survey of the Swiss market based on a representative panel of retailers.

If we look more closely at these categories, Fossil is ahead of Tissot and Esprit as the most widely distributed brand in the entry-level retail outlets. Tissot outstrips Certina and Rado in the mid-range, the particular preserve of the Swatch Group (editor’s note: see our previous issue on the middle class).

As for the top of the range, absolute parity reigns between Breitling, Chopard, Longines and – once again – Tissot, all of which are distributed in a quarter of the most prestigious retail outlets in Switzerland. Note that 134 brands are sold exclusively in one store! Thierry Huron explains: “Many retailers have lost their flagship watches and are launching their own brands as private labels; moreover, certain brands have selected distribution, limited to one single store.”

Zurich tops the list

The consultant has developed a statistical tool called Brand Density Score (BDS), which multiplies the number of watch stores present in a given locality by the average number of brands represented in each. The result is the density of watch brands present in the 259 Swiss towns covered by the study.

The size of France Zurich comes out top in the rankings, with 89 sales outlets and an average 9.2 brands per outlet, resulting in a total BDS Several lessons can already be learned from the first report of 819. Geneva comes second: although it has the largest published by Thierry Huron. From his findings, he concludes number of sales outlets in Switzerland (no fewer than 97, that with its strong exposure to tourism “the national market more than half in the premium segment!), the high proporexceeds the one-billion-franc mark and ranks among the top tion of monobrand boutiques detracts from the average asfive markets in the world for Swiss watchsortment per store and, consequently, the es”. In other words, Switzerland stands on end score of Calvin’s city. Lucerne, Basel a par with the major European countries, and Interlaken are the remaining three in Switzerland stands on such as the UK, Italy, France and Germany. the top five Swiss cities in terms of brand “At the last press conference on the redensity. a par with the major sults of the Swatch Group, they provided Thierry Huron used the same index to deEuropean countries, information about their share of the Swiss termine which chain of outlets had the such as the UK, Italy, market: it represented ten per cent of the broadest array of watches. It came as no group’s turnover in 2015,” underscores surprise that with 64 boutiques and a toFrance and Germany.

Thierry Huron. “It attained 14.6% in 2010, tal BDS of 1,264, department store Manor and dropped 23% between 2015 and 2016. came out at the top of this class for all You have to take into account though that categories, ahead of two other popular these figures include deliveries of components to third par- chains: Christ and Coop City. In the premium segment (over ties, so they can’t be considered as a part of sell-out in abso- CHF 5,000), Bucherer leads the dance with 16 sales outlets lute terms.” and a BDS of 234, ahead of Gübelin, Kirchhofer, Kurz and Les Ambassadeurs. The independent retail outlet is still the most common model in Switzerland: there are 582 of this type of Tissot rules at home store, compared with 287 chain-owned outlets and 109 monobrand boutiques.

Virtually half the retail outlets documented in The Mercury Project study sell brands at a median price of up to CHF 800, the remainder being split equally between retailers operating below and above the CHF 5,000 bar. The strength of Tissot in Switzerland – overall the most widely distributed brand in the country – is worth noting: present in 42 per cent of the stores documented, which puts it ahead of Certina and Fossil, it has models in every category of sales outlet.

59

TOP 10 LOCATIONS BY BRAND DENSITY

Less than one third of all stores are located in Geneva, Zurich, Lucerne, Basel and Lausanne.

4 6 7

9

1 3

5

2 10

8

TOP CITIES BY BRAND DENSITY SCORE* Stores 89

Brand density score*

Brand assortment per store

B

Zurich

819

C

Geneva

97

677

7.0

D

Lucerne

49

499

10.2

E

Basel

29

343

11.8

F

Interlaken

24

297

12.4

G

Bern

27

254

9.4

H

Lausanne

29

192

6.6

I

Lugano

24

171

7.1

J

St-Gallen

17

154

9.1

K

Zermatt

20

113

5.7

*The Brand Density Score (BDS) multiplies the number of watch stores present in a given locality by the average number of brands represented in each.

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9.2

FOCUS ON CHAIN RETAILERS: STORES AND BRAND DENSITY Chain retailers: a few powerful players

Premium segment: Primarily (but not exclusively) watch brands at a retail price higher than CHF 5,000

TOP CHAINS IN SWITZERLAND Stores Brand density score B Manor

64

1264

C Christ

70

986

D Coop City

28

270

E Bucherer

16

234

F Kurz

12

228

G Kirchhofer

7

188

H Gübelin

7

157

I Oro Vivo

23

139

J Globus

11

138

K Helen Kirchhofer

8

122

TOP CHAINS PREMIUM SEGMENT Stores Brand density score B Bucherer

16

234

C

Gübelin

7

157

D

Kirchhofer

5

153

E

Kurz

6

123

F

Les Ambassadeurs

5

113

TOP CHAINS VALUE SEGMENT Stores Brand density score B Christ

33

518

C

Kurz

6

105

D

Kirchhofer

1

26

E

Manor

1

24

Value segment: Watch brands at a retail price below CHF 5,000 Economy segment: Watch brands at a retail price below CHF 800

SHARE OF THE TOP CHAIN RETAILERS … … in the premium segment* 11%

Bucherer

7%

Gübelin

7%

Kirchhofer

6%

Kurz

5%

Les Ambassadeurs

64%

Others

… in the value segment* 21%

Christ

4%

Kurz

1%

Kirchhofer

1%

Manor

73%

Others

TOP CHAINS ECONOMY SEGMENT Stores Brand density score B Manor

63

1240

… in the economy segment*

C

Christ

37

468

32%

Manor

D

Coop City

28

270

12%

Christ

E

Oro Vivo

23

139

7%

Coop City

F

Globus

11

138

4%

Oro Vivo

G

Helen Kirchhofer

8

122

Au Rubis

13

104

4%

Au Rubis

H I

Carat

8

76

J

Kirchhofer

1

9

41%

Others

*Base = Brand density score of the segment in Switzerland and Liechtenstein

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TOP 3 DISTRIBUTED WATCH BRANDS Top 3 watch brands in Switzerland and Liechtenstein B Tissot

42%

C Certina

30%

D Fossil

29%

Top 4 watch brands in the premium segment B Breitling

25%

B Chopard

25%

B Longines

25%

B Tissot

25%

Top 3 watch brands in the value segment B Tissot

69%

C Certina

61%

D Rado

45%

Top 3 watch brands in the economy segment B Fossil

49%

C Tissot

39%

D Esprit

38%

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Retail malaise Independent retailers are nevertheless facing increasingly tough competition not only from the chains and private-label boutiques, but also from online sales. How can they maintain their market share? By offering supplementary services, a more personalised relationship with their customers and niche products, says the study.

“Many watch retailers are suffering today,” Thierry Huron feels.

“To remedy that, they’re in search of new investors and are developing their online business and their social media presence. The number of ads there have soared. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg: any number of smaller retailers are shutting up shop or are opting to sell only online, or to sell jewellery. It’s true that in that market, there are fewer brands, less pressure and consequently opportunities for higher mark-ups. And it’s easy to produce private-label jewellery. The retailers who are keeping their heads above water at the moment owe it above all to jewellery, not watches. In fact, only nine per cent of the stores sell watches only. Given the current challenges facing them, the watch retail trade is having to re-invent itself!”

Watch this space One of the motives behind the Mercury Project’s designs for a periodic survey is to help ease difficult decision-making in a landscape which is being reconfigured. “My objective is to do in Switzerland the work that the LGI Network has been doing in the United States for a number of years now,” explains Thierry Huron. “That is, to put together a representative panel of retailers, ideally one-third of the documented stores, to provide information about the watch trade in Switzerland and to sell the report to the different industry players who have an interest in this strategic market. Similar surveys exist in France and the UK, but so far not in Switzerland.”

So what motivation might retailers have to take part? “Four years ago, I would have replied ‘none’! Because their sales were experiencing two-digit growth. Today, it’s in their best interest, because that way they benefit from exclusive information about their competitors, and first and foremost they’ll be able to assess their own performance compared to stores with a similar profile.”

YOUR ADVERTISEMENT IN EUROPA STAR For a global reach

www.europastar.biz

CO AL

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Fr e W ely H ER spe ak E in W IL g L

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alking with a friend recently, I noticed that in addition to the Rolex Deepsea on his right wrist (he’s left-handed), he was wearing a very slim apparatus on his left wrist. It turned out to be a Fitbit activity tracker that tells him the number of steps he’s taken in the day, the distance walked, calories burned and consumed and via Bluetooth when and who is calling his iPhone.

At this point I couldn’t help wondering where all this wrist technology was leading. Many of the so-called ‘connected watches’ tell you all sorts of things that until recently you really didn’t give a damn about like blood pressure and heart rate, calories consumed, the ideal time for you to go to sleep and so on. Whatever happened to annual check-ups with the doctor, reading the back of the packet of cornflakes or Mcdo’s tray liner to discover your calorie count, or Horlicks (a malted milk hot drink developed by James and William Horlick that claimed it helped people to sleep better)?

64

Much of this information was already available on your mobile phone, but it now seems that the trend is to also have it on your wrist on a watch or some other connected device.

But why do we need them, and why are more and more of the so-called apps being developed? Is it simply because manufacturers are trying to attract people away from their mobiles and back to wearing a watch or is because the world is slowly going gadget gaga?

Communication is clearly the world’s buzzword but it’s the apps like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat that have become the means to communicate inanities between hundreds of millions of users. We now use watches and mobiles to communicate weird abbreviated texts instead of using Man’s unique gift of speech or writing. Even one of the so-called world’s leaders uses Twitter to communicate his own vacuous musings – although he also manages to repeat them in news conferences.

Three or four years ago I was in a restaurant with my esteemed Editor in Chief and we witnessed a man and a woman having a non-verbal but aggressive argument by angrily stabbing messages out on their mobiles, waiting for an answer and with a withering look venomously replying in the same manner.

Some years ago, Ira Levin wrote a novel called This Perfect Day, where the world has evolved whereby everything and everyone is controlled by a central computer buried deep in the mountains somewhere near Switzerland. People live like robots, the weather is regulated to provide rain or sunny days just as the population is manipulated via a bracelet that everyone wears. When they’re down or hyper-active they are made to place their wrist in a machine and are instantly cured of ailments and mood swings – until that fateful day when they reach a specific age and simply disappear. There are no sick, curious, rebellious or old people in This Perfect Day. Could it be that’s where all this wrist technology is finally leading us?

EN

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he word “dial” is the kind of linguistic fossil I love to discover. Most words are fossils, in the sense that they bear the imprints of a time long past, such as their Latin roots, or their medieval vowel shifts. But “dial” is a special case that may have arisen from a misconception. So maybe it’s less like a fossil, and more like an old stamp with a misprint.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, “The word perhaps was abstracted from a phrase such as Medieval Latin rota dialis ‘daily wheel’, and evolved to mean any round plate over which something rotates.” That’s what I mean about the misprint – logically, we should be using a derivative of the word rota now, rather than a descendent of the word for “day”.

Anyway, we know the rest. The word “dial” was subsequently abstracted from the sun dial to designate other more sophisticated devices for telling the time, which (generally) happened also to have circular faces. And thence to our chunky,

clunky 20th-century telephones – I can still hear that reassuring zip and purr of the rotary dial, “dialled” by an impatient finger or the end of a pencil.

Those phones are now museum pieces or vintage home furnishings, but they have left some traces in our modern vocabulary – you can be “dialled in” to new concepts. Samsung, for instance, has obviously dialled in to the idea that the smartwatch business might have something to learn from the traditional watch industry.

The Korean tech giant continues to eat into Apple’s share of the smartwatch market by offering something that still looks a lot more like a watch than a wrist-mounted computer. The Samsung Gear S3, although definitely “oversized” in traditional terms, is easy to describe using the usual watch terminology, with its unapologetically round dial and its rotating bezel, which is used to access the smart functions. The company literature also emphasises the product’s craftsmanship, finish and detailing, rather than just its smart technology.

The Apple Watch, meanwhile, has a rectangular touch sensitive face. Otherwise known as a screen. As you would expect, this smartwatch relies on the phenomenally successfully design codes of its mothership, Apple, rather than any implied reference to mechanical horology.

So, when does a dial become a screen, and a screen, a dial? Is it just about the shape, or is there more to it? Perhaps screens need to have things projected onto them, as they have since the earliest days of the cinema. A dial, on the other hand, conveys a sense of being the visible surface of a hidden machine, its gears meshing and cogs whirring mysteriously out of sight. Screens are associated with information overload and tech addiction. Dials are analogue, retro; they hark back to a slower, gentler time.

Which one will win? Well, it’s still far from clear that there’s even a battle to be fought. But rumour has it that the next Apple Watch will ship with a “circular screen”. Let’s see where that leads…

65

A last word to start

WHEN GRAFTS

DON’T TAKE

BY PIERRE MAILLARD

I

t’s not the first time an attempt has been made to graft a Chinese organ onto a Swiss watchmaking body but, once again, the graft has been rejected. Or, more accurately, it rejected itself.

Shot itself in the foot is another way of putting it. This latest failed attempt was by Citychamp (formerly known as the Haidan Group), which acquired Eterna in 2011 and Corum in 2013. So, why on earth can’t the Chinese succeed in making a reasonable profit from their investments and incursions into the Swiss watch industry? Is there some kind of basic genetic incompatibility that means any attempt at a graft is destined to be rejected? Or worse – condemns its host to clinical death, or a long-term artificially induced coma (look at Universal, for example)?

But, unlike in the field of medicine, where it’s the host that defends itself by marshalling its immune system to attack the intruder, here it’s the intruder itself, the graft, that seems to have initiated the rejection.

In the case of Corum, it would be too easy to point a finger at surgeon Davide Traxler, put in charge of the operation by his Chinese bosses. The poor chap has done his level best to put the brand in the limelight. He wasn’t afraid to sport a red baseball cap with the slogan “Make Corum Great Again”, he distributed virility-enhancing Bubbliagra to the press, and we had begun to see some results from his fun, joyful and colourful approach to watchmaking. But perhaps “Bubble” isn’t the most auspicious name choice, over the longer term. Because that’s where the problem lies, where the Swiss and Chinese are concerned – the long term. Switzerland’s proverbially bucolic pace of life is sometimes – not always, granted – an advantage. “Make haste slowly (Eile mit Weile in German, Chi va piano va sano in Italian), taken from the Latin Festina lente, is a familiar adage in Switzerland,” explains Wikipedia. But try telling that to a Chinese billionaire in a hurry to make a profit, who has built up his immense empire in just a few short decades.

In his eyes, either an investment shows a quick return, or you move on to something else.

This approach doesn’t always play too well in the watch industry.

There’s another graft that appears not to have taken: Haute Horlogerie and Cartier.

Cartier certainly took its time; in 2005, the phenomenally talented Carole Forestier was put in charge of creating complicated and, for the most part, highly original movements. But something wasn’t working. The Cartier organism, historically based on jewellery, has failed to assimilate its Haute Horlogerie graft.

Determination alone is not enough; you must also persuade your target audience that you have a legitimate claim to do what you’re doing. Perhaps, regardless of the excellence of their movements, the watches’ rather overstated neo-classical design failed to convince. And all those avid collectors, those wealthy individuals with a passion for mechanical watches, in whom these orbital tourbillons and mysterious movements should have lit a spark, remained unmoved. For them, the graft remained a graft. And they have rejected it.

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www.munichtime.de

October 27th to 29th 2017

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1

EUROPE N°342 & INTERNATIONAL N°395 Two folios – Not sold separately

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Instant jumping hour, 240° retrograde minute, small second. 3-day power reserve.

COVER STORY

CARL F. BUCHERER, UNDER THE SIGN OF THE MANTA RAY Spotlight on the latest offering by the Swiss watch manufacturer, the Patravi ScubaTec Manta Trust.

PARAPHERNALIA

JEAN-MARC WIEDERRECHT Continually forgetting in order to start afresh…

| ON ITI ED AL OB GL

08 14

T AP CH

3 ER 017 .2

OUR COVER

CARL F. BUCHERER PATRAVI SCUBATEC MANTA TRUST Elegant and mysterious: Carl F. Bucherer

TECHNOLOGY

QUARTZ: THE MOMENT OF TRUTH Once a pioneer, yet now decidedly run-of-the-mill, the quartz movement is approaching a crucial point in its history.

16

is launching a limited-edition timepiece dedicated to the Manta Trust, a charity active in the conservation of manta rays. Each watch is one of a kind: a unique engraving on the back of the case depicts the pattern on the underside of a specific individual manta ray. And its sales will help finance an entirely new kind of research expedition.

30

84

PORTFOLIO

PORTRAIT

WRIST JEWELLERY Our selection of the most beautiful jewellery timepieces, or ”Swiss wrist jewelry”, as Americans call it.

XVINCENT CALABRESE The Neapolitan wanderer.

82

INDUSTRY

THE CLASP It says a lot about your watch.

76

MATERIALS

XWOODEN WATCHES Some watch brands have specialised in using wood to create timepieces. An introduction.

64 HISTORY

XWATCH AUCTIONS: THREE DECADES OF A LEGEND

60

INTERNET

52

DIGITAL BESPOKE More and more luxury brands are offering online customisation, but each in their own different way.

TRENDS

JEWELLERY AND THE NEW WAYS OF WEARING IT Now jewellery is everywhere, popularly occupying every square inch of our bodies.

PART I

SUBSCRIBE TO EUROPA STAR MAGAZINE www.europastar.com/subscribe | SUBSCRIBE TO THE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER www.europastar.com/newsletter | CHAIRMAN Philippe Maillard PUBLISHER Serge Maillard EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Pierre Maillard CONCEPTION & DESIGN Serge Maillard, Pierre Maillard, Alexis Sgouridis PUBLISHING / MARKETING / CIRCULATION Nathalie Glattfelder, Marianne Bechtel/Bab-Consulting, Jocelyne Bailly, Véronique Zorzi BUSINESS MANAGER Catherine Giloux MAGAZINES Europa Star Global (Europe & International) | USA | China | Première - Switzerland | Bulletin d’informations | Eurotec EUROPA STAR HBM SA Route des Acacias 25, CH-1227 Geneva - Switzerland, Tel +41 22 307 78 37, Fax +41 22 300 37 48, contact@europastar.com Copyright 2017 EUROPA STAR | All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of Europa Star HBM SA Geneva.

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louisvuitton.com

Tambour Automatic Chronograph

Editorial

1984

ON YOUR WRIST

BY PIERRE MAILLARD

“

Before the advent of the railway, owning a watch was a mark of wealth, but afterwards it became proof of civilisation. There is no civilisation without railways, and there are no railways without watches,” declared author Henri Vincenot, referring to the expansion of watchmaking in the 19th century.

Watchmaking, that great social regulator, did indeed make a decisive contribution to the emergence of industrial civilisation, by enabling the coordination of production, transport, logistics and thus the circulation of goods and merchandise. But in its way, watchmaking also helped to enslave workers, by subjecting them to the inflexible dictatorship of timetables and the tyranny of the punch card.

Today, the smartwatch takes this enslavement even further. The laboratory of this new era of civilisation is not mighty industry, steel or the railways. No, it’s finance, or more accurately, what is known as “behavioural finance”. Research carried out at Cambridge University beginning in 2009 showed that physical attributes play an important role in the financial success of stock-market traders, whose emotions fluctuate wildly, who are obliged to take split-second decisions, and who work in an ultracompetitive environment. These factors are all major stressors. It turns out that heart rate, perspiration and accelerated movements are all stress indicators, and they can all now be tracked by a smartwatch. Recent studies carried out by the same Cambridge team, led by neuroscientist (and former trader) John Coates, show that traders equipped with smartwatches, who actively use them to control their physical parameters, manage stress better and perform better than other traders (whom one images sporting expensive mechanical watches that they are increasingly unable to afford, given their mediocre performance...).

It seems clear, therefore, that an ability to read one’s own “gut feelings”, as indicated by body temperature, breathing frequency, heart rate, thirst, hunger and anxiety, makes for a better trader. It has also been shown, however, that too much stress over a long period, which generates the hormone cortisol, can contribute to the sudden onset of “risk aversion and irrational pessimism” among bankers during a financial crisis. Stress, clearly, must be handled sensitively, to ensure that traders feel some pressure, but not too much, and not too little. This kind of fine-tuning is possible with the help of a smartwatch.

Hence why banks are now looking at how they can manage, and control, their employees’ emotions.

“Keeping management informed of performance in real time, measuring the emotional stability of a trader during recruitment, helping him to master his emotions throughout the day, even blocking access to trading platforms if his stress levels exceed a given point,” – these are the goals of the emotional controls being put in place, according to researchers Sylvain Frochaux and Ariel Cecchi.

And it’s all now possible, thanks to the smartwatch. Or because of it, as you might be inclined to say if you’ve read George Orwell’s 1984.

6

CALIBER RM 63-01 DIZZY HANDS RICHARD MILLE BOUTIQUES SWITZERLAND

© Didier Gourdon

Rue du Rhône 78 1204 Geneva - Tel.: +41 22 810 85 73

•

Quai du Mont Blanc 19 1201 Geneva - Tel.: +41 22 732 20 22

www.richardmille.com

Reef manta ray, Manta alfredi, surface feeding, D’Arros Island, Amirantes, Seychelles Š Guy Stevens, Manta Trust 2016

8

Cover Story

CARL F. BUCHERER, UNDER THE SIGN OF

THE MANTA RAY

The Swiss watch manufacturer is launching a limited-edition timepiece dedicated to the Manta Trust. This British charity is committed to protecting and ensuring the survival of manta rays, which are being threatened by overfishing. Part of the proceeds from sales of the 188 ScubaTec watches will go to help finance an entirely new kind of research expedition.

C

arl F. Bucherer has supported the Manta Trust for many years in order to help with the conservation of manta rays. This partnership now embraces a new dimension with the launch of a dive watch series limited to 188 watches and dedicated to the Manta Trust charity. Two manta rays are pictured on the ridged dial, appearing as though they are surfacing from beneath the ocean waves.

Each watch is one of a kind – a unique engraving on the back of the case depicts the pattern on the underside of a specific individual manta ray captured on underwater camera by Manta Trust CEO Guy Stevens and his team. The identification number is engraved underneath it. This number acts as an access code to a website where the new owner can bestow a name upon this real manta ray.

The new Patravi ScubaTec Manta Trust features an automatic helium release valve, making it perfectly equipped for dives of up to 500 metres. The luminescent indices and hands round off its distinctly sporty look and ensure that it is easily readable underwater.

With part of the proceeds from the sale of this watch, Carl F. Bucherer will finance an entirely new kind of scientific expedition, during which data will be gathered that will help to protect the habitat of the manta rays. In August 2017, a team will spend two weeks out at sea monitoring the manta ray population in the waters surrounding the Maldives to analyse their habitat use and feeding habits, as well as the planktonic prey on which the mantas feed.

The information gathered will be essential for ensuring the survival of the species.

9

“EVERY WATCH IS UNIQUE AND FEATURES A DIFFERENT MANTA RAY PATTERN” The Patravi ScubaTec Manta Trust, in the silvery grey tones of the creatures the company is helping to protect, will appeal to lovers of both fine watches and sea life. Carl F. Bucherer’s CEO Sascha Moeri lets us into some of the secrets of this limited edition.

What are the main features of the Patravi ScubaTec Manta Trust?

Every watch is a unique timepiece! Each of the 188 watches features a different manta ray pattern that identifies an individual creature, a bit like a fingerprint. In addition, the owner of the watch can name “his” manta on a dedicated website.

In addition to these unique features, we also wanted to contribute to a worthy cause by supporting the Manta Trust and their incredible work in more than 20 countries. As such we decided that a defined amount of the proceeds from every watch we sell will be invested in a two-week observation expedition as well as in a database which helps to classify the observations and findings. Scientists have been waiting a long time for both the expedition and the database.

The manta ray is the symbol of our ScubaTec family. Each model in this flagship collection has two manta rays engraved on the reverse. But it’s only the Manta Trust limited edition that features the markings of a unique manta ray.

So, who are these watches aimed at?

Traditionally, our ScubaTec collection is very strong in Europe, the Middle East and the United States. The limited edition will appeal to connoisseurs looking for an exclusive, high-quality timepiece with COSC chronometer certification, as well as to lovers of marine life.

The watch is both elegant and mysterious, and its colours reflect the colours of a manta ray.

Mr Bucherer himself, who generally wears a tourbillon or perpetual calendar model, always takes a ScubaTec with him on summer holiday! With all these advantages, as well as a price tag of CHF 5,900, I have no doubt that this limited edition will quickly find an audience when we launch it this summer.

Reef manta ray, Manta alfredi, Dhiggaru Kandu, Ari Atoll, Maldives © Guy Stevens, Manta Trust 2015

Do you have any follow-up projects planned?

Of course! This limited edition takes our partnership with the Manta Trust to the next level. Given the scope of the ScubaTec collection, there are lots of future development possibilities, and we’re not short of ideas. It’s very important to us that we continue to showcase the activities of the trust.

For the record, it was because of this partnership, which we concluded quite a few years back, that we now engrave two manta rays on the back of all our ScubaTecs. In fact, our first joint project with the Manta Trust involved monitoring two manta rays in the Maldives. Naturally, we decided to call them... Carl and Friedrich!

PATRAVI SCUBATEC MANTA TRUST Reference number: 00.10632.23.33.98 Movement: Automatic, CFB 1950.1 calibre, chronometer, diameter 26.2 mm, height 4.6 mm, 25 jewels, power reserve 38 hours Functions: Date, hour, minute, seconds Case: Stainless steel, stainless steel and ceramic bezel, automatic helium valve, screw-down crown, sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating on both sides, water-resistant to 500 m (50 atm), diameter 44.6 mm, height 13.45 mm, unique manta-ray engraving Dial: Black with two mantas Strap: Rubber with finely adjustable diving folding clasp in stainless steel Limited edition: 188 watches

11

“THERE IS STILL A GREAT DEAL WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE MANTA RAY” Whether ocean or reef dwellers, manta rays are a potent symbol of marine life, boasting the largest brain of all species of fish. But they are also extremely vulnerable, and are currently under grave threat from the fishing industry. The Manta Trust, which is supported by Carl F. Bucherer, studies them at close range and leads concrete initiatives to save them from extinction. Guy Stevens of the UK, who founded the trust, answered our questions.

The manta ray is categorised as a “vulnerable” species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. What are the main threats to its survival?

The biggest threat comes from fishing – both fishing that targets the manta ray directly, and also what is called “bycatch”, where they are caught unintentionally. The manta’s gill plates are prized in medicine, which unfortunately has led to increased fishing for this fragile species. The results are shocking. Populations have declined dramatically in Indonesia, the Philippines and in the Indian Ocean. These fish have a very fragile life cycle, and their population levels are naturally low. They don’t reach sexual maturity until the age of 10 or 15 years, and then they reproduce slowly and bear just one pup at a time. This makes the impact of fishing all the more devastating.

Researcher using a stereo camera to measure manta rays, Hanifaru Bay, Baa Atoll, Maldives © Guy Stevens, Manta Trust 2012

12

What concrete actions does the Manta Trust undertake to preserve the manta ray?

We were heavily involved at a global level in having the manta added to the CITES, the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species. We helped the countries concerned and provided scientific data. We are very proud that our perseverance paid off! We also campaigned to have manta rays listed in the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS). It is difficult for countries to take unilateral measures when the rays migrate to different habitats.

Are you also active at national level?

Yes, in Peru and Indonesia, for example. We’re also very active in the Maldives. Thankfully, manta ray fishing is banned there, as are the fishing nets that can trap them accidentally.

That is why the islands are home to such an enormous concentration of reef mantas, with an estimated population of around 5,000. We have also helped to identify their key aggregation sites in the Maldives.

Manta rays have the biggest brain of any fish. Are there any other scientific mysteries to solve, where the manta ray is concerned?

Yes, a huge number! To give you an idea, it is only in the last ten years that we have begun to answer some key questions about their lifespan, how they reproduce, their habitat, what they eat, etc. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’m a scientist myself, and I have many colleagues who are also trying to answer these questions. For example, the only way we can establish their lifespan is through photographic identification, which is why it is so important to record each individual accurately. The size of their brain is also a fascinating topic, and hints at the complexity of their social interactions.

You go diving regularly to photograph and document the manta rays. What are the rules for approaching them in the water?

In general, it tends to be the rays who approach the divers, they are very curious creatures! The best tactic is to remain as calm as possible and swim slowly, slightly off to the side and never straight at them, so as to leave their way ahead clear. Let them get a good look at you, don’t surprise them.

How did your partnership with Carl F. Bucherer come about?

A little over three years ago we were contacted by the company, who were in the process of creating a diving watch. Their

designer was fascinated by manta rays, and wanted to engrave one on the watch. He approached us to find out more about the species, and the company decided to support us. With their support, we were able in the first instance to begin tagging rays in Mexico. Thanks to Carl F. Bucherer, we have also created a code of conduct to promote best practice in interactions with manta rays, which we have distributed to the tourist industry.

The partnership is moving to the next level today with the launch of a Manta Trust limited edition comprising 188 watches, each featuring a different manta ray. Were you involved in designing these watches?

During our discussions we all agreed on engraving pictures of the manta rays we identified during our dives on a limited number of watches. I felt it was a unique and amazing idea, because it allows us to monitor each of the 188 creatures chosen. The owner of the watch can give “their” manta ray a name of their choice.

We always name the manta rays we identify: it’s more friendly, and it’s also easier to remember a name than an ID number! The watch also creates a logistical challenge, because we’re creating a special database that will be accessible to the watch owners. They can get basic information about the manta ray they are sponsoring, like age, size, the state of their health etc. So you not only buy a great timepiece but you also help to protect Mantas by purchasing that watch.

Another important aspect of this operation in partnership with Carl F. Bucherer is an expedition to the Maldives next August. What is its purpose?

We’re bringing together a small group of scientists from different domains to try to better understand how manta rays feed. This will enable us to identify the species’ key habitats, where they find their food, and consequently the places that must be protected as a priority. To achieve this, we will be diving to collect plankton – their sole food source – and tissue samples from the manta rays. By comparing them we hope to establish a precise link between the two.

As a diver, you no doubt have a very special relationship with watches...

A diving watch is an essential part of our equipment, but my view of them has changed. When I started diving, I was happy to wear a big, complicated block of plastic over my wetsuit, but today I have a proper elegant watch on my wrist, which I also wear on land. That would have been unthinkable with the watch I was wearing 15 years ago!

13

Paraphernalia

JEAN-MARC WIEDERRECHT,

CONTINUALLY FORGETTING

IN ORDER TO START AFRESH

14

Fred Merz, Lundi13

J

ean-Marc Wiederrecht, watchmaker and founder of Agenhor, may have no fewer than seven Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève awards to his name (for Best Watch Designer in 2007, for Harry Winston in 2009, Van Cleef & Arpels in 2010, Hermès in 2011 and 2015 and Fabergé in 2015 and 2016) and a plethora of patented inventions each more stunning than the next, but he is nonetheless a deeply modest man, who says of himself: “My biggest strength is that I always forget everything, because that forces me to continually start afresh.” And with the help of these perpetual new beginnings, Jean-Marc Wiederrecht is able to invent idiosyncratic processes, and discover new creative paths.

The result is a collection of outstandingly poetic pieces that tell the time in a new way – such as Temps Suspendu, l’Heure Masquée and l’Heure Impatiente, three pieces created for Hermès, as well as Pont des Amoureux and Midnight in Paris, designed for Van Cleef & Arpels – and radically revolutionary inventions, like his recent Visionnaire Chronographe for Fabergé. The one constant factor in his work? His quest to achieve the utmost simplicity. This quest is reflected in certain objects that can tell us a little about both his background and his creative journey. (PM)

1 The “Crocodile” locomotive by Märklin “Like all little boys at the time, I was fascinated by electric toy trains. I had always thought they were spectacular. But I wasn’t interested in just seeing them go round. No, I built complicated circuits, marshalling yards, and switch points. I looked at how the trains were made and then I took them apart and put them back together in a different way. I built meccano cranes and then immediately dismantled them just to do it again differently. Once complete, I lost interest in them.

Material objects don’t interest me in general. I could live without them. I would actually prefer to live with nothing.”

2 Bolex Super 8 projector “My father travelled the whole world, video camera in hand, to buy precious oils for the perfumier Givaudan. When he came back, he would show us his films on the projector. And so I travelled the whole world in my imagination, to the most remote places, and that made me immensely curious; I was in awe of the world. I hate the current climate of rejecting otherness, it’s a climate of fear, of barriers and borders. Otherness, the world, has always fascinated, attracted, and enchanted me.”

3 Stones “I love stones, looking at them, touching them. Simple stones, that aren’t worth anything. One is from Namibia, it’s Pietersite, which was only discovered in 1962. The other one comes from Crete, from a small and remote place that’s inaccessible by road, a place that I love and visit often with my wife. I don’t need spectacular scenery. I love simplicity. When I’m in the mountains, or there in Crete, under a tree, away from it all, looking out to sea, watching the branches of a tamarisk sway, that’s when my best watchmaking ideas come to me. It takes years, it gradually builds up, and then suddenly it comes to me. And everything falls into place in my mind.”

of this accumulated horological knowledge, you also have to use it to explore new forms and functions. The computer has opened doors for us, and makes possible things which seemed unimaginable before. But the aim is always to make things clearer. And to express time in new ways.”

5 Mechanical pencils, sketches, mock-ups “I love this simple mechanical pencil so much. It’s become my lucky charm. It was a gift from my employees. I always use this pencil because I always need to erase things. For a long time, I can’t think of anything, and then suddenly it comes to me, so I draw some designs, some sketches. There are four pages there, and that’s enough, everything I need, including the dimensions, to build the chronograph invented for Fabergé. I said to myself: what about making a hole in the middle of the movement? And everything came from there.

After that, the mock-ups, they’re pretty, but that’s just to show the journalists...”

6 Sun dial “I designed this sun dial, which received the Gold Medal at the Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva in 1996. It accurately shows the real solar time, summer and winter civil time, the equation of time, Greenwich time, the times of the sunrise and sunset, the height of the sun on the horizon, the length of the day and the direction of true north.

Thanks to two cams, the style moves and the various indications adjust themselves.

Calculating all that was a pain, but the result is simple, magical, and doesn’t need anything to work.

In a thousand years, in ten thousand years, it will still work.”

4 The book Time & Space: Measuring Instruments from the 15th to the 19th Century “When I was at watchmaking school, I spent a lot of time flicking through books. My memory is very visual. I have a lot of admiration for everything made in the past, before the computer. Incredible. I don’t invent anything, but I reinvent a lot of things, always with the utmost respect for what has already been done. All

The indications of the Visionnaire Chronograph made by Jean-Marc Wiederrecht for Fabergé are displayed centrally with concentric counters, providing a reading that we see at a glance. Rather than having to look for the seconds, minutes and hours displayed at different places on the dial, all the indications are provided on one central dial. Reading is made even easier thanks to the chronograph hands in gilded aluminium with red tips.

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The E63.171 calibre by ETA

QUARTZ – HOW DOES IT WORK? In 1880, the Curie brothers discovered that some materials vibrate when an electric current is passed through them, a phenomenon known as piezoelectricity. Quartz crystal, which is a silicon dioxide, provides the best stability/machinability/price ratio for timekeeping.

The current standard frequency for these vibrations in 32,768 Hz. They are counted by a processor, which acts as a master clock. The processor then proceeds to divide this frequency to derive the second. In the case of analogue watches, a system of micro-motors operates the hands, powered by the same battery that makes the crystal vibrate.

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Technology

QUARTZ: THE MOMENT OF TRUTH

BY DAVID CHOKRON

Once a pioneer, yet now decidedly run-ofthe-mill, the quartz movement is approaching a crucial point in its history. With mechanical watches becoming less and less expensive, and with the arrival of functionally superior smartwatches, quartz is feeling the pressure on all sides. Will it still be around tomorrow?

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tools they need for quality control and maintenance. With barely any moving parts, lubrication, or wheels, the watch becomes shock-proof and is unaffected by ageing oils. Finally, quartz’s biggest strength is usually kept under wraps by the world of mechanical watchmaking,

Chronometry made easy Quartz movements are impressively accurate, once protected against variations in temperature, which strongly affects A raw quartz crystal, them. The COSC criteria provide a clear scale of the quartz produced in a Seiko movement’s abilities. A mechanical chronometer must be acautoclave, which will then curate to within 3 minutes per month. Accuracy for a quartz be shaped into little slivers. chronometer, meanwhile, should be within 25 seconds per year, which is 85 times more accurate than a mechanical watch. We’re even seeing a return to high precision. With the release of the Conquest V.H.P, Longines is ccurate, reliable, durable: reviving the 1980s, when a model of the Quartz is like a quartz once represented the same name offered the same level of precisachet of freeze-dried future of the watch. But elecsion, accurate to 5 seconds per year. British food: inexpensive tronic movements regulated company Hoptroff has miniaturised an by a quartz crystal (known as atomic clock for the wrist: accurate to one and effective, but quartz movements) have become so runsecond per thousand years. And if that’s artificial and generic. of-the-mill that they are now ubiquitous. still too much, various radio-controlled Capable of almost everything, the quartz watches (from Junghans in particular) removement has been left to its own devices. The reputation ceive DCF77 signals in Europe and WWV signals in the United of quartz today is not unlike that of freeze-dried food: inex- States. They are hooked up to atomic clocks, which are accupensive and effective, but artificial, bland, and generic. And rate to one second per million years. to open up a watch to find a plastic casing-ring and a little battery lost in the middle is a terribly sad sight. Ironically, after having come close to forcing the mechanical movement into retirement, the quartz movement itself is now at risk of losing its functional and economic relevance.

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Massive industrialisation In 1969, after decades of miniaturisation, the collective initiative of the Beta 21 movement in Switzerland, and Seiko’s Astron, finally succeeded in developing a quartz movement to fit the wrist. They had managed to switch from a mechanical to an electronic approach. Soldering replaced screws, and batteries replaced barrels. Increasingly energy-efficient, the movements were produced via a process of industrial, automatic, and bulk manufacturing. Now, an assembly workshop for quartz movements is composed of a long, automated production line. A few rare humans push around trolleys with the

The Longines Conquest V.H.P: accurate to 5 seconds a year, perpetual date, hands are re-synchronised after an impact.

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KLONDIKE MOONPHASE Automatic Chronograph with moon phase, full calendar and unique day-and-night indicator.

TIME TO PERFORM

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Delma Watch Ltd., CH-2543 Lengnau, Switzerland, Phone +41 32 654 22 11, info@delma.ch, www.delma.ch

Junghans created the first radio-controlled wristwatch in 1990. The Force Mega Solar is its successor.

Easy energy

scene, like a bull in a china shop, is unprecedented. In the space of three years, the quartz watch has become outdated.

Another of quartz’s strengths: it is battery-powered. Progress Connected, upgradeable, and interactive, the smartwatch in battery technology means that a watch can now run for is a micro-computer for your wrist, complete with a touch five years before switching to standby for fifteen years, or screen, integrating a quartz master clock among its thounever stopping at all if equipped with solar panels, which sands of electronic elements. The quartz watch, meanwhile, have long been transparent and ultra-thin. cannot update itself. Some smartwatch The result of all of these benefits is total manufacturers have even bet on the disA COSC quartz domination. The quartz movement is fitappearance of the quartz movement for chronometer is ted in 95% of watches, and 72% of Swiss exall but the most basic watches. Because ports. As an object, the mechanical watch the smartwatch is in a whole different accurate to within is an anomaly, almost a technological abcategory. As Moore’s law predicts, costs 25 seconds per year. erration. As if every car in the world were decrease as quickly as performance inThat’s 85 times better electric and yet a small minority still chose creases. Already, an Android Wear toucha steam engine despite all opposition. But screen smartwatch starts at around 100 than its mechanical we know that mechanical watchmaking is CHF. Already, ETA, Ronda, and IsaSwiss counterpart. based on things beyond the reasonable. are competing with Intel, Samsung and Google, whose quarterly profits are close to a year’s worth of Swatch Group’s annual turnover. Already, Pressure the Swatch Sistem 51 is on sale for 150 CHF, for an automatic Swiss-made watch, though it is disposable and 80% plastic.

Today, quartz has come face-to-face with its spiritual son, the smartwatch, which could soon kill the father. Through touchscreens, the addition of connected modules, and lowenergy processors developed by the field of telephony, electronic movements have fundamentally changed. The speed with which the smartwatch burst onto the watchmaking

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High-end applications Quartz technology still has some applications in the luxury segment and there are some brands working to develop it further, but these opportunities are rare, and above all, dwindling. The progress made by Citizen in the area of extreme thinness, with its 2.98 mm Eco-Drive One, is restricted by the physical limits of the case, as in mechanical watchmaking.

Can the ergonomic research implemented in Bulova’s Curv Chronograph Watch, with its curved movement and case, move beyond the anecdotal? It hardly matters that it has a frequency of 262 KHz, 8 times the standard frequency set by Girard-Perregaux for this technology. As a matter of fact, the biggest Swiss watchmakers have joined in the adventure, and continue to do so. Patek Philippe applies the same finishing to its two inhouse quartz calibres, which are still used in about 25% of production, as used on its other calibres. On the whole, quartz chronometers make up a quarter of Breitling’s production. Even François-Paul Journe has turned its hand to quartz. The champion of classic watchmaking, positioned as a spiritual heir of Berthoud and Breguet, has launched Elegante, a battery-powered watch, and not just for ladies.

The curved movement of the Bulova Curv Chronograph.

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2.98 mm thick thanks to its 1 mm movement, the Citizen Eco-Drive One’s thinness is limited by the solidity of its metal case.

TITONI.CH

SWISS MADE

MASTER SERIES # 9 4 6 8 8 S - S T- 5 7 9

Piaget’s calibre 700P, the latest example of what a mechanical-quartz hybrid can achieve, but at a steep price.

The calibre Seiko 9F62, one of the few to represent true technological, yet limited, progress.

Fusion For a while now, hybrid watches have been making their mark. Following the incorporation of rechargeable kinetic batteries (Seiko’s Kinetic, 1988), Audemars Piguet and JaegerLeCoultre’s quartz movements with chronograph modules (1980s), and the emergence of Seiko’s Spring Drive in 2004, quartz has once again adapted to pair itself with gears. In Piaget’s Emperador Coussin XL 700P, a generator/quartz regulating organ powers a mechanical calibre, for over 70,000 CHF. Seiko continues to innovate with its calibre 9F, featuring ultra-high precision micro-motors. Casio is developing expensive limited editions of its G-Shock, putting Japanese metallurgical expertise in the spotlight. But look beyond these Japanese initiatives, produced by a country that has built its entire watchmaking industry on this technology, and quartz technology has plateaued. Even the multi-function and touchscreen T-Touch dates back to 1999.

Looking ahead Caught between a rock, smartwatches, and a hard place, low-cost mechanical movements, the pressure on quartz could yet prove fatal. Because in 5 to 10 years, it may well face a struggle to prove its very relevance. What purpose will it serve beyond the most economical of uses? The options seem scarce. The functional one-upmanship within the market is so fierce that quartz must do better than an ultra-thin, solar-powered, back-lit watch automatically regulated via satellite, with a ten-year warranty and battery life. Because this type of watch is already on the horizon.

The T-Touch Expert Solar is solar-powered, but the model invented the multi-function touchscreen back in 1999.

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HIGHLIGHTS In this section, Europa Star provides brands with the possibility to express themselves. The concept is straightforward: one watch per brand, on one or two pages, and deliver your arguments to convince the markets! So, do you accept the challenge?

This is a visually efficient way for retailers, distributors, collectors or simply watch lovers to catch up with the latest offerings on the market.

We give a price indication of the watch presented, using the following categories: Less than 500 dollars $$ 500 – 1,000 dollars $$$ 1,000 – 3,000 dollars $$$$ 3,000 – 10,000 dollars $$$$$ 10,000 – 50,000 dollars $$$$$$ 50,000 – 100,000 dollars $$$$$$$ More than 100,000 dollars $

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HIGHLIGHT Sponsored content

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HIGHLIGHT

ZENITH

DEFY EL PRIMERO 21 THE EL PRIMERO LEGEND IN THE HUNDREDTHS OF A SECOND AGE Swiss watch manufacturer Zenith is resolutely taking its place in the third millennium with a new 100th of a second chronograph movement.

While remaining true to its legendary roots, the 21st century Defy El Primero flaunts standout performance.

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“In the next months we will stick to Zenith’s DNA and positioning, but we wish to connect this exceptional and authentic Manufacture not only with its great history, but also with its future. Zenith has won 2,333 chronometry prizes and is known for its high-frequency El Primero. We are now introducing Defy El Primero 21, offering 100th of a second timing. It’s the most accurate series-made chronograph on the market and it combines Zenith’s expertise in terms of technical precision with a more powerful and particularly cool-looking design. This is an historic moment for a brand with such an innovation and a stunning technical achievement.”

Sponsored content

With its powerful 44 mm titanium case, Defy El Primero 21 becomes the master of extreme precision. The world’s most accurate series-made chronograph in 1969 enters a whole new era. The new watch features a certified in-house movement driving a hundredth of a second display by means of a central hand, with its unique and exclusive dynamic signature of one rotation per second. The chronograph beats at a frequency of 50 Hz, making it ten times faster and more accurate than its illustrious predecessor.

Its double-chain structure is based on two regulators, made of Carbon-Matrix Carbon Nanotube composite. The new balance- Julien Tornare, new CEO of Zenith springs developed by the LVMH group engineers stem from a patented technology that is also a world premiere. The exceptional physical and mechanical properties of this balance-spring with its graphene matrix render it insensitive to temperature and to the influence of magnetic fields, well beyond the known 15,000 Gauss standard, thereby guaranteeing peerless precision in all conditions of use.

Portfolio

WRIST JEWELLERY

BY LAURENCE JANIN, D. MALCOLM LAKIN, PIERRE MAILLARD AND SERGE MAILLARD

“After not getting a pay rise for many years, there are better things to spend money on than Swiss wrist jewelry”, wrote Bloomberg in a recent article about middle class angst.

We were struck by this typical American expression to denote a watch. They are jewels indeed! With arguments for some of them that might open up the wallets of the readers, after all…

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The Diamond Outrage by Audemars Piguet is part of the brand’s diamond trilogy.

It’s a tour de force that was inspired by Baroque Punk and a forest of iced conifers straight from the Vallée de Joux. It couldn’t be any more modern.

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PORTFOLIO WRIST JEWELRY PAGE DE GARDE

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Jaeger-LeCoultre Rendez-Vous Moon: Simple, elegant and pure – the Rendez-Vous Moon is a very subtle piece, as are the guilloché motifs on its dial and its moon disk. It features an accurate moon (with a variation every 972 years) with a sanded finish that confers it a remarkable depth, just like moonlight has.

Patek Philippe 7130: Patek Philippe’s reference 7130 is a reinterpretation for women of one of the most iconic – and useful – complications of the leading Genevan brand – World Time. 24 time zones are spread around a delicate greyblue dial that features guilloché decorations at the centre and is enhanced by a bezel set with 27 diamonds. The watch represents the quintessence of good taste and mechanical art.

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Luna by de Grisogono: It’s the ultimate ladies’ watch.

A draped dial. Sensual shapes.

An almost smiling face. The watch seems to take on a life of its own. To top it all off, there are different, eclectic contrasting-colour versions.

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If you’re looking for a garden with a difference, the Grand Soir Botanique No 2 by Dior could be your nirvana. A unique white gold timepiece paved with snow-set round-cut diamonds and a white gold pavé dial set with snow-set round-cut pale sapphires, diamonds, blue and pink sapphires, emeralds and rubies. A kaleidoscope of colour with a burgeoning flower at 7 o’clock and the hour and minute hands blending into the floral mosaic at 10 o’clock. The Grand Soir Botanique No 2 has a quartz movement and the colourful dial is enhanced by a midnight blue fabric strap with undulating lines.

Take a round 36 mm stainless steel case, set the bezel with 24 arc-cut blue topazes, insert a grey sunray outer dial with a round inner central blue mother-of-pearl dial encircled with a diamond ring, applied silver studs and three diamond indices, add silver-coloured hour and minute hands, attach a blue Dolce T. calfskin leather strap and ensure the watch functions with a Swiss-made quartz movement. The result is an elegant Fendi timepiece that can be worn anywhere, anytime.

However, if you want to make a statement of your intent, show the fashionistas the latest trendy wrist adornment, simply attach a blue Dorothy Glamy made of arctic fox fur to the watch and hey presto, you’re wearing a modernised corsage showstopper.

My Way Topazes Special Edition by Fendi is available with either blue or green topazes, matching leather strap and a flamboyant Dorothy Glamy.

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Montre à Secret Haute Joaillerie Caméléon by Cartier: It features an 18 ct green tourmaline, which is as round as a chameleon’s eye. A blend of semi-precious and precious stones (emerald, onyx, turquoise, tourmaline) and an exceptional strap, fashioned like the spine of a mythical animal.

The Divine Time by Harry Winston can either be worn on the wrist or as a pendant. Six marquisecut diamonds have been used as indexes on a dial paved with diamonds. The fire of the stones is at its best. The elegantly cut midnight blue alligator strap is a refined addition.

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With its white gold dial entirely paved with diamonds, the refinement of Blancpain’s Ultraplate (reference 6104-1963-58A) lies in its elegance and its in-house 913 calibre, which is only 3.28 mm thick. It’s a translucent ocean of precious stones.

Breguet Tradition Dame 7038: Launched in 2005, Breguet’s Tradition collection gave birth to a style – imitated by many others – which allowed for the visual spectacle of the movement’s mechanics to be admired. With this oh-so-delicate new piece, Breguet has fully succeeded in adding a feminine touch to the transparent play of mechanical gears that was hitherto deemed to be reserved for men. The piece proves that technical spectacle (of the silicon lever escapement and of the balance equipped with a silicon balance-spring) can go very well with diamonds, engravings, mother-of-pearl and pink gold.

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The moon has rarely been as dreamy and elegant as it is on the Moritz Grossmann Tefnut Sleeping Beauty. Created for the Glashüttebased manufacture by designer Michael Koh of Singapore, the model displaying a moon crafted on its dial stands out thanks to the sized precious stones. These, combined with the sparkling guilloché decoration, create a wave-like pattern and give the watch unprecedented grace.

Kerbedanz is all about symbolism. The Tree of Life Black Edition is a declination of last year’s women’s piece that attracted great attention. As its name suggests, it represents the tree of life – a symbol of growth and immortality – with branches that climb towards the sky and roots that plunge deep into the soil. Different crafting techniques were used on the dial, including enamelling, bas-relief and glazing. The black diamonds on the case and the lugs give the model a particularly mysterious aura.

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Gucci Le Marché des Merveilles: A honeybee, a tiger and a snake are the three beasts we can find delicately embroidered on this piece’s dial, which is covered with a nylon fabric in the brand’s iconic colours – green, red, green or blue, red, blue. The piece comes with a strap embroidered with the motto “L’Aveugle par Amour” (blinded by love).

All the unconventional, colourful, daring and romantic elements of Alessandro Michele’s style (he is Gucci’s artistic director) feature in this watch.

Bulgari Lucea Moon Phases: With the Lucea Moon Phases, Bulgari plays with shapes, materials and colours in all subtlety. The moon, mounted on a disc set with rubies or aventurines, moves from phase to phase in an aperture cut into a motherof-pearl dial. Brilliant-cut diamonds are placed as hour markers and a further 45 also adorn the gold bezel, which is enhanced by a cabochon crown with a diamond-tipped pink gemstone.

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Mademoiselle Privé Décor Aubazine by Chanel: Inspired by the stained glass of a Cistercian Abbey in Aubazine, the piece awakens a plethora of emotions. With its rhodium-plated gold and its diamonds, it is a blend of rigour and discipline.

A whole new conception of refinement.

La Sirène by Ateliers de Monaco was created in 2009 for Princess Charlene of Monaco using light blue topaz stones set into the leaves of the King Protea, South Africa’s national flower, which is depicted on the dial. Now Ateliers de Monaco have extended the collection with two new models, La Sirène Diamant and La Sirène Rubis. Seen here is the all-diamond version in white gold with a total of 737 diamonds (3.06 carats) set into the case, crown, bezel and the mother-of-pearl dial.

Powered by the in-house automatic dMc-700 calibre with a 22 carat gold rotor engraved with the shield of the principality of Monaco, La Sirène exudes refined elegance with its luxurious and stunning diamond-set dial and case, underlining the brand’s desire to create iconic timepieces.

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Smartwatches, you say? Can you reconcile elegance, accessibility and connection?

Frederique Constant seeks to prove it is possible with the introduction of the Horological Smartwatch Ladies. A pioneer of analogue movements with connected modules, the brand has reinterpreted its 2015 women’s version. As co-director Aletta Stas put it: “We are currently the only ones who offer connected watches that have been genuinely designed for women.

Women tend to prefer quartz over mechanical watches – we provide them with the same userfriendliness in our connected watches. To top it all off, the watch doesn’t need to be recharged, as is often the case with smartwatches.”

Century, an expert in sapphire-set cases, has combined sapphire and mother-of-pearl on the Dragon Stone. The “Nacrilith” technique is a process in which a thin mother-of-pearl layer is inserted between two sapphire blocks. As refined as it is, the material is also fragile since it is extremely friable. On the watch, it is revealed in all its glory. Its shimmering effects are enhanced by light as all 36 sapphire facets reflect it at every movement of the wrist. At the peak of its glory, the Dragon Stone Skeleton – first introduced in 2009 – offers a clear view of every gear of the hand crafted skeleton self-winding movement.

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Trends

JEWELLERY AND THE NEW WAYS OF WEARING IT

BY LAURENCE JANIN, FOUNDER OF THE LAUR’LOGE BLOG AT WWW.LAURLOGE.COM

Nowadays, adornments for the ears and fingers are teaching us a thing or two about our anatomy. For a long time, our phalanges held no fascination for us, the mysteries of the helix, concha and lobule were known only to the medical world. Now jewellery is everywhere, popularly occupying every square inch of our bodies. It has rocked the market from the lowest to the very highest echelons of society.

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e women are being swept off our feet by the new jewellery-wearing possibilities.

These novel ideas are now suffused with passion and daring: they are speaking out for freedom and captivating a whole new transgenerational clientele. Many a fifty-something woman can now be seen entering a top prestige location, turned (multi) piercing parlour due to popular demand.

Take, for example, the White Bird in Paris (just a stone’s throw from the Place Vendôme), the sophisticated showcase for designers, where such sessions are held every month accompanied by High Tea. Whether jewellery junkies for all time or more recent converts to the cause, more and more of us are starting to sit up and take notice of these creations for flesh long left fallow; “left fallow” meaning left provisionally uncultivated.

For a long time, the body was indeed a desert waste, bereft of adornment, while jewellers and metalsmiths were producing pure marvels of exquisite execution. We were long witness to what can only be described as a prolonged abandonment of the body by Western societies, while in so many other civilisations, all parts of the flesh had been bedecked and bejewelled from time immemorial. Seen in a historical sense, the loss of interest is a recent trend and an entirely relative one.

When the whole body was a canvas For anthropologists, to discover the first items of adornment was to reach out and touch the beginnings of mankind. Jewels are symbols, they stand testament to man’s symbolic thinking. In the Dordogne in France, there is a tomb dating from the Palaeolithic era depicting a child whose head, ankles and wrists are decorated with more than 1000 shells, as well as fox and deer teeth. Before writing was invented, adornment was a form of communication, a message that could be conveyed by the whole body.

Jewellery had an identity function, marking a person as a member of a group, and also a social function, indicating status. Depending on the era, it co-existed, with varying degrees of ease, alongside the increasingly popular invention of clothing.

In the Western world, up until the First World War, only the face remained uncovered. Long sleeves, hats, veils, gloves reduced the surface of the canvas. Jewellery, in brooch-form, was attached or stitched onto the garment itself. The hippie trend provided a good excuse for the return of embellishments on more unconventional parts of the body. So, too, did the punk movement, which strove to “stylise a person’s body to mark his/her membership of a group, while nurturing a culture of hyper-singularisation”, to quote Philippe Liotard, an expert in body-altering practices.

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The Jean-Paul Gaultier shockwave Jean-Paul Gaultier, without question the enfant terrible of fashion, created a sensation on the runway in 1994 with his spring/ summer womenswear collection. Gaultier’s “Les tatouages” collection channelled Joan of Arc-type armour with face piercings, graffiti prints and nose clips. This seismic event occurred bang in the middle of the radical minimalist era. The purist’s less is more approach had meanwhile been taken to extremes, making even the tiniest accessory uncool. It finally imploded when the mischievous designer successfully imposed his own unbridled, joyful, cross-cultural vision of fashion.

Since then, accessories in general, and jewellery in particular, have become decisive factors in a fashion show’s success.

They are what make the runway spectacular, in the same way as lighting or music. The piercing was irrevocably launched.

Once a symbol of “kinkiness” in SM and gay communities, the safety pin ended up piercing the cheek in a rebellious demonstration of transgression and is now well on its way to becoming mainstream.

From Prada to Givenchy and back, Haute Couture adopts new ways of wearing From hairpins sporting the Prada label through to Dior’s chainmail bibs, jewellery of every kind abounds in all the grand Maisons. Featuring in Chanel’s Spring-Summer 2012 runway show, pearls were used to embellish hair-buns and adorned the neck (and back) of top model Arizona Muse, in her show-closing catwalk.

As every brand well knows, jewellery contributes to the style of a collection. It is the distilled essence of a vision, the quintessence of a season’s inspiration. Often crafted in relatively cheap materials, including resin, acrylic, leather, and brass, they are the shortcut keystrokes for every budding fashionista on a shoestring seeking to fulfil a dream.

For designer Tiffany Bähler, jewellery is no longer the investment it once might have been. From haute couture to readyto-wear, the world of fashion has created a whole new clientele who follow trends by adopting bold statement pieces that contravene traditional wearing habits. Yet, these new ways are not everyone. For example, the facial embellishments created by Riccardo Tisci for the Givenchy AutumnWinter 2015 show will not be readily copied. Charlotte Chesnais, a big fan of conundrums and young designer working for the likes of Balenciaga, Kenzo and Paco Rabanne is, however, in her element. Produced under her namesake jewellery brand, her silver or vermeil bracelets proved an instant success. A word of caution: you’ll need an instruction manual to set these jewels off to their best advantage! ou bien to figure out how and where to wear these beauties.

A lesson in style, Chanel Iman by Jacquie Aiche

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Berbere earrings by Repossi

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@INLOVEWITHDOTDOTDOT

Voilette by Reny Kestel

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Best-of-the-rest in new practices Nowadays it’s possible to find a reasonably affordable ring for two or three fingers. A few centimetres further away, nailwear is also making a notable breakthrough. Paris-based sisters Chloé and Chanael Knopfer, co-founders of the Asherali Knopfer jewellery line, established a reputation for themselves with their minimalist nail caps in black or white gold, mounted on a diamond- or tsavorite-studded band encircling the fingertip.

In Beverly Hills, you may bump into a super-cool designer walking around with bare feet and a long tousled mane on her way to her celebrity hang-out showroom. The body chains designed by Jacquie Aiche, born to American and Egyptian parents, are the offspring of an unlikely union between two cultures, Native American fossils and turquoise and hammered gold amulets from the Middle-East.

Meanwhile, over on the east coast at Jacob & Co, Rare Touch Glove has been around for a while, but it still managed to create a stir at the last edition of Baselworld. Midway between luxury prosthetics and hand corsetry, these precious gloves shine with the fire of 382 brilliant-cut diamonds inlaid into rose gold mesh.

Finally, the Chanel 2018 cruise collection recently unveiled at the Grand Palais proves, if proof were needed, that headbands and head jewellery are more fashionable than ever.

Maison Margiela mask

The exceptional case of the ear

Preciousness reigns

Hoops, chandeliers, clips, studs, sleepers: the vocabulary associated with earrings is evocative of a singular world that says much about lovers of ear adornments. Ear-lobe piercings are the oldest known act of body alteration. In cultures throughout the world, women, and many men, wear earrings every day. Buddha himself was no exception. His elongated ear lobes are a reference to his princely origins and to a time when they were adorned with impressive jewels.

In 2011, Gaia Repossi designed an ear cuff for his Berbere collection, inspired by his studies in social anthropology and archaeology. The organic ear embellishment soon became a must-have among fashion designers. Ever since, the High Jewellery creations of the Maison Repossi have decorated the bodies of stars and starlets at red carpet events all over the world.

It is certainly a whole new world for the adventuresome spirit. The terra incognita of the ear has inspired many a designer’s imagination. According to Elizabeth Fischer, in charge of the design, fashion and accessory department at HEADGeneva: “It’s here to stay. Any new territory is highly motivating for the designer. Before short hair styles were in fashion, the ears were kept firmly hidden, they were not revealed until the nineteen twenties. But ear piercing was a taboo subject”. Yet another bastion has fallen. Multiple piercings thus give us a delicious sense of transgression. What joy!

We have finally understood that jewellery has broken free.

It has found its own territory, the more it advances, the more space it needs. The thirst for territorial conquest has resulted in the blurring of boundaries. Take, for example, the masks made by the Maison Margiela, headed up by the Belgian designer and supreme master of anonymity, who asked his models to walk the runway incognito. The crystalembellished rosette facemasks continue to fascinate us and constitute a work of art in their own right.

Theatrical, yet not quite so obliterating, the Swarovski crystal veils created by the Australian milline, Reni Kestel play on their precious duality and mystery.

Demonstratively ostentatious, shawls and capes crafted in diamonds by the Chinese brand Kimberlite Diamond are sketching the contours of a new world of excess and immoderation.

Perhaps we are witnessing the “gemmification” of everyday objects, clothes, glasses, headsets, and mobile telephones? It is as if we see no beauty in banality, the mundane is no longer sufficient, it can only exist if embellished and adorned with refinements. Jewellery, joie de vivre, it’s the same difference!

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Internet

DIGITAL BESPOKE

BY SERGE MAILLARD

More and more luxury brands are offering online customisation, but each in their own different way. We look at two interesting examples: Bulgari, which targets the end customers directly with its Serpenti, and Armin Strom, which addresses retailers first and foremost – and ultimately the customer – with its online configurator.

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ARMIN STROM In the case of the independent Biel-based brand, the new online configurator was designed first and foremost for retailers. “It’s not easy to find a good retailer in the first place, but when everybody has different tastes, it’s really tough for a brand that produces 600 watches a year!” explains CEO Claude Greisler. It was to solve this problem that they came up with the configurator tool: the retailers themselves create the watch and design their assortment to suit their customers’ tastes. To align itself as closely as possible to the expectations of different markets – such is the ambition of Armin Strom, thanks to the web. “Moreover, if retailers have configured a model themselves, they’ll be more likely to push sales of it. Once they’ve designed a few variants, we send some advance stock. They can also configure a watch directly with the customer, but there will be an additional waiting time before they receive the model.” And of course, aficionados can also personalise their models directly on the brand’s website.

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BULGARI The Italian luxury brand has launched an application that allows customers to create no fewer than 312 different configurations of one its emblematic models, the Serpenti. “It’s now possible to personalise your watch on the internet, whether the diamonds, the colour or the strap, and to have four letters engraved on the back,” explains Fabrizio Buonamassa, who heads up design at Bulgari. ‘Love’ (or ‘Hate’), it’s up to you! Case, strap, dial – virtually everything about the Serpenti is now customisable. “The watch is delivered within two months for a starting price of CHF 3,800, to which you have to add CHF 500 for the customisation.” A very affordable price which, quite apart from the personal touch, is also likely to charm digital natives. And that is the whole point of the operation!

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History

WATCH AUCTIONS: THREE DECADES OF A LEGEND

PART I

BY OLLIVIER BROTO, WATCHONISTA CONTRIBUTOR, AND JOËL A. GRANDJEAN, CHIEF EDITOR OF WATCHONISTA

In the early 90s, watches at auction could only be found among the general objects to come under the hammer at non-specialist sales. We take a look back in time.

The Rolex “Bao Dai” reference 6062 ignited a bidding war of 13 minutes, eventually selling for CHF 5.1 million, at the Phillips auction in Geneva in May 64

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The age of the visionaries Auctions dedicated exclusively to horology were once spe- the pioneer Helmut Crott remembers how Patek Philippe alcialist rivulets supplying, alternately, the ever-widening ready dominated the field back in the day. The remainder of stream of dealers and, albeit less frequently, the three main the offering comprised complicated pocket watches produced general auction houses present in Geneva. by home-grown (Swiss) and foreign brands, including those A handful of personalities with a nose for the business, genu- made by Abraham-Louis Breguet in the 1800s, steel Rolex ine watchmaking enthusiasts and legend builders, came to Sport watches, such as the Stelline Moon ref. 6062, the Jeanthe fore immediately prior to this period. Osvaldo Patrizzi was Claude Killy or Paul Newman Daytona chronograph watches, one such figure. In 1974, he had already founded the “Galerie Vacheron Constantin’s pocket or wristwatches, and the old A. d’Horlogerie Ancienne”, an auction house for “wristwatches, Lange & Söhne models from Glashütte. clocks and other objets de vertu”, which became Antiquorum In addition to these figurehead models, one could also find SA in 1987. He also subsequently took advantage of the demise enamelled pieces made in Geneva in the first half of the 19th of Habsburg Feldman, whose last auction in Hong Kong was century and Swiss automaton models dating from around back in 1990. the 1800s, stellar mechanical works of art, The other leading figure was Dr. Helmut which fetched over 2 M CHF. On the other Suddenly, based on an Crott, an expert collector somewhat eclipsed hand, wristwatches made by brands less in idea of Osvaldo Patrizzi, demand, often chronographs, commandby the much-hyped Osvaldo Patrizzi. He is the concept of the nevertheless one of the visionaries to whom ed derisory prices. Thus, brands such as the industry owes so much today. Originally Omega, Eberhard & Co, Heuer or Longines themed auction revothe founder of Dr. Crott Auctioneers in 1974, were far more affordable compared to lutionised the industry. he embodies a German tradition, which, at Patek Philippe. the time, was just as, if not more, important than that of Geneva. He still owns what purists consider to be the largest Patek Philippe database for old watches. A reliable The turning point of 1989, tool, which continues to be regularly updated and consulted the birth of themed auctions to this day, listing all the product references with their sales scores and which is based on a system that relies on trace- Suddenly, based on an idea of Osvaldo Patrizzi, the concept ability and exhaustive documentation. The information con- of themed auctions revolutionised the industry. “Today, they tained therein proves just how independent of stock market are milestones in watchmaking history”, Dr. Helmut Crott developments these pieces have been in terms of investment confides. He may well have been inspired by Sotheby’s famous sale of a watch collection in the United States in 1986 and legacy value over the last 25 to 30 years.

Still active in the industry and highly respected among an en- belonging to Seth Atwood, the American industrialist, who tire breed of collectors impervious to passing crazes and trends, sold off his Time Museum in Rockford, Illinois. Be that as it

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Dr. Helmut Crott, the founder of Dr. Crott Auctioneers in 1974, an expert collector and one of the visionaries to whom the industry owes much today.

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Rolex Ref. 6265/6262 Daytona ’Paul Newman Panda’ circa 1971 (Sotheby’s)

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All rights reserved

may, he made the year 1989, coincidentally the date of Patek Patek Philippe’s Henry Graves Philippe’s 150th anniversary, a turning point. Osvaldo Patrizzi Super-Complication had, in fact, held the very first auction exclusively dedicated to the legendary maison’s timepieces. Head honcho organiser and expert hammer-wielder with a firm grip on the finer points of interpersonal and communication skills, the exuberant entrepreneur auctionthe owner of the brand, Philippe Stern, ever eer managed to gather a sufficient number keen to add to his watchmaking and enamel of sought-after pieces to turn the event into collections, and build upon his prestigious an overwhelming success with the public. library. His thirst for acquiring historical This brief overview helps give an idea of pieces of his own, as well as Swiss watchmakthe watch offering in the late 80s and of the ing items in general, only served to boost trends that would emerge. It was the end of sales and excite interest. a decade, which, after the fatal quartz crisis, To sum up, 1989 saw the breakthrough of contributed in its own way to the rebirth of vintage wristwatches onto a market hiththe mechanical watchmaking industry. erto dominated by pocket watches and auLot no. 34 was a PPC 2499/100 in platinum, tomata. It also marked the point at which where C stood for & Cie, since the company Osvaldo Patrizzi, watchmaking pieces acquired a division of still carried the name Patek Philippe & Cie. the founder of Antiquorum and their own in the auction sector, a fact that The price achieved for this unique timepiece a legend of watch auctions the grand old institutions of watchmaking under the hammer was CHF 380,000. Lot no. had to learn to live with. It was therefore at 297 was a rectangular minute repeater, the only piece attrib- this moment that a genuine division was born and the sound uted to Mel Blanc (1908-1989), the Californian actor dubbed of the gavel reverberated for the first time at exclusive watch“the man of a thousand voices” for his mastery of the cartoon making sales. Since then, in collectors’ circles, the collector’s voice, which went for just over half a million at CHF 520,000. watch has had a special place, of the kind hitherto reserved Lot no.229, a rectangular Patek Philippe timepiece with tour- only for paintings and sculptures. The new business area has billon, topped all sales at CHF 650,000. continued to gather momentum to this day, save only for As Dr. Helmut Crott himself proclaimed in response to this a sharp downturn at the end of the Gulf War in 1992. “Even remarkable result: “At that time, as in previous years, it was Patek Philippe pieces were victims of the crisis and falling the pocket watch, not the wristwatch, that was putting up prices,” Dr. Helmut Crott remembers. the best sales performance.” Thus the grand complication dubbed as Lot no. 300 and Calibre 89 achieved a record CHF Other key dates 850,000 and CHF 4.5 million, respectively, at auction.

1989 was also the inaugural year of the Patek Philippe Museum, at 7, Rue des Vieux-Grenadiers, Geneva. The wealthy First off are the themed auction dates arranged by Osvaldo Italians who were contributing largely to the surge in horolo- Patrizzi. Patrizzi organised several events under the banner gy-specific auction sales were then joined by a newcomer, fol- of Antiquorum, whose cultural staging approach and imlowed by aficionados from all over the world: none other than pressive catalogues helped bring together the world of vintage watches with that of art in the form of painting, sculpture and legendary objets d’art: “L’Art de Breguet” in 1991, “L’Art de l’Horlogerie Française” in 1993, “L’Art de Vacheron Constantin” in 1994, “L’Art de l’Horlogerie Anglaise” in 1995, and “L’Art de Cartier” in 1996.

Dr. Crott Auctioneers created a buzz in Frankfurt in 1992 with its themed auction of watches from Glashütte, in particular a number of timepieces produced by A. Lange & Söhne. It topped the one million DM mark with a gold and enamel pocket watch with tourbillon dating from 1900. The millennium ended on a record note, when, in 1999, Patek Philippe’s Henry Graves Super-Complication, the most famous watch in the world, went under the hammer at Sotheby’s and sold for a record-breaking 11 M USD, thus making it the most expensive timepiece in history.

Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva, inaugurated in 1989 68

Read the article online at Watchonista.com

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AUREL BACS: A COLLECTOR OF

SUPERLATIVES

INTERVIEW BY SERGE MAILLARD

Aurel Bacs has put his stamp on today’s auction world with his record-beating sales. What hidden mechanisms are at work behind these skyrocketing sales statistics?

Without a doubt the most iconic figure in today’s watch auction world, Aurel Bacs has been with several prestigious auction houses, each time leaving his own inimitable stamp on the industry: Sotheby’s (1995-2000), Phillips, for the first time (2000-2003), then with Christie’s (2003-2013), before returning to Phillips in 2015 with the stand-alone consulting firm Bacs & Russo, founded jointly with his wife. In May, the auctioneer packed a big punch with a Rolex ‘Bao Dai’ wristwatch, which went for over 5 million CHF.

You drove Christie’s ahead of Antiquorum, you are now driving Phillips ahead of... Christie’s. Is the success of an auction house mainly linked to the aura of the auctioneer – Osvaldo Patrizzi back then, now your good self? Is it really just a matter of personality?

At the risk of appearing provocative, I’d say that even if you start out with a McDonald’s logo, you can still make it to the top, if you build the best team! I’m no miracle-maker, or angel sent from heaven. Success is built on reputation, a good address book and a solid team. Whenever I’ve joined a house in the past, sometimes I’ve found a team already in place, other times none at all. Each time, we were either no.3, no.4, or nowhere in the ratings. On two occasions, I started from scratch at Phillips. But we’ve always been able to build a team and secure a leadership positioning.

Have your teams always followed you from one house to the next?

I’ve never taken any teams with me! You can find new talent everywhere. The man who currently manages the American market had never worked in a watch auction house before: he previously worked in defence... But he had what mattered most: passion, an address book and a reputation. You could

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call it obsession, love, the pleasure of dealing in fine watchmaking... We move in a world where there are no contracts to protect you, where you rely solely on a relationship of trust between the client and the auction house. That’s why our reputation must be flawless. And that’s the guarantee that also attracts the finest experts.

Have you noticed how your clientele has evolved since you first started out?

It has completely changed: only 10% of the clients I had in 1995 are still in business. If the top specialist a decade or so ago had fallen into a deep sleep and woken up today, he would never be able to organise a 10 million CHF auction sale. Firstly, we work with new players and the address book has changed totally: hugely wealthy clients with an interest in watchmaking are turning up from nowhere. Information is widely available, collectors are now acquiring an indepth technical knowledge of timepieces. Trends have also evolved: the square pink models with manual winding popular back then have been replaced by round steel automatic designs. And appraisals have become highly complex.

The current development in the vintage market is no doubt linked to the general resurgence in interest for watches after 2000. In that respect, your own fortunes seem to be inextricably linked with those of the contemporary watchmaking industry...

I’m indeed very grateful to those people who have never abandoned fine watchmaking at the manufactures, for example Messrs. Stern, Hayek, Cologni, Rupert and Biver. They have been responsible for giving millions of people the taste for watchmaking, and of course we also benefit. At the same time, globalisation has contributed enormously to the rise in popularity of watchmaking and watch auctions. Never would we have grown so fast if we had confined ourselves to Western, or, indeed, Japanese demand.

But the correlation with the current industry appears to end there: you are now achieving record sales, while modern watch sales are in decline...

There’s an easy answer to that: the demand outweighs the number of vintage watches that are actually saleable. No one’s likely to come across a safe containing a million rare watches. And lots of old watches are no longer saleable, they are either damaged, poorly restored, or altered almost beyond recognition. Consequently, the prices have necessarily risen. What to do if you don’t have the wherewithal to buy your precious Patek Philippe or Rolex? You look for alternatives. This explains the recent successes posted at watch auc-

tions by brands such as Longines, Tudor, Omega and Heuer, and the “independent” watchmakers, such as F.P. Journe, Richard Mille, MB&F, to name but a few.

The internet has nonetheless increased the amount and reach of information and knowledge available: we can find out anything we want about a particular model, old or new, whenever we want...

Occasionally, one hears criticisms that today’s boutique staff lack expertise. Does this also explain collectors’ current interest in the vintage watch world?

I’m still sceptical about the internet. Recently, Twitter’s founder apologised that what started out as an information dissemination tool has ended up being invaded by fake news, to such an extent as to even influence the election results... We shouldn’t bury our heads in the sand: much of the stuff written on the internet about watchmaking is fake! We use the web for our communication and people can now bid at our auctions via the internet, but there are some experiences that technology cannot replace, such as talking with people face-to-face... And 95% of our clients bidding on the internet have already seen the timepiece in the flesh.

The subject of knowledge is a tricky one. If someone spends millions of CHF on watches, does it make him a specialist? For instance, I’m not a wine connoisseur, if I were to be handed a wine list the length of an auction catalogue, I’d tell the wine steward: “I’d like to enjoy some quality time in good company; I’ll leave it to you: this is my budget and my preference.” It’s also like that in the watchmaking world. It’s perfectly OK to not be a specialist, it doesn’t make you unworthy in any way!

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RESURRECTING ANTIQUORUM: ROMAIN REA’S TRICKY TASK INTERVIEW BY SERGE MAILLARD

Despite being the first house to launch thematic auctions devoted to watchmaking under the impetus of the charismatic Osvaldo Patrizzi, Antiquorum has seen a drop in its fortunes in the past decade. The task that lies ahead for French expert watchmaker Romain Réa, who has just taken over the reins, is an obvious, but not easy, one.

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Were you not in two minds about taking over the reins at Antiquorum since the decline in its fortunes over the past decade and the forced departure of the legendary Osvaldo Patrizzi?

I gave the matter a lot of thought before agreeing to take over the management. I was certain in my heart, because Antiquorum, a pioneering auction house in the field, is one of the reasons I am so passionate about watches! But as far as my head was concerned, the decision was less instinctive, given its eventful past. But my task was to put those events behind me and turn a new page. I submitted an action plan, which was accepted by the owners of Antiquorum Management. I should just like to point out that our shareholder, FIDES, is based in Zurich and invested in the company in 2014. We have no contact at all with Antiquorum USA, which suffered so many setbacks involving Osvaldo Patrizzi.

One of my conditions, in fact, was that we should be backed by a powerful shareholder... without any complications.

What kind of auction experience do you have?

I was first approached as watchmaking expert and entrepreneur in the sector. I’ve had several stores in Paris and was the founder of the watchmaking department of Artcurial. In particular, I led the first thematic auctions devoted to JaegerLeCoultre and Panerai in France.

How do you intend setting Antiquorum back on its feet?

I have a three-pronged action plan. First of all, my task is to resurrect the company’s heritage and rekindle the “magic” of Antiquorum. We want to restore the undeniable quality of the entity’s expertise, put a stop to the rumours surrounding the company and defend the brand on every level: that’s the main objective, the main task from which everything else will follow.

The second strategic move is geographical: while sales in Geneva remain very good, the same cannot quite be said for Hong Kong, a market that was abandoned by the previous management team. We want to revive the momentum in Asia, not just in China, but also in Japan. Also, we are launching a new permanent presence in Monaco, or “little Geneva” as it is known, where I have several on-the-spot contacts. As is the case with Geneva and Hong Kong, we’ll be there 365 days a year. It’s the French Riviera, so watchmaking will grow increasingly in importance. We should also point out that even though we’re not specialists in everything, we’re going to extend the range of items for sale to include jewellery and other luxury goods. We’ve therefore planned another jewellery auction in Monaco in July.

Finally, our third task is to re-establish the prestige of Antiquorum’s thematic watch auctions, which came into existence within our company. Although the last big date in the calendar was Omegamania in 2007, we’re going to make this our core activity. The first thematic sale that we’ll be organising in November in Geneva will be the Art of Calatrava to mark the 85th birthday of the model and the anniversary of the creation of the Croix de Calatrava. It will be a tribute to The Art of Patek Philippe, Antiquorum’s first thematic sale in 1989.

What about the digital revolution?

Surprisingly enough, the .com address of the site still belongs to the former director, Evan Zimmermann. We therefore launched a new antiquorum.swiss address, firmly connecting the company to its roots in Geneva, the birthplace of luxury watchmaking. More generally speaking, the online store will be developed before summer. There are a lot of projects going on at the same time. We’ll carry on as if we’d just started up!

How do you reckon on repairing the poor image plaguing Antiquorum following the ousting of Osvaldo Patrizzi, even though he has since emerged as blameless from the affair, cleared of all suspicion? It’s difficult to rise untainted from such a business, in the watch connoisseur’s eyes...

We are undertaking a major overhaul from the catalogue graphics chart to the pieces exhibited! Our task is to preserve the DNA of this historical company intact by recreating a top-quality image and content symbolic of its rebirth.

Antiquorum is now way behind its competitors. As for Osvaldo Patrizzi, he is still the founder of the company and in this regard he retains his integrity. We must not forget this. I simply have a new vision for the company.

But what, in particular, can you offer collectors, when there are people like Aurel Bacs at Phillips, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, who occupy nearly the entire territory?

I work with a huge team of experts in France and Monaco.

Many companies have a distinctive face, an expert who dominates. We rely heavily on teamwork and have many experts.

The quality of our skills is already top-notch, but hardly anyone realises it. We must work on promoting them. In fact, we have garnered an extraordinary wealth of experience since 1974. As far as I’m concerned, I won’t be abandoning my activities in Paris or my work as expert at the Court of Appeals. Basically, I’m placing my networks at Antiquorum’s disposal. That’s the network we’ll be building on.

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DID YOU SAY

VINTAGE?

BY DOMINIQUE FLÉCHON, EXPERT AT THE FONDATION DE LA HAUTE HORLOGERIE, GENEVA

The term ‘vintage’ appears to be invading the entire watchmaking world and yet it covers many very different realities from the authentically ‘vintage’ preowned, pre-loved watch to the modern, so-called ‘neo-vintage’ model inspired by the past, not forgetting the timeless classics with an eternal vintage flavour.

But there is a meaning behind the term!

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n the context of current-day watchmaking, 2017 is often referred to as the “year of vintage”. Today, the term is used mainly in connection with clothing and accessories, jewellery, furniture and automobiles.

Depending on the context, in watchmaking it refers not only to timeless models, such as the Cartier Tank, JaegerLeCoultre’s Reverso and the Royal Oak by Audemars Piguet (to name but a few), or second-hand or new versions of old classics 30, 50, and sometimes 100 years old, but also to more or less faithful re-editions and contemporary creations. The latter, referred to as retro or neo-retro, were designed to recall or resemble old objects by means of artificial ageing. To conclude, the term would therefore appear to be a generic

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concept, although our studies have revealed a contrary reality and indeed other aspects beyond the field of semantics.

Forming part of the oenologist’s vocabulary, the term vintage was originally used to refer to the age of a quality wine or the year of harvesting the grapes that went into its making. Gradually, it extended to fashion to describe any item of clothing or accessory made at least thirty years ago and pinpointing the time at which it was made. This definition was then gradually enriched by its association with remarkable moments in the history of clothing, furniture, automobiles and other industries.

Vintage, neo-vintage and other watches A genuine vintage watch is a pre-owned object generally manufactured between 1945 and 1980, a period covering several creative movements in the twentieth century and therefore different styles. Each model is a classic that has withstood the test of time without becoming outmoded. Its past may be read in the varying degrees of wear and tear. Such a timepiece is considered authentic in respect to the brand, as well as the techniques and materials used. It can recall a particular moment in the measurement of time, sporting achievements or epic tales of science. These wearable pieces form part of our cultural heritage and imply a certain level of knowledge on the part of their owner. They are sold through specialists and auction houses.

While retro fashion consists in wearing authentic items from the past, neo-retro is used in reference to contemporary creations designed to resemble or recall other older models. This notion is also found in the furniture industry. For example, an armchair dating from the Louis XVI era could only have been made somewhere between 1774 and 1792, whereas its counterpart in the Louis XVI style may have surfaced anywhere between the late 18th century and today.

In the watchmaking industry, the term applies mainly to re-editions of successful models, whose original aesthetic codes from the period are reworked and reinterpreted. Such re-editions are made necessary by the relative rarity of originals in good condition. However, many examples have been repolished, thereby losing some of their original surface relief, much to the displeasure of some purists.

Moreover, although a broad clientele is drawn to these period designs, it is nonetheless also captivated by the performances and dimensions of contemporary timepieces. The ensuing “contemporanisation” is achieved through the incorporation of modern characteristics: watchcases that are water-resistant to the stated measurements and fitted with sapphire crystals, present-day mechanisms with automatic winding and equipped with a shock damping device.

The neo-retro watch is therefore the result of a fine balance between yesterday’s aesthetics to lend a hallmark signature and today’s technology. Inspiring without compromising is the key to the success of any re-edition, a fact that is not totally incompatible with creativity. In fact, neo-retro watches appear to have in their DNA a number of symbolic virtues that provide credible insights into history and that can be translated differently.

Retro-futuristic watches, for example, respond to the desire of enthusiasts wishing to link the past to the future. The extravagant features of past times were attenuated by the use of purely avant-garde elements.

Vintage, a recent phenomenon?

The interest in timepieces dubbed vintage for some, or neoretro for others, is not a new phenomenon. Back in the 19th century, the so-called fantasy watch adopted cases in the form of animals and insects, fish and shellfish, flowers and fruit that had been so popular two hundred years earlier.

Equipped with ingenious 19th century mechanisms, they would likewise have been called vintage if the term had been in use. The same applied to Napoleon III furniture, which also adopted many styles from previous years either wholesale or in a reworked form.

Closer to our times, the mechanical watch, albeit overtaken by technology, once again went into production after the 1980s, either continuing in the same vein, or adopting a revamped aesthetic driven by talented designers specialising in watchmaking, with Gérald Genta leading the pack.

The Rolex Submariner falls under this second approach.

Housed in a case inspired by the celebrated 1926 Oyster, it first appeared in 1959 before it was adopted by James Bond. In 1981, it was replaced by a version that was the ancestor of the current model and technically superior. Its aesthetic codes remained fundamentally unchanged, but were discreetly updated. The Submariner, therefore, like other emblematic watches, was a nod to the timeless timepieces, which blurred the boundaries between vintage and neo-retro.

A protest movement... and a nostalgic nod to the past The repeat success of the neo-retro watch since the early 2000s is the result of a rebellion against everything that moves too fast in life. It displays a certain nostalgia for less oppressive times, a time when life was perceived, rightly or wrongly, as less complicated.

The enthusiasm for vintage models illustrates the search for assurances that are found in contemporary watches with their uncomplicated back-stories and the disillusionment with the watchmaking extravagances of the 2000s. The latter manifested itself in a flurry of novel inventions, complications often difficult to understand for the layperson, the search for precision to within the nearest thousandth of a second, and other performances that had nothing to do with mechanics. This race for innovation took its toll on prices, many of which appeared to be unjustifiably inflated and largely unaffordable for most enthusiasts.

The terms vintage and neo-retro also express a longing to return to human values, the need to be advised by a watchmaker and the desire for interaction among enthusiasts. At once easy to wear and more affordable, these models make it possible to break free from fashion constraints. They are a symbol of “self-indulgence”. Their subtle beauty replaces ostentation. The sobriety of their designs and the reduced dimensions of watchcases after 2012 marked a return to the watchmaking basics, a vector of timeless values.

What will the vintage models of 2050 look like?

In these politically and commercially troubled times, vintage and neo-retro models represent the best of the present and the most aesthetic of the past. They enable the watchmaking brands to minimise commercial risks while offering them the manufacturing volumes they need. Bereft of any grand complications, requiring no costly research studies and technical developments, they consolidate the entry-level range to the collections. However, not all models are worth updating and only the most creative new designs, especially where time-telling aesthetics and finishes are concerned, will serve as the basis for the 2050 vintage.

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Materials

WOODEN WATCHES

BY MR. E

Should you go for wood? Over the last few years, wooden accessories have gone mainstream.

Increasingly, we’re seeing more lifestyle brands popping up specialising in wooden products like sunglasses, caps, and yes, even wristwatches. But today’s wooden watches are not like early models, which were very much a niche phenomenon. Today’s models are more refined, less bulky, and more durable. And they can also be found at very attractive prices, making this growing market very accessible to a range to consumers. In this special feature, we profile seven brands specialising in wooden timekeepers. From America, Canada, Italy, Germany, and Latvia, they’re all part of the global eco-fashion trend and are capitalising on today’s growing environmental conscientiousness movement.

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TIMESHAPES: SCULPTURES OR TIMEKEEPERS? Timeshapes is the creation of Iowa-based designer James Borden. Since the 1980s, James has been in the business of creating some very special kinetic sculptures. They are essentially mechanical weight-driven or spring-driven clocks, and maybe most impressive of all is that every component is made of wood.

James Borden hails from a small town in the state of Illinois – once a strong centre of American watch and clock making. But interestingly, his formal training had nothing to do with clock making. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree and then went on to finish a Master of Divinity Degree.

In the meantime, he opened a clock repair and restoration shop while attending his courses. From repairman he became a designer, creating standing and suspended clocks that have all of their gears exposed.

Gradually he then went on to make the hand-carved pieces we are familiar with today, all of which are made from fine woods like walnut, cherry, maple and hickory. They have been so well received that they have won several awards at the Smithsonian Craft Show.

Designs include clocks that can be suspended from the ceiling, which can measure nearly 3 metres in length and 2 metres in height, or standing clocks, which can be even larger.

The table clocks are a bit smaller, standing at about 60 cm.

The inspiration behind the unique clocks comes from shapes found in nature, whether that is a tree or the silhouette of an animal.

When set in motion, the pieces have a smooth motion and the passage of time can be heard through soft and woody clicking sounds. This is quite different than the high-beat ticking of watches – it represents a slower and calmer passage of time.

Borden mostly sells his clocks at fairs and exhibitions. He also makes specially commissioned pieces for private customers, and prices range anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 USD. Of course, there is no mass production here – the master craftsman and clock maker can only manage to make about 10-15 of these clocks per year.

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AB AETERNO, A WOODEN WATCH FOR ETERNITY? Italy is a country full of history. Rome is, after all, called the “Eternal City”. But the country also seems to be full of wooden watch makers, too.

Ab Aeterno is yet another Italian fashion brand looking to leverage environmental consciousness. The formula is the same as with many other brands in the same space: cases and bands designed from sustainably sourced wood and quite affordable quartz movements on the inside (in this case courtesy of Ronda). The brand in particular prides itself on being toxin-free.

Like with other wooden watches, the appearance of these watches will change a bit over time, making the watch a more personal item.

The fact that wood remains somewhat of a “living” material gives such watches their character.

Generally the watches are quite versatile and can be worn by either sex comfortably. To add a bit more flexibility and pop to their designs, the watchbands are interchangeable. Popular options besides the standard wooden band is the NATO style canvas straps for a sportier look.

Their first collection was the Nature and Sky series, followed up with the more sober looking Horizon collection. But for Baselworld 2017, Ab Aeterno raised its level and introduced its first chronograph series: the Ianus.

THE “LOVE FOR WOOD” AND KERBHOLZ

The story of Kerbholz is half romantic, half silly. According to their website, Matthias & Moritz had been travelling across Central America when “they rediscovered their love for wood”.

That’s when they got the idea to integrate the organic material into everyday street style. Joining Matthias and Moritz were their two friends Adrian and Nils, and after some planning, they started producing wooden glasses and wooden watches in 2012.

Now that we know the origin story, what about that unique

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The collection includes three models made from different woods: maple, walnut or black sandalwood. Positive early signs from the Italian brand, and we’ll watch out for them at next year’s show.

brand name? The word Kerbholz is German for “notches in wood” and it is meant to be a metaphor for all of the memories you would notch up wearing a wooden watch.

The wood used in Kerbholz is sourced from certified sustainable forests, as it usually is with wooden watchmakers.

Sustainability is an important part of the brand’s message.

For their part, Kerbholz promises to donate a share of its profits to reforestation projects in Nicaragua.

Besides using wood for their lifestyle products, Kerbholz also uses slate and acetate. Slate is known for its folded and parallel surfaces, which makes it a unique material to use in their sunglasses collection. Acetate, on the other hand, is essentially made from wood waste such as bark and other plant fibers, which makes it light and also somewhat weather-resistant.

In terms of watches, the brand uses natural wood and Swiss sourced Ronda 762 E movements. A natural varnish is used to protect the cases from humidity and weather, which makes them splash proof. This also allows the watch to become darker with time, producing a patina similar to leather.

Overall, with Kerbholz wooden watches you get a fine balance of German design, Swiss (quartz) mechanics and eco-friendly material sourcing. All that, and a great price to match makes this young brand a great option for those looking for something a bit different from the watch industry.

TENSE WOODEN WATCHES FROM A VERY CHILL PLACE The story of Tense Wooden Watches begins with Ken P. Lau, who in in 1957 started to work as a professional clock designer. From the beginning, Ken experimented with natural components like wood and stone. But in 1968 he moved on to making wristwatches, and three years later he founded Tense Wooden Watches.

Being around since 1971 makes this brand one of the pioneers in this sub-category of the watch industry. And today Ken brings nearly a half-century of watchmaking expertise to the company.

The name itself comes from the word “tense”, as in one moment in time in relation to another moment in time (as in: past tense, present tense). That all makes perfect sense. Except for those who might unfortunately associate the brand name with “tension” instead…

This brand, however, seems to be anything but tense. For starters, they come from Canada. More specifically, Canada’s west coast, which is know for its chill vibe and beautiful scenery.

Those characteristics are reflected in the watches as well.

In this case, the watches are made from 100% recycled or reclaimed wood, and are manufactured by hand in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The watches are powered by either Swiss Ronda or Japanese Miyota quartz movements, and they seem to offer something for everyone.

For instance, the Vermont – part of the Hybrid Series – can be had for $360 CAD (270 Swiss francs, at the time of writing).

Believe it or not, that’s on the more expensive side of their collection. The square face watch has a wood and metal case on a wood and metal band, hence the “hybrid” designation.

It is powered by a modest Ronda 6004D Swiss Movement and is protected by scratch resistant sapphire crystal and stainless steel with PVD coating, both nice additions at this price point.

For the ladies, there’s the fashionable and affordable Delta.

It costs only $230 CAD (164 Swiss francs) and is made from teak. The triangular face is paired with an elastic band with angular pieces of wood forming the bracelet. This model is powered by a Japanese Miyota quartz movement.

Most of their other watches, however, can be worn as unisex models. For instance, the Leather Hampton is a good option for either sex. It is made from genuine Italian leather and 100% recycled or reclaimed wood and costs only $180 CAD (135 Swiss francs).

With a broad range and excellent price points, Tense Wooden Watches has done the Canadian watch industry proud.

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THE GOOD THAT COMES FROM WOOD: LAIMER’S CASE This young company – it was only established in 2012 – is based out of South Tyrol, the picturesque region straddling the Italian side of the border with Austria.

While the region can’t compare with Swiss watchmaking heritage, it can certainly compete with its natural beauty.

And nature is what it’s all about with Laimer.

Patrick Laimer, the brand founder, has been working in the wood industry for years. He now applies his skills in making lifestyle products – including watches and sunglasses – combining fashion and the protection of the environment.

The benefit of using wood is that it is a sustainable material – but only when it’s done right. Often, wood watch brands use leftover materials, for example using offcuts that would be otherwise too small to make furniture.

Laimer’s watches and sunglasses are made of high quality leftover woods like maple, hackberry, zebrano, oak and sandalwood.

In many cases, they use woods native to South Tyrol in Italy, which also lowers the carbon footprint of the business by

consuming and producing locally. On top of their sustainable sourcing of materials, the company also supports various projects for reforestation.

Of course, it’s pretty hard to make a movement using only wood. So on the inside of their watches we typically find Miyota quartz movements. The light movements, and also the light weight of the wooden cases and bands, makes these watches very comfortable to wear.

The nice thing about wooden watches is that grain itself can provide an excellent aesthetic, especially if different patterns and materials are mixed.

In my opinion, the natural look is the best for these timepieces, and Lamier gives us some fine examples. But for those looking for a bit more flash, some models also incorporate crystals from Swarovski, like the “Julia”.

Prices are generaly in the mid-100 euro range and that is a great price point for anyone looking to enter the wood watch movement. And in this case, it is a proper social movement, too, since the company looks to be doing more than its fair share to work in a very sustainable way.

HOW WEWOOD STAYS SUSTAINABLE WeWood is an Italian brand founded in 2009 in Florence. And coming from Florence can be a blessing and a curse for a brand. On one hand there is the great cultural and artistic heritage.

On the other hand, the brand has to actually live up to it. That’s possibly a difficult ask since the city is known for its art scene, its architectural beauty, and even its T-bone steaks, but not really for its watches.

But on balance, WeWood’s designs seem to hold up. One example that stood out for me is the Oblivio, which sports a bold, circular case with metallic hands, large industrial indices, and a rich wood grain 46mm case.

For those looking for a bit more resilience from a wooden timepiece – which they are not really known for – the Phoenix is a good option. It features the brand’s first waterproof case up to 5 ATM or 50 metres. It is paired with a Miyota VD54 movement and standard issue mineral glass.

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Like most other wood watch brands, WeWood uses remnants of hardwoods from all over the world. That helps keep material sourcing affordable and also environmentally sustainable. And just in case that wasn’t enough, for each watch sold WeWood promises that they plant a tree in collaboration with nonprofits like American Forests and Trees for the Future.

So far, the company has planted nearly half a million trees since the programme began in 2010. If that is an accurate indication of the number of timepieces they’ve sold since then, WeWood seems to be in decent shape.

But while WeWood watches are designed in Florence, full disclosure: they are assembled in China. That might raise some sustainability questions, but they’re not exactly the only fashion brand to set up camp in China. And it seems that the brand does more than most to make up for it in the end anyway.

ANOTHER UNUSUAL MATERIAL… THE TAMAWA STORY: FROM SNOOKER BALL TO WRISTWATCH

OVI WATCH: PUTTING LATVIA ON THE WATCHMAKING MAP We’ve covered many wooden watch brands of late, some relatively young and some that have been around for decades.

And with the market for eco-fashion on the up, we’re still seeing some new players enter the space.

We recently discovered another example from Latvia: Ovi Watch company. We don’t see much in terms of watchmaking from the Baltic country, so they’re worth a closer look.

As it turns out, starting a lifestyle brand specialising in wooden products in Latvia makes a lot of sense, because wood is the country’s number one export. Most of the place is covered with trees, after all.

Ovi takes this plentiful natural resource and adds value to it by designing some interesting timepieces. They’ve even delved into making wood brimmed caps.

But let’s stick to the timepieces for now. Starting from 3D models at the Liepāja Design and Art College, the team produces all of its timepieces in the Latvian town with the same name. Typical source materials used for the cases include elm, cherry, walnut, and teak.

On the inside we get Swiss made Ronda quartz movements, and each is topped with a sapphire crystal. That’s notable because their price points are very good, typically ranging from the low to high 100s in euros.

Getting your own personalised Ovi watch, for example, will run you 189 euros, which enables you to choose among wooden materials and a specific signature to mark the watch as your very own.

Typically of wooden watches, these too are quite light. They are also quite versatile – perhaps more than most wooden watches – and they can be worn daily and even during some formal occasions without much of a second thought.

Having seen my fair share of wooden watches recently, what I really like about Ovi’s watches is the integration of the hour indices from the dial up to the bezel. It’s a nice bit of wood carving that adds depth and detail, making Ovi one of my favourite wood watch designers.

This contemporary brand executes a mono-form design concept to perfection, with a wide range of lifestyle products inspired by the Bakelite ball.

We first came across innovative Belgian brand Tamawa at Baselworld 2017. The relatively young company was founded by Hubert Verstraeten, who also plays an active role in design for the company. The unique name is Japanese for “ball on steel ring”, but all Tamawa products are 100 % made in Belgium.

What really makes this lifestyle brand stand out was the unique monoform design concept across the entire product range. You might have recognised that the brand’s identity is firmly tied to Bakelite, an early plastic that was invented by a Belgian-American inventor over a century ago.

Bakelite is the same material that snooker and billiard balls are made from. The idea came about when Hubert Verstraeten met with a Belgian snooker ball manufacturer, which would then go on to supply a special resin to the designer to make his watches and eventually jewellery pieces.

This mono-form design also makes is relatively easy to have a single design aesthetic running throughout the entire product range. The company employs the talents of up-and-coming designers, artists and silversmiths to create a very colourful and contemporary product line.

On offer we have everything from jewellery, to salt and pepper mills, coat stands, wall hooks, and even lighting systems. All pieces have a unique shine and are quite durable. They also come in a wide range of bold colours – in fact all the official colours that snooker balls are available in: white, blue, yellow, purple, black, orange, red and pink But what I’m really interested in is their watches. The two emblematic pieces comprising the collection are the TW27 and TW35 watches, designed by Hubert Verstraeten himself. Again, a Bakelite ball is at the core of the design, complemented by a spherical dial and usually a double bracelet.

I also enjoy the simplicity in the naming of the different models. There is the “Small Watch” option which comes in a 27 mm Bakelite casing, and the “Big Watch” which is larger at 35 mm. It’s hard to make a mistake about choosing the wrong size in this case.

Watch prices range from € 255 to € 286 depending on the size. Each can be customized online, with plenty of case colours to choose from, as well as two different options for the watch hands.

For those who can’t decide one way or another, there is also the option to purchase a complete set, allowing the different components to be interchanged. The set comes packaged nicely in a case which looks more like a snooker set than a watch collection, which certainly makes these Tamawa pieces conversation starters.

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Industry

THE CLASP

THAT SAYS A LOT ABOUT YOUR WATCH

BY PIERRE-YVES SCHMID, EUROTEC

Not always intuitive to fasten, the clasp is often a stumbling block for the owner of a new watch. So the best thing is to be prepared. But why are there so many different systems? And what are they exactly? We have the answers.

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here are two parallel approaches to clasps, that baseline component of virtually every watch.

Some see them simply as a means of opening and closing the strap. But others make them an integral part of the design, an asset of differentiation.

In that case, the choice of model, materials used and degree of personalisation take on an importance all of their own.

In this article, we present the principal clasp systems used in the industry and explain the rationale behind them. The degree of complexity depends largely on how they are produced and how secure they are once closed, but also on the type of material used to make the strap.

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The different types of clasp The pin buckle: Identical to the system used for belts, this clasp takes its name from the small metal pin that you insert into the holes in the watch strap. It is without a doubt the simplest and most widespread system. Although its relatively low cost can be a sales argument, it has the disadvantage of wearing out fairly rapidly. As for its scope of use, that’s easy: only supple straps in leather, plastic or silicone can be fitted with pin buckles.

Folding clasp: With its hinged system, the folding or deployment clasp ensures that the two parts of the wrist strap are never separated. That means that the risk of losing your watch is virtually nil. There are two versions of this type of clasp.

In the ‘single-fold’ version, the clasp unfolds on opening and folds itself again through a ‘V’-shape on closing. The doublefold version, also called a ‘butterfly’ clasp, has two hinges and opens in two stages. On closing, the metal sections on the inside of the strap fold over symmetrically on either side of the clasp. These two types of clasp are often used with steel watches, but it is perfectly possible to mount them on supple wrist straps. Although they are already reputed for

being hard-wearing and secure, they may additionally be fitted with a security system either in the form of a pushbutton that locks the clasp, or a ‘flap’ that folds down over it.

Just above, we mentioned two versions of the folding clasp.

In fact there is a third, a derivative of the butterfly version.

This is the invisible butterfly clasp. For reasons of elegance, the clasp closure is hidden from view. It is opened by pressing tiny buttons on the sides. It is especially popular for ceramic wrist straps.

If there are any disadvantages to this deployment-type clasp, it is the risk that the curve does not perfectly mould to the wrist.

Clip clasp: Also very common, this is a fairly basic type of clasp. It has a lever system which clips onto the strap simply by pressing it down. It is most frequently found on metal watch straps and jewellery bracelet watches. It has the advantage of blending discreetly into the links of the strap.

Some brands use it on their metallic straps in Milanese mesh – that is, without links.

Sliding clasp: Closely related to the clip clasp, the sliding clasp offers the possibility of adjusting the length of the strap to the size of your wrist. It is mainly used on Milanese straps.

Hook-and-loop clasps: Some watches (we’re clearly not talking about the top end of the market here) use bands of Velcro to make the straps. The good thing is that they’re easy to open, but the downside is the lack of security of this system and its tendency to snag all over the place and to succumb rapidly to wear and tear. This system is used first and foremost for sports watches.

How to make a clasp, in four easy stages It all starts with the design. This can be made on the basis of ideas or precise wishes voiced by clients, or left up to the designers. As soon as an initial design emerges, the draft is passed on to the engineers who check the concept for feasibility in terms of materials and performance. If the engineers give the all-clear, a prototype is produced to obtain a visual idea of this first stage. These same engineers then make the transition from design to production by producing technical drawings using CAD programmes.

The clasp will usually be manufactured by stamping, that is shaping the material by pressing it over tools specially created to reproduce the desired shape. The workers in charge of manufacturing these tools, called press tools or swages, have over time developed special techniques and tool types that respond to the specific aesthetics and precision needs of the watchmaking industry. Today, technological advances (electrical discharge machines, milling on multi-axis CNC machines, etc.) have further developed the profession towards greater productivity, higher precision and increasingly complex shapes (such as incorporating logos by overstriking).

Once the stamping operation is completed, the part goes to polishing. ‘Polishing’ covers several techniques: actual polishing (to make it shiny) or calendering (to make it matt) a piece by rubbing it with different materials. The difficulty lies in removing the defects without deforming or changing the size or geometry of the object. Whether polishing

is manual or automated largely depends on the volume of parts to be processed. As regards automated polishing, there are several types of equipment for this: for example, machines with a continuously rotating table for production volumes of anything from 30 to 500 parts an hour. The parts are loaded and unloaded while the machines are running, which limits idle times and consequently lowers costs. As for robots, they have been used for several years now, but for a long time had the disadvantage of being unable to reproduce the exact movements of an experienced polisher.

It is worth noting that mechanical engineering company Crevoisier solved this problem with its POLIcapture concept: with the aid of complex software, 3D-modelling of the parts and the polishing system, as well as a highly accurate definition of the geometries, it succeeded in capturing the exact movements that have to be performed.

The final operation consists of assembling and then inspecting the different parts of the clasp. By agreement with the customer, inspection can be carried out from the perspective of performance, dimensions and aesthetics. The aesthetics inspection is conducted purely visually with or without a magnifying glass to spot the slightest flaw. If a flaw is found, the part returns to the polishing workshop for correction.

Lastly, special packaging (foam boxes, adhesive tape or protective film) is used to ensure that the work of the polishers is kept intact.

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Golden Bridge

Portrait

VINCENT CALABRESE

OBSESSIONS OF A NEAPOLITAN WANDERER

BY PIERRE MAILLARD

Just published by Editions Slatkine, Le Temps d’une vie (in English ‘Time and a lifetime’) is Vincent Calabrese’s novel-like autobiographical account of independence. It tells both his own story and that of the Swiss watchmaking industry.

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incent Calabrese has just brought out a book that anyone gravitating around the watchmaking “ecosystem” should consider reading.

Although it reads it like a fully-fledged novel, describing the very singular personal journey of an extraordinary watchmaker born into a poor family in Naples, it also gives us many insights into the world of Swiss watchmaking. Vincent Calabrese is obsessed. Obsessed with existing, with creating, with innovating, and with telling the whole story. In fact, without these obsessions and his thirst for independence, he would probably not be the person he is today. And without this Neapolitan wanderer, the Swiss watchmaking landscape would no doubt look very different.

Vincent Calabrese is temperamental, he’s as stubborn as a mule, does exactly as he pleases, is not afraid of facing up to the big boys, and he’ll always tell you exactly what he thinks of you, good or bad.

He’s an agitator, a troublemaker, a spanner in the works, an awkward customer, a fearsome opponent with the grip of a Rottweiler.

At the same time, he’s also a tireless worker, an exceptional creative talent and a gatherer of energies. A genuinely good, modest man, with no hidden agenda, who likes to foster healthy competition and emulation among peers and rivals, Calabrese is the originator of the AHCI (Academy of independent creative watchmakers). What a contrast Vincent Calabrese makes in this sullen environment that is the bigbrand-name watchmaking sector, with all its jealousies and suspicions. Yet the self-taught craftsman could not care less and even when, sometimes, his path has been strewn with obstacles and hardships and he has been tempted to give it all up, he has never allowed himself to be defeated.

From Naples to Le Locle Vincent Calabrese’s journey began in 1944 in Naples, where he was born into a poor family. He lived together with his parents, his brother and sister in a basso, a space measuring 30m2, which gave directly onto a noisy narrow street in old Naples. Of his father, a former master baker, who had come home from war an invalid to join the ranks of the unemployed, he once said that he was “honest and generous, yet obsessed with the thought that he was being exploited, an illiterate man for whom violence was his sole means of expression”. His mother was “a gentle-natured, cultured woman, who loved opera and loathed vulgarity, and who worked from morning to night at her sewing machine to provide a better future for her children.”

At the age of 13, he left school, moving from one minor job to another, ranging from chemist’s assistant to delivery boy

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for a bookshop before securing a post as apprentice to a local watchmaker. Here, he learned all kinds of skills, such as “combining radios with alarm clocks, or making metal chairs and covering them in plastic”. But his wage was only enough to cover the cost of a packet of cigarettes a week, so he gave it up and when he was barely 14, he set himself up in business at home as a “watchmaker/repairer”.

Already fiercely independent, he more or less made a living at his job, saved a bit of money, growing up in the rebellious mood of post-war Naples, until it was time for him to enter military service. “In order to escape the nightmare of spending two years in the Marines,” he wrote, “the only solution was to emigrate.” His uncle had settled in Switzerland, so why not join him? He managed to convince his mother, brother and sister that it was a good idea and so all four of them left the father behind in Naples and headed for Le Locle. It was then the winter of 1961, and one could only guess at the shock of the young Neapolitan wanderer suddenly finding himself footdeep in snow in the middle of nowhere.

“I’m a watchmaker! No, you’re an Italian.”

One week later, he was hired at Tissot! Admittedly, it was an era of full-time employment. But in the workshop, whenever he announced that he was a watchmaker, the reply was: “No, you’re an Italian!”. No matter. He tempered down and was happy to be in Switzerland. At Tissot, he worked on a production line. “I sang while I worked, cracked jokes, and took far too much interest in my female workmates. I was reprimanded by my boss for my exuberant behaviour.” Eventually tired of the atmosphere and the repetitive work, he left Tissot and joined Cyma…

In the coming years, he would become a man of integrity, proud, hard-working and obstinate, moving from one company to the next: in 1964, he joined Zenith, in 1965 he worked for Richard, in Morges, then he took a job at Hebdomas, in La Chaux-de-Fonds, finally becoming workshop foreman at Teriam… Every time, it was more or less the same story. He was a good, fast worker, he learned a great deal, improving the workshops or departments in his charge, but his various employers always failed to keep their promises. So he regularly handed in his notice until 1971 when he found the job of his dreams. He was appointed manager of Diamant Bleu, a watchmaking workshop in the terribly chic Crans-Montana ski resort! It was a sudden move up the social ladder and, now in contact with a rich clientele to whom he began selling prestigious brands, the self-made Neapolitan man suddenly saw his future.

The moment of truth One day, a client brought him a splendid 19th century pendant watch made by Breguet. It had been run over by a car, the case has suffered greatly, but the movement was still repara-

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ble. “The client was asking me to repair the case alone. He didn’t care that the watch no longer worked. He was only interested in appearances… I remember I was boiling with rage!”

The feeling of rage, once again, would remain with him for some time and that single incident would lead, a few years later, to one of the finest creations in contemporary watchmaking: the Golden Bridge. “That day, I decided that, as soon as I could, I would design a watch that would be bought for the beauty of its movement alone”. Fine words, but quite a challenge. It would be some years before Vincent Calabrese succeeded in designing and creating the object of his “spatial” watchmaking dreams, in which the entire movement was left open to view.

Still without any qualifications whatsoever, he went on to fine-tune his knowledge by taking courses at Patek Philippe, then Rolex (two completely different atmospheres, by all accounts) and, one fine morning, he woke up after dreaming about his watch. “Trance-like, I began to draw the system that would enable me to invent the principle of spatial watchmaking. I could already see the solution in my head.” Corum were quick to purchase his prototype, which scooped the Gold Medal at the Geneva International Inventions Exhibition in 1977. It would become known as the Golden Bridge. From that moment on, Vincent Calabrese would not stop innovating.

The philosophical wanderer In the course of his book, Calabrese details his successive inventions in turn. This one-by-one discovery helps us to fully understand the meaning and consistency of the whole. As is often said of a painter in the process of becoming, Calabrese builds his oeuvre. And the common thread connecting his creations appears as an underlying philosophy. Yes, he dares to use the term. An emotional philosophy is at the root of his language. A philosophy, which is incarnated in watchmaking. “The only language I can express myself with is watchmaking”, he often likes to say. It is a conscious language, at which he became increasingly adept. And, throughout the book, Vincent Calabrese regularly proclaims that everything he does is undertaken in full knowledge of the facts, knowing precisely where he wants to end up.

As one discovers further, the watches do indeed begin to make sense. They form a long, coherent sentence, beginning with his Spatial creations, explorations based on the Golden Bridge linear movement. But unlike the baguette-shaped movement on the Golden Bridge, the Spatial movements came in all shapes possible: the letters of the alphabet, characters, symbols, even the boot of Italy.

As a result, Blancpain commissioned him to make a tourbillon. He came up with a rarity for the time, a flying tourbillon, for which he executed a prototype. But Blancpain delayed its release. Tired of waiting, two years later, he brought it out himself and the watchmaking world beheld the spatial Flying Tourbillon magically suspended between two crystals, bereft of any attachments.

Moreover, Corum appeared no longer in a hurry to produce his Golden Bridge. Calabrese, who had by then set up business on his own and was running a small watchmaking workshop in Morges, did not receive the anticipated royalties and struggled to stay afloat. And although in the meantime he had founded the AHCI, gathering around him the most talented independent watchmakers in Switzerland and elsewhere, he still felt like abandoning everything.

The Baladin One watch would get him out of the situation in which he found himself: the Baladin. A watch created “in the image of the cantastorie, the Italian storyteller who wandered the streets of town spreading news”. This meant a watch comprising a hand-free display on which time-telling was by means of an aperture digitally indicating the hours. The aperture wandered around the dial indicating the minutes as it went. Simple and ingenious. He sold his concept to the Italian Pinko and “I went overnight from CHF 30,000.- a year to several years’ worth of sales”. The watch sold by the thousands.

He got back up on his feet (as he always does) and invented an extraordinary travel clock. Two Hands is a tourbillon travel clock with counterweights, composed solely of two hands suspended in the void at the end of a stem. One extraordinary feature was that the entire movement was housed in the minutes hand, including the tourbillon. A true feat of achievement.

But he was keen to continue along the path opened by the Baladin and from then on designed “extraordinary watches with ordinary movements”. And presumably his Neapolitan origins were not without significance. For his obsession never faded. He felt that the big brand names had become far too omnipotent. He realised that “the public were no longer buying a product but an image”. He felt that he was clearing the ground for the big makes to start exploiting the territory.

Commedia Everything, in his eyes, is a vast Commedia. And Commedia was precisely the name of his next piece: an aperture displaying the jumping hours could be glimpsed through partly open theatre curtains. In the ultimate provocative gesture, he inserted a quartz movement. To emphasise his message, he borrowed from Dante and his Divina Commedia. This time, eleven words are made visible: Perdete Ogni Speranza, Voi Che Create, l’Arte Pagante E Solo Alle …! In English: “Abandon all hope, ye who create. Only fashionable art pays off.”

But once again the wind turned. It was then 1992 and two more new chapters opened in the life of Vincent Calabrese, entitled “Sur orbite” and “Les Années ludiques”. More creative than ever, he finally followed up with his “extraordinary watches with an ordinary movement” for his own brand. He fine-

tuned the performance capabilities of the power reserve indicators for automatics and on dual time zones adjustable to the nearest minute. He devised the ingenious AM/PM, Night & Day watch, he invented the Horus, with its satellite subdial with minutes indication. He also started receiving new commissions, achieved recognition in Japan, and was awarded the Gaïa prize, known as the Nobel prize of watchmaking.

With the support of his daughter, who took care of the rest of the business, he produced up to 800 watches a year, “made by my own hand”.

The carrousel A blow of fate, a drama, the sudden death of a loved one were events that would successively conspire to stop him dead in his tracks. A subsequent attempt to kickstart his activity again failed due to a partner’s indiscretions. Would the rebel finally have to fall in line? “2006 to 2008 were years of survival”, he confessed. But he went on to grant Cartier a licence, and clocked up commissions for Sellita, Vuitton and Blancpain.

Blancpain wanted to be the first and only brand to bring out a carrousel, a mechanism with rotating escapement and an unfairly scorned rival of the tourbillon, invented by Bahne Bonniksen in 1892. A carrosello was music to the ears of a Neapolitan. Excellent news. He was picked up by Blancpain and could at last devote himself entirely to his research and not have to worry about a thing. He was up for it. The brand presented a promising and noteworthy prototype at the Basel watch fair 2007. Then… absolutely nothing.

What had happened? It was a mystery for Vincent Calabrese who had always had a very good relationship with Marc Hayek. He never received an explanation, but maybe the answer lay elsewhere. Setting the “proletarian” carrousel against the “noble” tourbillon wasn’t going to do anyone any favours. The tourbillon had become the industry’s sacred cow. More tourbillons were now being produced in one year than had ever been produced since its invention

by Breguet in 1801 and until the early 90s. Commedia was the operative word.

Vincent Calabrese became a little paranoid. And for good reason, it wouldn’t be the first time that one of his innovations had been pre-empted only to end up on the back burner. Maybe someone bought it to conveniently spirit away?

Once again, he handed in his notice. But he popped up again as an independent operator at the end of 2011.

Independent? He will no doubt remain so until the end of his days. An independent struggler, fighter and designer. For him and others like him, such as his friend, Jean Kazès, the ingenious Carouge-based clockmaker, whose works he goes to great lengths to promote. And rebellious? Always. One of the final chapters in his book is entitled Obsession, in which he tells a few home truths about the watchmaking industry and its journalism. And he doesn’t mince his words. But why should he? He’s a lone wolf, is Vincent.

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RECOMMENDED READING

BY FABRICE MUGNIER, WATCHPRINT.COM

Breguet: Watchmakers since 1775

By Emmanuel Breguet First published in 1997, this is the new edition, updated and with the notable addition of pages showing the historic pieces acquired by the Breguet Museum since 2000.

This unique work not only describes the life and vast oeuvre of the brilliant watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823), but also the uninterrupted history of the Montres Breguet company to the present day, including one chapter devoted to Nicolas G. Hayek, who headed the company from 1999 to 2010. The work further includes a large glossary, a table of the illustrated watches and clocks, a chronology, a bibliography and an index of names.

452 pages, CHF 130.-

Moonwatch Only: 60 years of Speedmaster

By Grégoire Rossier and Anthony Marquié Numerous bloggers view this work (FratelloWatches, Timezone, Hodinkee) as one of the best books for collectors. It owes its success to an innovative methodology. The first half of the book is devoted to the parts that constitute a Speedmaster. The different calibres, dials, bevels and buttons are all described, enabling the reader to identify all the codes that go to make up a Speedmaster. Published on the model’s 60th anniversary, this re-edition is considerably expanded and has two new contributors, Petros Protopapas, curator of the Museum, and James H. Ragan, the NASA engineer formerly in charge of selecting watches for astronauts, who recounts anecdotes from the space programme about this model. Ragan also states that he does not know any other equipment suppliers to NASA who have continued to deliver their products to the space programme for so long.

566 pages, CHF 250.- Edition Watchprint

Patek Philippe: The authorized biography

By Nick Foulkes There is a large body of books describing Patek timepieces, from the pocket watch to the wristwatch, to the delight of collectors all over the world. But so far, none has really charted the history of this prestigious manufacture. The narrative begins in Poland, the native country of the brand’s founder Antoine Norbert de Patek, before his meeting in Switzerland with the great watchmaker Jean Adrien Philippe. It tells every stage in his story, from the purchase of the manufacture in 1932 by the Stern family to the present day. In two exclusive interviews, Nicholas Foulkes was able to penetrate the family intimacy and bring out stories and forgotten anecdotes. Together, they have made use of the brand’s extraordinary archive to present some astonishing, previously unpublished photos.

544 pages, CHF 220.- Editions Preface

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Archives

SEVERIN WUNDERMAN, THE GENIUS PRECURSOR OF

THE FASHION WATCH

BY PIERRE MAILLARD

I

n April 1993, Europa Star dedicated its cover to Gucci Watches, which at the time was licensed to the Severin Group, owned by Severin Wunderman.

While the Severin Group’s corporate headquarters were based in Irvine, California, it was in Lengnau, Switzerland, near the city of Bienne, that the more than 1 million Gucci watches sold annually were produced and distributed, generating a turnover in the region of 300 million francs. This considerable success was due to the visionary genius of the incredible Severin Wunderman.

Born in Belgium in 1938 to a Jewish glovemaker father, he was hidden from the Nazis in a school for blind children, where he was the only sighted pupil. After the death of his mother, he was sent to live in Los Angeles at the age of 10. By the beginning of the 1970s, he was a sales representative in the US for French watch brand Alexis Barthelay.

On a trip to New York, he was struck by an idea; he managed to meet with Aldo Gucci and to persuade him to order $250,000 worth of watches bearing the Gucci name. But when Barthelay struggled to supply the watches, Wunderman offered Aldo Gucci another deal: he would leave Barthelay, set up his own company and oversee the production of the watches himself.

There was just one small snag; he didn’t have a penny to his name. But Aldo Gucci wrote him a cheque and paid for the order in advance!

In 1972, Wunderman created Severin Watches and acquired the licence agreement for Gucci watches (and later on for Fila watches). Over the course of the next 25 years, he built a multimillion-dollar business by producing and distributing Gucci watches. His main hunch was to not rely on traditional watch retail networks, but to distribute through department stores by promoting the Gucci name. He followed the

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changing fashions, stuck to the trends and applied US marketing formulas to high-quality, Swissmade watches. Ten years later, he had increased his sales 100 fold and inspired many a brand to diversify into watches.

During a visit to Lengnau in 1993, Europa Star was clearly impressed by the modernity of the centre: “You can physically feel the power of this organisation, which spans 4,000 m2 and processes over one million watches every year. The building is centred around an enormous strongroom in which 300,000 to 400,000 watches are kept in continual stock. All the different departments are arranged around this room to give a completely integrated centre,” we wrote at the time.

However, at the same time, a cloud was on the horizon at the Severin Group: the fight for control of the Gucci group, which had been raging for several years. Investcorp, the owner of Ebel and Breguet, was in the process of taking over the entire group; and the Gucci watch licence agreement, which was awaiting renewal, only ran until May 1994.

On 14 October, Severin Wunderman decided to go for broke by publishing an open letter in all the Swiss newspapers, in which he extolled his many successes with Gucci Watches.

He pointed out the jobs at risk and publicly pleaded his case with Investcorp. The next day, in a dramatic turn of events, an agreement was signed to extend the licence for another year – “long enough to negotiate another long-term contract that will benefit both companies.”

The enterprise continued for another few years until 1997, when Investcorp sold Gucci to François Pinault’s PPR group (now Kering) and bought the watch licence agreement from Severin Wunderman.

He would later go on to take over Corum with this small fortune, but that’s a whole other story…