![]() ![]() We’ll soon put in place a system of stock buy-backs which we will sell either through partners like Tourneau which has a pre-owned division, or through our own stores. Why are you able to buy a Mercedes with 70,000km that’s officially certified by Mercedes with a guarantee, beautifully done, and yet not enjoy the same with luxury watches? All those watches on Chrono24, where do you think they come from? They come from retailers who can’t get rid of unsold stock. Every industry has a secondary market except ours. The grey market is one craziness of our industry. ![]() The purchase process might take months but the purchase act takes 30 seconds, and you need to be able to offer that possibility to buy the watch Sunday morning 2am if the guy wants it after eight months of decisionmaking, which is influenced by digital marketing, bloggers, communication, articles in the press… He wants to buy Breitling and Breitling has to have the same appearance throughout these platforms. You have to be everywhere and offer a seamless experience across all these platforms. This means we have boutiques, retailers, our own e-commerce and pure players like Mr Porter. We need to talk about omni-channel, not just e-commerce. Everything we do including aftersales has to become digital because this is how people behave and consume and read. We had a reach of 250 million for our international roadshow, 250 million! And Breitling never did digital. But a watch is not a commodity it will remain analogue but everything else surrounding it will become digital. If you want a digital watch you go to Apple, finito. I don’t believe in digital watches for the traditional Swiss industry. Now that I’m an entrepreneur, we need to be rational. I don’t think all brands need to do everything by themselves. We want to gain efficiencies and quality because we give each other volume. Plus, we have a great collaboration with Tudor. I’m not worried about increasing product. We should stop listening to the 0.0000001 per cent of geeks who think everything should stand still. Remember when Porsche launched the Cayenne, everybody said: ‘ok this company will be bankrupt in five years’? Then they launched the Panamera, Macan, etc and guess what? The best seller at Porsche is now the Cayenne, it’s not the 911. You can implement a change in management but you have to do it right, obviously. Analogue watches will remain but tastes are also changing. It’s about style, a lifestyle, a relationship or a memory. A watch, on the other hand, is not a commodity. A car will become an iPad with four wheels and all emotion around it will be gone, even the experience because there will be autonomous driving. A car is a commodity transport will be commodified. Understand that analogue watches are not commodities. You make a phone call, ask do you want to join, yes, ok I send you the contract. The good thing is you don’t have long discussions. We’ve recruited 35 managers in marketing, product development, design, etc within a couple of weeks. Look, we haven’t spent one dime on a head hunter. And so what’s the first thing? The first thing you do is build a team. We just came with our bags, put our stuff down and just… took over. I remember when we walked in last September, we hadn’t even had our offices yet. It was just a side note in a very small newspaper in Switzerland and it went viral, which shows what kind of world we’re living in today. In an interview I mentioned, just as a side note, that we’re going to stop with the overt macho campaign and suddenly it appeared in papers like Daily Mail, The Wall Street Journal. It’s phenomenal how we can in 48 hours change the image of the company. ![]() The beauty of our time is we’re living in the digital age. Now people are going towards Heuer and Breitling. Not sure if it’s because of me-kidding! But seriously, Rolexes and Pateks are basically gone in the sense that everything’s all taken up so there’s nothing left. I can tell you that Breitling is really going through the roof now. ![]() I’ve been with many brands and I’ve been looking at vintage watches. A lot of people are going into vintage watches now. ![]()
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