A fter spending 17 long years at Richemont group, Georges Kern surprised the watch world by moving to rival brand Breitling, a popular brand known for making aviator watches. Kern’s former employer is one of the largest watch groups in the world with brands like IWC, Panerai, Montblanc and Cartier under one umbrella. At Richemont, Kern spent most of his time heading and expanding IWC’s growth. His move out of Richemont came as a surprise to the company and the entire watch industry.

There has been a lot of excitement post-Baselworld 2018, where the first batch of novelties under the new leadership of Breitling was revealed. This time, Breitling skipped the Basel tradition and ahead of the watch fair, rolled out a roadshow across some of the most important watch markets in the world where Kern introduced the first set of novelties built by his new team. A major modification involved the discontinuation of the ‘winged B’ logo. It has been replaced by an older and simpler Breitling logo. Breitling will also reduce the number of watch references from 650 to just 120 to ease the selection process for customers. Kern introduced the Navitimer 8 collection with several design changes. The rest of the novelties were introduced at the Basel watch fair. We caught up with Kern in Dubai to understand his strategy for a brand that was valued at €800 million before his takeover.

What will be the first set of marketing measures at Breitling with you at the helm of affairs?

Almost 50 per cent of our marketing investments will be online, a change from our earlier strategies. The product will remain analog but everything surrounding it will become digital. We will have our own e-commerce platform soon and encourage retailers to do the same. However, we won’t have online-only products to be fair to our retail partners.

Breitling has performed better in multi-brand stores than in stand-alone boutiques. How are you changing things around, if at all, in terms of distribution?

The distribution depends on the price of the watch. We have 2,000 doors, and we will reduce them to 1,500 because some of them do not perform or fit the image of the brand anymore. We will reduce some of them in Europe and the US, and build more in Asia.

Where does India stand as a market for Breitling?

We do very well in India. We are one of the few watch companies to have subsidiaries. The market is growing, and we can do many things with it. It is a bit difficult here because of the taxes. Often, we tend to compare India’s performance with Dubai since they are similar markets in that sense.

You were associated with IWC for 15 years. It sure must have had an influence to the changes you bring at Breitling?

We are not targeting brands for competition. We are targeting segments. When you are running a brand for 15 years, you bring your taste and style into something. I am not going to launch anything I don’t like, so I will have an influence because I have my preferences. At the same time, we need to be faithful to the history of the brand as well as change it to make it more stylish.

At IWC, the brand has had several popular faces as brand ambassadors whereas Breitling has hardly had any. Is that going to change?

We will have famous faces associated with Breitling but we will also have famous persons in their respective fields such as sports or art, featured in a different way. We have these different elements that we take inspiration from — air, sea and land. For land, we already have Bentley and we can further enrich storytelling on that front. We have collaborated with Norton bikes. I love Norton on many levels. First of all it is the oldest motorbike company in the world. Second, it has a retro touch in its design, which I find very on point. Pricing wise, it is twice as expensive as a Harley Davidson. We will do a limited series edition with Norton. Limited series pieces do well if there is a credible story associated with it. For sea, we have signed up with Ocean Conservatory, an NGO finding plastic in the oceans. (Breitling announced Brad Pitt and Charlize Theron as new ambassadors in its Cinema Squad, soon after this interview.)

In terms of research and development, will we see new materials for Breitling watches?

Of course! We will continue to use Breitlight polymer and large watches so we have to use lighter materials. We are going to focus more on chronographs. Breitling is a chronograph brand; we invented everything in chronograph. We launched B01. We have a new technical director who has ideas to further develop the chronograph. This is our main asset. There will be light materials like Breitlight or titanium because of the size of our products. But at the end of the day most people are buying steel.

Will Breitling make a smartwatch again?

You have to distinguish between digital watches from digital companies and Swiss watch companies. Digital companies make them as a communication tool. Digital watches from watch companies are a little bit of a flop show. Is there anyone successful with it? No! In my opinion, analog watches will be the new luxury because it is ‘not connected’. You can make any product cool by using digital means to communicate with your buyers. What I am focussing on is how to talk to the millennial.

Availability of watch prices online has made it very easy for buyers to compare prices in countries across the world. A lot of your well-travelled customers buy watches not from their home country but from where they can get them cheapest. How do you plan to deal with this?

What we are now aiming for is worldwide pricing so that the price of the watch remains the same. The only difference will be the added tax of each country. Sixty to 65 per cent of our customers are world travellers; they know the prices in different countries. We need transparency and worldwide prices.

Shilpa Dhamija is the editor of LuxuryVolt.com

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