Breitling CEO: There will always be clients for watches

For Georges Kern, the hope is in the math. If there are nearly 8 billion people on the planet, and if the Swiss watch industry makes about two million wristwatches a year, chances are they will get sold, even after COVID.

“The market is still there,” Kern, the Breitling CEO, said recently in an interview with Middle Eastern luxury magazine AEWorld. “You have a [global] population of 7-8 billion people. Within the Swiss watch industry, we’re talking about a couple of million timepieces made each year. So there will always be clients.”

Kern warned that not every brand will succeed in the new world.

“I believe we will see consolidation and concentration on fewer brands,” he said. “The winning brands will be the ones who are embracing the new values that I mentioned (being inclusive and socially aware). But some others will go through a very tough time. But the market is there, people will continue to buy, we already see it. People are travelling less so there is more disposable income.”

Kern said the advantage of the watch industry was that while a customer may not buy a watch today, he’d buy it two or three months later. Unlike pizza, which, if made today, cannot be kept too long for later consumption.

“They (people) still want to catch up with their purchases and that is the difference between us and some other industries,” Kern said. “Take a pizzeria for example, after the confinement you’re not going to eat double the pizzas – those sales are lost – but you can postpone buying a watch. So people will still buy, but it will just be two or three months later.”

Kern spoke about his brand’s thrust on active lifestyles and informality. That is why they eschewed mainstream sports and associated themselves with activities like triathlon and surfing.

“We are a casual brand, so we don’t want to go into traditional sports like tennis, Formula 1, golf etc,” Kern said. “Right from the beginning, we looked at lifestyle sports like surfing. Now we have added triathlon to our portfolio and it is a fast-growing sport. Everyone cycles, swims or runs, so it makes us approachable. We want to be cool and relaxed, not formal in any way.”