Jaeger-LeCoultre luxury timepieces bridge gap between tradition and latest trends

Jaeger-LeCoultre is a brand every luxury watch owner is very well aware of. The brand has shown its presence in Sri Lanka for the last two years since the unveiling of Chatham Luxury in March 2013. 

It has gained rapid popularity among its affluent clientele, primarily owing to the personalisation and innovative edge each piece offers. Thus Jaeger-LeCoultre identifies its luxury watches as luxury timepieces. This has made it not just a fashionable watch but a luxury timepiece which goes beyond exterior luxury. 

The luxury watch manufacturer has managed to stick to its roots in Switzerland with almost two centuries of business experience in-house, with no interruptions whatsoever. While giving emphasis on heritage and tradition it didn’t fall short to nurture innovation; over 400 patents attest its success in the industry.

The legendry Reverso model which brought Jaeger-LeCoultre to the limelight in 1931 has kept the production lines active thus far and is still one of the iconic references and one of the best selling lines.

According to Jaeger-LeCoultre Regional Brand Director Marc de Panafieu the 2015 collection has aligned primarily with astronomy. He also highlighted that one of the most recent additions to its novelty basket is its own watch maker’s achievement to attain the most accurate moon phase up-to-date. 

Panafieu noted,

“If you set it up properly and the watch never stops after 3,887 years, it will have a one-day difference compared with the real moon cycle. In terms of watch making it’s quite huge. Any watchmaker can do a moon phase but not everyone can reach this level of accuracy.”

Bridging the gap between tradition and the latest ‘smart’ trends the Swiss watchmaker unveiled a new mobile application as a result of their 2015 collection, to help owners to set their watches’ moon-phase complications without a trip to the boutique. By doing so, the brand was able to meld traditional watch making with technology without having to enter the wearables field.

Available for Apple devices, the ‘JLC Moonphase’ provides owners of Jaeger-LeCoultre watches with tutorials to correctly set the moon-phase complications on their timepiece. The company believes that producing an app that helps the consumer with maintenance may be a more welcomed download, compared to one that simply pushes ecommerce or heavily showcases timekeeping technology.

Following are excerpts of a Daily FT interview with Jaeger-LeCoultre Regional Brand Director Marc de Panafieu:

Jaeger-LeCoultre Regional Brand Director Marc de Panafieu

By Shehana Dain

Q: How has the Sri Lankan market responded since you partnered with Chatham in 2013?

A: Very positive. So far our customers here have been mostly Sri Lankans in the local market and foreigners who have permanent residence. This is very promising because it means that in the country itself there are customers and they are people who understand what we do, appreciate what we do and share our common goals. We decided to partner with Chatham because both parties shared the same set of values. 

To be honest we are very confident. Seeing the hotel developments and being based in Dubai I hear a lot about Sri Lanka; whether it’s for surfing or whether cultural or historical. We are confident based on the tourism factor and also on the local market.

 

Q: What’s your sales strategy in Sri Lanka?

A: Basically we are not looking into volumes. It has to make sense; what makes sense here is a customer base here who appreciates what we do. That’s a pre-requisite to do business anywhere. People have to like what you do; if not there is no point of entering a market. The case here is we have customers with similar taste for our time pieces, for our idea of luxury and for our idea of watch making. 

Most importantly we should have a very strong partner and in Sri Lanka both conditions regarding our clients and partnership were met.

 

Q: How does Jaeger-LeCoultre’s selection process take place to pick and choose time pieces showcased in the Chatham Luxury showroom?

A:  We have a very diverse range. This is why it’s important to partner with the right person. There’s a saying ‘you need two hands to clap’; this is where we rely on know-how’s and expertise of Chatham. We have such a wide range and not everything works with everybody; it is true in every market and throughout the world. So you need a partner who knows their customers really well and can tell you about customer preferences. 

What tends to blur this concept is tourism. Today geographical boundaries play a lesser important role; in the case of Sri Lanka with the growing tourism you need to have right assortment that can satisfy the local clients and also the tourists. Depending on what nationality of tourists you get you might tune your product assortment. Today there is so much of tourism and migration you can’t just serve one nationality. Again this can get tricky, so you solely depend on your partnerships.

It’s a collaboration between us the manufacturer and Chatham the retailer as to what pieces we want to bring and experiment. There is virtually no limit for the products Sri Lanka can have; ultimately we offer our whole product catalogue to our partners. 

Q: Do you think Sri Lankans are more familiarised with luxury items now than they were a few years back?

A: I’m not sure we can only focus on Sri Lankans in particular when it comes to this. Thanks to social media and smart phone technology news today travels extremely fast. We used to have captive markets where it took time for information to travel. Today if we launch a product, the next day the news has travelled. When it comes to the luxury market in general this helps new customers enter the world of luxury. This is valid to Sri Lanka as well as any part of the world.

As soon as you have access to information which includes luxury, people get interested; they tend to research and ultimately try to acquire items, it’s a worldwide phenomenon.

 

Q: Has the market for luxury timepieces expanded in Sri Lanka?

A: Yes it has, and again the credit comes from collaboration. The fact that we are present in the country, the fact that we have time pieces in the market pushes clients through the showroom entrance. There may be people who didn’t have a mechanical watch who might think why I need a watch that needs winding. A lot of people enter the Chatham showroom get an idea on Jaeger-LeCoultre and eventually may develop a liking towards mechanical watches.

Yes there are a lot of challenges as there’s a substantial amount of explanation to be done about the mechanisms, and also in relation to whom we are and what we do.

 

Q: What’s the connection between astronomy and Jaeger-LeCoultre timepieces? 

A: The entire concept of watch making is based on the moon, the sun and the stars. People understood that earth revolves around the sun and subsequently understood about the moon cycle; sailors used to travel using the stars; they didn’t have any GPS technology during the early days. So watch making roots are in the heavenly bodies. This year in our 2015 collection our watch makers decided to go back to the roots of watch making.

 

Q: The luxury watch market only targeted men in the early stages. How has it evolved around its female clients throughout the years?

A: A complication is basically anything on top the time. The moon phase complication is a much sought complication especially among our female clients, because it has a very attractive aesthetic aspect as well as very rich content which go into designing it. This is what we are known for; we will not compromise on watch making because of aesthetics and vice-versa, the whole thing should have a meaning. More and more women appreciate watch making, so now we have women watches with moon phases, with minute repeaters and tourbillion.

We don’t do watch making without aesthetic and we don’t do aesthetic without watch making; this is our strength. We can do this because we have very competent watch makers. We have 180 skills in our manufacturing department. So when we design a watch we think in a global perspective. At the end of the day it has to make sense in all aspects of the watch.

 

Q: What sort of global trends do you see in the luxury timepiece market?

A: I don’t think there are global trends as such. There was a global phenomenon which was the smart watches but again I don’t think that is affecting us so much because we are in a completely different field. Of course we tell the time and a smart watch will tell the time but I think this is where the similarity stops. When someone uses a timepiece there’s an idea of craftsmanship and heritage, also there’s a lot of emotion. So I think our timepieces carry much more and stand for much more than the sheer purpose of telling the time. 

When it comes to traditional or mechanical watches there is no such global trend, you can see at times in different markets with different populations mainly in large volume markets certain designs can become trendy simply by the fact of the number, but I don’t think there’s a trend. Our range showcases much of this; there are diverse lines; we haven’t dropped any lines; we have customers who like all these lines and each of them are very different.

 

Q: What sort of future do you see for Jaeger-LeCoultre in Sri Lanka?

A: Promising for sure. Like I said we have here the local base of customers; that criterion is already met. And this country is in a developing stage of tourism and when I travel around the world I hear more and more people talk about Sri Lanka as a destination. 

Our future plans for the Sri Lankan market is to work hand in hand with Chatham explore opportunities and consolidate our presence. When something makes sense we study it and we go for it. I will put it as a traditional point of sales evolution, you can open, renovate, relocate or you can open additional doors. I would say there’s no real limitation; everything is possible. We are currently present in a multi brand boutique; maybe we will open a Jaeger-LeCoultre boutique in Colombo. Again there is no particular path set by us for any market; it’s basically the evolution of the market which decides the way we advance in the market.

– Pix by Sameera Wijesinghe