A Swiss Watchmaker With Deep Ties to India Is Back From the Dead — Again

Luxury watchmaker Favre Leuba plans to unveil greater than two dozen timepieces later this yr, priced as a lot as 24,000 Swiss francs ($26,489), as a part of a model relaunch that seeks to increase the Swiss pioneer’s attraction past its majority Indian shopper base.

Watchmaker Abraham Favre began a workshop in Switzerland within the 18th century, laying the muse of a enterprise that may later tie-up with the Leuba household, giving beginning to the Favre-Leuba model. The corporate, which as soon as owned the long-lasting Jaeger-LeCoultre, was one of many prime innovators of the Swiss watch business earlier than the quartz disaster of the Nineteen Seventies and ‘80s pressured it to cross via a number of palms.

India’s Tata conglomerate acquired the dormant Favre Leuba model in late 2011 and launched new watches in India and different abroad markets. However their design aesthetic and advertising and marketing didn’t win over a big following. It exchanged palms in a personal transaction once more final yr, giving Indian watch retailer Ethos Ltd. and its mum or dad KDDL Ltd. management of Favre Leuba.

Favre Leuba stopped manufacturing about three years in the past and a few of these fashions are offered solely in India by Ethos.

Grenchen-based Favre Leuba will launch 26 new fashions at Geneva Watch Days in August, Chairman Patrik Paul Hoffmann informed Bloomberg Information in an interview on the outskirts of New Delhi.

The brand new assortment is designed round three themes — air, sea and land — and utilises three actions, that are the mechanical guts of the watch. “The manufacturing of the actions is happening, the manufacturing of instances is happening,” stated Hoffmann, who beforehand served as CEO of Ulysse Nardin SA.

Favre Leuba is spending 5 million Swiss francs initially for manufacturing and advertising and marketing of its new lineup, with plans to possible double that funding over the subsequent yr, Hoffman stated, sitting on the rooftop terrace of Ethos headquarters.

“We begin from zero,” Hoffman defined of the plan to refresh the watch agency’s whole catalog by drawing closely from the model’s wealthy historical past and including evolutionary touches to its basic timepieces. Within the Sixties, Favre Leuba developed one of many world’s first dive watches, named the Deep Blue, in addition to an expedition mannequin, Bivouac, that might measure altitude and air stress.

Favre Leuba plans to ultimately transfer meeting and motion constructing in-house, Hoffman stated. For now, it’s utilizing Manufacture la Joux-Perret SA and Chronode SA actions and collaborating with veteran designers corresponding to Antoine Tschumi, who has helped create timepieces for Czapek & Cie and Louis Moinet, and Laurent Auberson, who’s labored for Zenith, Chronoswiss and Germany’s Lehmann Uhren.

The brand new watches will begin at round 3,000 Swiss francs and go as excessive as 24,000 Swiss francs for a tourbillion in a chrome steel case. The US, Canada and Caribbean shall be key markets for the model, which additionally expects to promote within the Center East and components of Asia, together with Japan, stated Hoffmann.

Favre Leuba can even leverage its deep-rooted historical past in India — it was the primary Swiss timekeeper to enter the South Asian nation in 1865. Hoffman stated he plans to rope in Bollywood stars and cricketers for partnerships and advertising and marketing in India, the place the corporate will open its first three boutiques and likewise promote via Ethos shops.

Favre Leuba goals to make 4,000 watches within the first yr and ultimately needs to have the ability to ramp up manufacturing to an annual 100,000 items over a decade, in response to Hoffman.

So, who’s the common Favre Leuba buyer? It’s somebody who might be sporting a Rolex or a Panerai, however who’d perceive Favre Leuba’s historical past and appreciates the subtleness of its new fashions, stated Hoffmann. “It’s not anyone who says I would like this as a result of everyone else has it.”

By Sankalp Phartiyal

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