Breitling Interview on AskMen.com

http://www.askmen.com/fashion/trends_600/617_breitling-watches-interview.html


The time that the watchmakers have been dreading has arrived: ETA, the Swatch subsidiary that produces movements for most of the industry’s manufacturers, is cutting off their supply. ETA will make its last shipment of movement blanks -- customizable movements -- toward the end of 2010. Thereafter, watch producers that had relied on ETA (Tag Heuer, Panerai, IWC, and pretty much every other watch brand you know) will have to find another source for movement blanks -- or will have produce them themselves.

Breitling is one company that has chosen the latter route. The Swiss watch producer revealed their first in-house movement, the Caliber B01, at Basel last year. The Caliber B01 will be available in the Navitimer model as of Spring 2011 (it is currently available in the Chronomat B01).

Breitling’s marketing director, Ben Balmer, has been with the company for nearly 20 years. He even comes from the same hometown: Biel, Switzerland. AskMen sat down with Ben to discuss the ETA’s movement moratorium, the difference between Swiss and Japanese watches and why men love timepieces.

What was the first watch that you owned?

Ben Balmer: My first watch was… do I have to tell you? (laughs) My first watch was a Tissot and the bracelet was a bracelet that we at Breitling decided, a year and a half ago, to produce in one of our own watches. It was a design from the '60s, and it was basically the inspiration for our Air Racer bracelet, a metal bracelet. The bracelet on my Tissot was like that. I was really proud when we launched that bracelet again after so many years.

And afterward I had a Breitling, when I was 18. Because I was living in Biel and Terry Schneider, who basically runs Breitling today and whose family owns Breitling, was my brother’s best friend. Terry was working at the time at Breitling, even if he went somewhere else to learn about watchmaking. And I wore the watch because he was a friend, and because I simply liked the watches.

Biel is a city that’s basically all about watches. That’s where Rolex has its movement factories. When I was a kid the city was much bigger, and full of people, because everybody was working in the watch industry. Then in the mid-‘70s, electronic watches came along and suddenly mechanical watches were out. So a lot of people lost their jobs.


The Swiss watch industry has since nicely recovered -- and a lot of people credit the Swatch Group for reviving it.



BB: Yeah, Swatch definitely played a very important role. It was not the only one, but definitely the most powerful.

Is the Swatch Group giving the Swiss industry another boost today, by limiting the distribution of their movements and forcing watchmakers to produce their own?

In a way what you say is true. And the best proof of it is Breitling. We were a very good partner to ETA, which was the original Swatch subsidiary that manufactured movements. And we had been a very good partner for many years. We would not buy fully assembled movements. We would buy mechanical movements from ETA, but in parts -- meaning the hundreds of parts that make up a movement. We would bring these parts to our factory and assemble the movements using them. This allowed us, until now, to assemble to our own specifications and to make them perform better.

This arrangement is now coming to an end… for Breitling and for everyone else too. Starting at the end of 2010, no one will be delivered movements in components. You will still be able to buy movements from ETA, but only complete movements, assembled ones.

To us, buying complete movements is not the right solution. We believe that there should be added value to the movement. So that forced us, six years ago now, to start planning the production of our own movements. So that’s what we did!

Last year in Basel we debuted our own movement: the Breitling Caliber B01. The Caliber B01 is a mechanical chronograph movement, and its quality and performance are outstanding. I don’t think we’re exaggerating when we say it is the best mechanical chronograph movement in the industry. And it’s a chronograph, not a standard movement with just three hands. A chronograph is much more difficult to manufacture.

A normal movement is designed to tell the time: the hour, the minute, the second, and the date. A chronograph is a complication that we integrate into that base movement. And that requires a lot more components, and is thus much more challenging.


So, at the end of the day, this change was a positive one for Breitling…

BB: Yes, it’s good… but we were very happy to work the way we did with ETA! Because we were able to assemble movements to our own specifications, to do the little changes that we owned the secrets to, and we had highly performing movements.

We still do, however, have these ETA components, and we will be able to assemble these movements for several more years. And they are extremely reliable. The proof is that every one is a certified chronometer. No other brand can say that. The testing for chronometer certification is fairly severe: it takes place over multiple days and subjects the watch to different temperatures at different positions. It’s not an easy test! Most companies just want to have a few watch models certified; they’ll send hundreds of models to the official chronometer testing institute, and a selection of them – let’s say 20 -- will come back as having passed the test. So then they have 20 chronometers.

Breitling is the only brand that certifies entire collection. This makes it very difficult for us, as every movement we produce must become a chronometer movement. If it’s not a chronometer, we can’t do anything with it. So we have to make sure that our movements are going to go into the testing and come out certified.


Why do airplane pilots tend to favor Breitling watches?

BB: Somehow the Breitling watch is part of being a pilot. And one of the rewards of being a pilot is that one day you get to have a Breitling.

Early in the 20th century, before World War II, Breitling became the suppliers to world aviation. In 1936, we signed a contract with the Royal Air Force to supply not only chronographs for the pilots, but also the cockpit clocks. In a way, manufacturing a cockpit clock is easier because it’s a bigger movement, and bigger movements are easier to manufacture and normally more reliable. But in cockpits at that time, the temperature and vibration factors were much more important than they are today. And because these cockpit clocks were essential to navigating the aircraft, they had to be super-reliable. This reliability was very important to us, and providing it consistently is how we built our reputation.

Look, for instance, at the Breitling Navitimer watch with the slide rule. Back in the ‘50s, that slide rule was really used by pilots to calculate things like the rate of descent, of ascent, average consumption, these kinds of things. Which they could only calculate because they had a slide rule on their wrists.

In a cockpit today you have a lot of electronics and you don’t really need a lot of the functions that you find in our watches. Pilots today don’t need a slide rule; they have other means of making the calculations, very sophisticated navigation systems. But we still have a lot of pilots who wear our watches… despite the fact that they are not really cheap! But they really trust them, because they know they are reliable.


We asked Ben: Why are Swiss watches better than Japanese watches?

BB: They make excellent products. But they’re not really comparable to most of the Swiss watches when it comes to mechanical movements.

Because of the difference in quality, or because of the difference in cachet?

BB: Because of the cachet. The Japanese products are very high quality; there’s no question about that. They produce excellent watches with excellent functions… the quality is there. But there is no cachet. Let’s face it.

A few years ago we had the Casio G-Shock, which was a fashion watch, but otherwise you never hear about Japanese watches. With a Swiss watch, you know what’s behind it. You know where it comes from. And maybe I’m saying this because I’m Swiss, and I love my country and I know the people who make the watches. And I know how much effort they put into making a watch. They are obsessed with precision and quality, and it is reflected in the watches. So there’s more to a Swiss watch than to a Japanese watch. But again, that’s just my opinion.


We’ve seen some watches explode into popularity over the last few years, like the Hublot Big Bang and the Royal Oak. Would Breitling want to enjoy that kind of popularity with a model?

BB: It would be good for business! But at the same time, we’re not into fashion. Sometimes we’ll accommodate trends; for instance, we know that when there is a trend for black watches, people expect to see one from us. But we’re not the kind of company to jump on any trend that comes along. We try to stay away from that. We’re a bit afraid of trendiness in watches, because trends will come and go. The best thing that we can do is create great models that become hot sellers.


Why do men like watches so much?

BB: It’s basically the only jewelry a man can wear. I hate rings. I hate necklaces. The watch is basically it.

Of course, there is status to the watch a man wears too. Some people say that the first things you look at on a man are his watch and his shoes. I guess I would notice a man’s shoes if they were really ugly, or really dirty. But the watch is a sure sign of who a person is.

Nice read...desagree with the subtle and a bit condescended tone, referring to Japanese watches... Grand Seiko put out a product that IMHO, blows away anything Breitling has ever made, let's see how their prices behave with the new in-house movement.
I do like some of their models.......