Andrea casa edit

Q&A: Andrea Casa of Tonino Lamborghini

Tonino Lamborghini Group celebrates its 35th anniversary this year. Fresh from exhibiting its watches at this year’s Baselworld, the brand’s Chief Operating Officer for License Product Development, Mr. Andrea Casa, spoke to WatchPro about the past, present and future of the brand.

WP: How did Baselworld go for Tonino Lamborghini this year?

Casa: Despite the general slowdown of the watch industry, Baselworld still represents for Tonino Lamborghini an excellent sales event: our main task was to consolidate actual markets, like the GCC, and to revamp our commercial presence in Asia. Both tasks have been fully accomplished. Thanks to the mix of luxury positing and highly appreciated pricing/product quality, we’ve considerably increased our sales in UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, opened new markets like the Korean one and consolidated the Chinese market with a new distribution partner.

Baselworld has also been the occasion to announce a great partnership with the Korean company Dasan Network for the development of branded IT wearable products like smart bands, smartphones and accessories, smart watches, home&office IoT (Internet of Things) devices. The target is the new sector of premium IT lifestyle devices, called “Techno-luxury”, that the Italian company has entered into last year with the launch of the 88Tauri premium smartphone.

 WP: What is the unique selling point of Tonino Lamborghini watches?

Casa: Our selling point is actually our special DNA: a mixture of iconic design conceived by a worldwide renowned family with more than 60 years of heritage in mechanical industry and technical expertise of the best players in each segment we operate. We have been carefully selecting our partners since our foundation more than 35 years ago. For watches, for example, we’ve mixed our three decades of history in watchmaking with the excellent expertise of the Swiss company Alro.

WP: What role do you personally play in the company?

Casa: I’m the COO (Chief Operating officer) for the business development of the Tonino Lamborghini luxury collections, direct retail channels, licenses assessments & coordination, marketing plans and commercial relationship with licensees, distributors and investors.

WP: What inspiration is used for the design of the watches themselves?

Casa: Our long lasting and most iconic collection is certainly the so-called Spyder: shield shaped, like the brand logo, and with racing details, it is certainly the most recognisable and best selling collection among all of our lines.

But as a heritage-inspired brand, for many of our watch models we take inspiration from all the mechanical and automotive items of the Tonino Lamborghini family tradition. For example, the pistons head cover of the luxury sports cars’ engines was the inspiration for our new and astonishing 2016 line called “Centenary Engine”: this watch has a mechanical UT 6498-2 movement and visible balance wheel. Furthermore the crown with the letter “L” of the Lamborghini surname engraved has a special cover with scissors open, where the etched “1916” number aims at remembering the birth year of Tonino’s father, Ferruccio Lamborghini.

Tonino

WP: What plans does the brand have for the UK market?

Casa: The UK market is a world of its own; the multicultural market environment makes it one of the most interesting European market as well as one the hardest to enter. We’ve so far concentrated our commercial efforts outside Europe on the most interesting luxury markets for our brand (like the Middle East and Asia), but in the next years we’re planning to focus more of our attention on the European market. We aim to open direct retail multi-products shops in the most important European cities and strengthen our online marketing efforts on this market to develop the online sales of our Lamborghini.it e-boutique.

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