In a tough time for the watch industry, the CEO of Vacheron Constantin, Juan Carlos Torres, isn’t too worried. After all, his brand has managed to survive 261 years and counting, as he explains in this interview with WatchPro sister publication CEO Middle East.
At the beginning of the year, luxury brands were battening down the hatches on what they were expecting to be a bad year. With 2016 almost over, how has Vacheron Constantin fared?
This year hasn’t been the best. But it is in this sort of period that we need to stay very faithful to our values. Ultimately, I’m not afraid. Vacheron has gone through many crises, thousands of them. Think of the first World War, then the second. The quartz crisis, then this downturn and that downturn. And yet Vacheron has survived.
Vacheron Constantin is 261 years old. It’s a genuinely historical brand. However, it’s also a business, and you must produce a number of new watches every year without fail. How do you consistently create new products, but stay true to a brand like that? You can’t be old and new at the same time.
We are not in the fashion business; that spits out designs every six months – and all of them be radically different and new. We’re more like the car industry. When Mercedes-Benz puts out a new car, it’s taken at least seven years in development. That means they have to look far into the future. It’s the same at Vacheron, as we can’t produce watches in six months. The next product we launch – for example – will have spent over five years in development.
How do you predict that something will be successful five years down the line?
If I knew that, I would be richer than Warren Buffett. No, it’s not about making predictions and being right all the time. It’s about following your own path. Continuing to build the brand step-by-step, and adding innovation when you can. That’s far more important than being a trendsetter. No one should follow trends; they should try and create them.
So where does the process of creating a new watch begin? Does it come from looking at the archives, or does it come from your watchmakers wanting to build something brand new?
It comes from everywhere. The archives, the watchmakers, the creative department, even clients and store managers. Yesterday, I was with a prominent collector in Beirut. Years ago he told me about an idea he had for a new Vacheron watch. It was a good idea so we decided to build it. We’ve done specific product partnerships – most recently with watch blog Hodinkee – but the idea for the watch came from them. Some ideas come from a watchmaker; others come from ideas that I have. We even take ideas from different departments within the company or even big clients.
Are we going to see anything new in 2017?
Well, I can’t tell you much about that until January next year. But I can say that in 2017 we’re going to be concentrating on the concept of Astrology. And what we have coming is truly stunning, if I do say so myself.
I expect this guy is not riding the right horse. To refer the automotive industry might be useful but should happen in the right way. In this case he should have recognized that the car industry was speeding up in the last decade and has shortened development time for a new product tremendously down from 5 to now 2-3 years. If Mercedes, like Mr. Torres is thinking about, would still need at least 7 years they would have disappeared meanwhile. Hopefully this will not happen with Vacheron by working so snugly.