A tribute for British GQ magazine by Nick Foulkes<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, one of the UK\u2019s most respected watch writers, gives a personal insight into the life and times of the great man that he knew for many decades. \u201cJean-Claude Biver is more than a successful Swiss watch boss, he is famous beyond the world of watches as an inspirational leader, a genuine star, a celebrity in a country that does not do celebrity. Biver\u2019s boisterous confidence, his enthusiasm and his energy make him seem like a natural phenomenon,\u201d he writes, adding: \u201cIn an industry that is increasingly a career choice rather than the vocation it once was, Biver is a Pharos of individuality, a triumph of character over the tyranny of the focus group, a passionate personal communicator in the age of Powerpoint. It is impossible to imagine the watch industry over the last decade without his commanding physical and emotional presence.\u201d<\/p>\nMr Biver\u2019s first job in the watch industry was a sales role at Audemars Piguet in 1974, a traditional independent watchmaker that was yet to enjoy the explosive success of the Royal Oak that has put it on a trajectory to top $1 billion in sales this year. He worked his way up to become European sales manager within four years, and also learned the business from the workshop upwards.<\/p>\n
He moved to Omega in 1979 and became the youngest deputy director the company had ever had, but he spent only two years with the brand before making the decision to strike out on his own.<\/p>\n
The quartz revolution had decimated the traditional Swiss watch industry, laying waste to brands that could trace their ancestry back to the 19th century.<\/p>\n
Blancpain was a prime example; founded in 1735, yet Mr Biver was able to buy the business for just CHF 22,000. Selling mechanical watches was like pushing water uphill at the time, but Mr Biver counter-intuitively turned Blancpain\u2019s vulnerability into its strength. \u201cSince 1735 there has never been a quartz Blancpain watch. And there never will be,\u201d his message to the market asserted.<\/p>\n
The audacity of Mr Biver\u2019s marketing concealed the precariousness of Blancpain at the time. The company, according to Mr Foulkes, was making fewer than 100 watches per year in the early 1980s. The business might have become another casualty of the quartz crisis were it not for the assistance of British watch business supremo Marcus Margulies who, admired what the watchmaker was doing, and perhaps the chutzpah of Mr Biver.<\/p>\n
He asked to buy 50 Blancpains in gold in 1983 \u2014 requiring a doubling of the brand\u2019s production \u2014 and there was another problem. Blancpain didn\u2019t have enough money to buy the gold for the cases. When Mr Margulies agreed to pay an advance for the watches, Blancpain was able to manufacture them and took a great leap forward.<\/p>\n
Within a decade, Blancpain was sold to SMH, which later became the Swatch Group, for CHF 60 million. The newly minted millionaire Mr Biver\u2019s reputation was sealed.<\/p>\n
Rather than put his feet up, the 44-year old asked SMH\u2019s owner Nicolas Hayek for a job, and was given the top job at Omega in 1993, another brand that had not emerged in great health from the quartz crisis.<\/p>\n
Mr Biver had a gift for doing three things well at the same time. He energised the workforce, rationalised a bloated range of products, many of which were unloved by customers and within the company, while at the same time staging a series of marketing stunts that grabbed headlines in watch publications and, importantly, mainstream lifestyle media. By the turn of the millennium, sales at Omega had trebled.<\/p>\n
Mr Biver took a sabbatical from the industry before reappearing in 2004 at Hublot, which he joined as chief executive. The brand was sold to LVMH in 2008 and Mr Biver became CEO of stablemate TAG Heuer in 2014 and later head of the watchmaking division that houses TAG Heuer, Hublot and Zenith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As Jean-Claude Biver bows out of day-to-day control at LVMH’s watchmaking division, WatchPro looks back at the star watchmaker’s career<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":34552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false},"categories":[7039,6,4,2],"tags":[452,420,56],"newspack_lstngs_evt":[],"newspack_lstngs_gen":[],"newspack_lstngs_mkt":[],"newspack_lstngs_plc":[],"acf":[],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"WATCHPRO","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43821"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43821"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_evt","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_evt?post=43821"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_gen","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_gen?post=43821"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_mkt","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_mkt?post=43821"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_plc","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_plc?post=43821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}