Interesting article/interview; thanks for posting it up.
I must say, while I appreciate Georges' honesty about his reasons for joining Breitling - "it was the chance to become a shareholder, pure and simple" - I think the romantic in me would've preferred an answer more along the lines of, "I've long loved the brand and I'm steeped in Breitling's long and rich history and I wanted to bring the brand back from the brink".
That said, it's obviously good that he's got a vested interest in the company being a success, and he's clearly listened (at least in a substantial part) to "one of our most prominent collectors" (so that'll be Fred then!) and been prepared to delve into the history books and take a lot of inspiration from that.I do personally think that care needs to be taken with making the brand too general as it'll then end up being akin to many other generalist brands out there, and a niche/USP is often hard to find and should be nurtured IMHO. But then what do I know!
I'm not the CEO of Breitling, and thus far I've been (for the most part at least) very impressed with the new releases since Georges took over... so he's clearly doing something right!
