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A little over 2 years ago I posted my 10,000th post as a personal plea to Breitling. It generated a lot of discussion, and while one or two accusations about my motives were thrown about, I think that there was also a lot of meaningful debate about where Breitling was and where it was headed. Was it self-indulgence, maybe but it wasn’t any attempt at self-promotion.
I managed to get from 10 – 25k faster than I got from 0 to 10k and that is in large part because this forum has become more active as it has grown in size. Now it is clearly one of the significant watch fora on the web, and it’s not just Breitling content. For my 25,000th post I should probably take a leaf out of Driver8’s book and just stick something in the Off Topic section – but that’s not me! I am going to indulge myself a little more with another very personal post. I have no agenda behind this post; it’s just my personal thoughts on things. I get criticized for not sharing more about myself so if this comes across as excessively indulgent, well, be careful what you ask for. If that doesn’t sound like your sort of thing then turn back now!
I’m going to start with the same statement that I started the main content of my 10,000th post with:
“I love Breitling. They have the largest representation of any brand in my collection, and will likely stay that way.”
However, so many of the trends that I bemoaned 2 years ago have continued and accelerated. The addiction to DLC continues, the high production run LEs continue, the pervasive use of rubber continues, the refusal to embrace new materials continues, the refusal to introduce new complications continues.
Is this simply that the brand is headed in a different direction than I would like and we are ‘growing apart’? I don’t think so; I think that it’s more complex than that. There are certainly a number of designs that are aimed at a younger demographic – sportier pieces with bolder colours and rubber, and I understand that the youth market is important to a brand like Breitling – get them young and you can potentially keep them for life. I can only assume that this strategy is working because Breitling insists on producing more and more of them, although I’m not sure exactly where this market is, because it doesn’t seem to be represented here in any great numbers.
But what is the brand’s overall direction? The identifiable ranges have disappeared and we now have three broad categories with outliers – the classic Navitimers, the ‘one watch’ or perhaps ‘all round watch’ Galactics / Chronomats, and the sportier elements of the Avenger and SuperOcean ranges. I’m not clear whether the Colt is supposed to be a general purpose watch like the Galactics / Chronomat or a sporty watch, and I’m not sure where the TransOcean fits. If a brand is going to introduce watches like the TransOcean Chronograph and the SuperOcean II Red at pretty much the same time then I think that it needs to be able to clearly convey to its customer base what its identifiable ranges are and where they are taking them. Right now the whole thing just seems a completely random set of releases without any clear strategic direction.
Added to that is the decision to replace the iconic bakelite boxes with little more than thick cardboard. Maybe the bakelite became hard or expensive to obtain, maybe the inherent brittleness was a problem, and they had to find an alternative solution. I can accept that, but the selection of the replacement is nothing short of pathetic. It says nothing about the brand, it does nothing to suggest that the contents are high quality, and it reeks of designing down to a (very low) budget.
Thomas (Alien) recently suggested that he got the sense from Breitling execs that they are aware of the concerns and perhaps agree with some of them, I hope so, because I want to see Breitling thrive. The mid-year announcements seem to support this view – the blue dial Navitimer with a blue date wheel is a nice touch – only an LE for now but I have to assume that a solid caseback regular edition is coming. The day-date TO is a little plain without guilloché, but still a nice, timeless design. Not enough there yet to stop the criticism that is going to come in this post, but maybe some early signs of a light at the end of the tunnel.
To start a theme that I am going to come back to several times in this post, the issue for me is not the disparity in designs per se, but rather the way that they are communicated. As an independent company that doesn’t have the corporate diversity of the conglomerate owned brands it’s important to diversify your product line. You can’t be reliant on one or two SKUs without exposing yourself to significant market risk and so I understand the appeal of a broader scope of offerings. Even a brand like Movado talks openly about two different type of customers – people loyal to their iconic designs and people who are prepared to be a little bolder and follow Movado into new territory.
In the case of Movado there is a lot more evidence of ‘brand DNA’ than with Breitling, although that may partially be because there isn’t the same diversity of design in the first place, but the biggest difference in my mind is the willingness to talk about the way that they are evolving their designs. Movado is acknowledging that they are trying to expand their customer base with innovative designs that broaden their appeal without rejecting the customers that have made them successful.
I suspect that Breitling are attempting to do something very similar – bringing out sportier, more youthful models to appeal to a new customer while offering more iconic designs for their existing loyal customer base. Are some (perhaps most) of those youthful models ‘misses’, debatable, but maybe, but the bigger issue is simply that Breitling utterly fails to talk to its customer base. Imagine if Breitling had stood up at Basel in any of the previous four shows and said something like “we’re consciously diversifying our offerings to recognize the different types of Breitling customer. This year we’re focusing on the young, fashion conscious, sporty buyer who strives to excel at everything they do and wants a timepiece that can meet those demanding standards. Next year we will be bringing our in house movement in new variants to the Navitimer range and an exciting new offering with a modern take on classic Breitling styling that will appeal to customers for whom the Breitling mantra of instruments for professionals reflects their own personal ethos”.
Now OK, I’ve just revealed that I have no marketing talent, but you get the idea – Breitling seems to think that talking to the media and their customer base at large about some of their plans is unnecessary. This leads to an increased perception of arrogance and a growing belief that they are out of touch with the market. The same watches with better communication would lead to a much better perception of the brand in my opinion, even if no opinions of individual watches changed.
Breitling seems to be confident that they are ready to deal with the apparently inevitable shortage of ETA movements and with a lengthy relationship with Sellita as well as the ability to produce ETA designs in house that’s understandable. There’s no final decision on Swatch Group’s request to reduce supply, but the reduction has been extended to the end of 2013 so it looks like it’s going to be allowed (and in my opinion it should be – It’s a free market after all). I’m still a little concerned about Breitling’s plans to handle the shortage of hairsprings, and while that has been less well publicised I think that it will be hairsprings and not ébauches that will form the bigger challenge for the industry – and Breitling.
As I type this the 2011 production numbers (or at least COSC numbers which amounts to the same thing for Breitling) aren’t available, but based on 2010 numbers Breitling’s bounce back from the economic disaster of 2008 / 2009 has been much slower than many brands and that has to be cause for concern in an independent organization that may not have the resilience of a major conglomerate.
So where does that leave Breitling – well they are a private company so I can only speculate, but I still see evidence of a company that seems desperate to generate revenue today regardless of the impact on the brand image in the future. They clearly can still produce iconic designs – Navitimer 01 and TransOcean for example, and while the Unitime may be a ‘miss’, it’s still an attempt at a modernised classic. The rest of the multi-colour, rubber adorned, DLC’d pieces have no discernible strategy behind them and just scream of revenue through any means and the consequences be damned. The result appears to be the ‘downmarketing’ of the brand in many eyes.
I see further evidence of an organisation that doesn’t have the capital to invest in ways that allow it to compete with other major manufactures and is forced into a design focused, short term approach. The relatively slow evolution of the in house movement – still essentially just one calibre with variations simply being a GMT variant (a very simple addition) and a manual wind version (an even simpler change). To me this seems at odds with a brand that spent so much time developing the B01 movement – when launched the claim was around 8 years of development; and who said from day 1 that the movement would be available in both 3,6,9 and 6, 9, 12 variants (so where’s the 6, 9, 12?). Maybe this is a conscious decision not to further evolve the in house offering yet, but I can’t think of any other manufacture that has been so slow on the uptake at evolving a movement.
It’s even more surprising given the apparent long term commitment to becoming vertically integrated. The 2009 ‘Breitling The Book’ publication had a big spread on the dial development and production process and I assume that the implication is that Breitling produces its own dials (most companies would tell us, Breitling apparently feels that it’s none of our business). I have no idea how much case making is done in house, if any, but I have to assume that there are at least plans to bring that in as well. We know that movement production is increasingly becoming vertically integrated, not just for the in house pieces but also for ETA base movements, so that should have made it easier to introduce a wider range of base calibers.
Breitling has also not attempted to push the envelope with its movements. While many of their competitors have been experimenting with different rates, different escapement designs, different low friction materials, etc in order to set themselves apart from the competition Breitling is still touting an instant date change as a key feature of its movement – a useful feature, but not ground breaking. Maybe they are experimenting in secret, but again, why keep it secret – companies like UN that have been pushing the boundaries of material science for years were getting tremendous coverage for that work long before it made it into a production timepiece.
Tag Heuer got a lot of grief in the last quarter century for being nothing more than a marketing concept – a brand that outsourced everything and just resold someone else’s work. They have managed to turn that around in the last decade, and while you can’t outrun a stigma that quickly, they have established a reputation for developing mechanical pieces that show true innovation – successfully commercializing the belt driven V4 (eventually) and then demonstrating that they learned from those mistakes with much quicker 1/100th and 1/1000th of a second chronograph commercial offerings and a prototype 1/2000th of a second chronograph with a completely new escapements. Oh, and they also experimented with magnets instead of a traditional escapement – all since Breitling announced the B01. The difference may be nothing more than the fact that Tag has the financial resources to invest in research and to hire the brightest and best, but the contrast is stark.
Maybe it’s also money, or the lack of it, that has led to a consistent refusal to embrace modern materials. When Breitling experienced consistent issues with titanium – particularly stripped threads on models with integrated middle cases (making repairs expensive) their response was not to move to grade 5 titanium instead of grade 2, it was to cut back on titanium completely until the new Bentley Superlight that uses a different case design. If grade 5 titanium is too much for Breitling then I guess that it’s no surprise that composites and more exotic metals are still a foreign concept to them. The continued commitment to DLC limited editions and rubber in various colours seems to be all of the material variation that Breitling is prepared to embrace.
The one thing that Breitling has continued to develop is its pricelist. All Swiss watch companies have shown an immunity to the economic reality that has gripped much of the world, leveraging the rapidly expanding Chinese market (and to a lesser extent other developing Asian markets) that is consuming as much production as these brands can produce. Breitling has been no exception from a price perspective, and of course with attempts at broadly consistent global pricing the prices have increased throughout the world. The Swiss franc was part of that for a while, but that ended 18 months ago.
Where Breitling seems at odds with other brands is that it doesn’t appear as though their multi-coloured, less understated designs are a natural fit for the high demand Chinese market. The 2011 COSC numbers really will be revealing here, but if they still show a failure to return to pre-recession numbers then Breitling really will seem to be in trouble with high prices, polarizing designs and inventory that the market is rejecting. Ironically that may make them more resilient to an economic slowdown in China because of less reliance on the market, but they need to get to that point first. On the other hand, the numbers for 2011 may show exceptional results and justify the recent decisions that Breitling has made.
Heavy discounting continues to be something that Breitling tolerates. They reduced dealer margin a few points to try and reduce discounts, and it worked to an extent, and every now and then they clamp down on one or two ADs who push things too far. However, it doesn’t seem to be a committed effort, and there is still clearly broad tolerance for the grey market – just look at the number of pieces that are available – from CostCo to Amazon as well as the more traditional grey channels.
As I have said before, Breitling could very easily (and cheaply) clamp down on the practice of selling to grey market sellers by buying a few pieces themselves and penalizing the AD that sold the piece originally – they just don’t have any interest in doing it because they still get their money and sales volume. They clearly also don’t care about fakes. To the best of my knowledge they have made no attempt to leverage eBay’s VeRO program designed to assist companies in protecting their trademarks, and have done nothing to try to add ‘security’ indicators to their watches as a way to identify a genuine piece. I know that such measures are temporary because the fakers catch up, but would it hurt them to try? While it’s testament to the efforts of the dedicated members in the fake section of this forum, it’s also sad that this community has been responsible for stopping the sale of far more fakes than Breitling itself.
The other thing that I find surprising about Breitling is its refusal to acknowledge its failures. No company is perfect - when Zenith recognized that they had taken their brand in a direction that was too far from their core roots they stepped up and bought pieces back from their ADs. It cost a fortune, but it sent a message – the Defy experiment is over and we are re-launching ourselves – and it worked. Breitling’s response is to cancel models without announcement and leave ADs to carry the bag – you don’t have to look too far to find Flying Bs at ADs that aren’t shifting below dealer cost – and most of those are now due for a first service.
Perhaps Breitling’s biggest issue though is its relationship with its customers. Breitling has some incredible ADs who go all out to connect with customers and present the brand in a great light, and often the regional distributors are there at the AD’s side – look at what happens at the air shows in the UK and US with hospitality tents. However, the corporation itself seems disdainful of its customers. They seem to have no desire to connect with them, they have no concept that the customer may be able to help them develop the brand, they just ignore them completely (not strictly true I guess as they don’t ignore BreitlingSource, they get their lawyers to send the owner nasty letters every now and then).
Maybe some of the money spent sponsoring jet packs and jet planes could be spent on a strategy to connect with customers through factory sponsored events, a more proactive web presence, etc – it couldn’t hurt! The same concept seems to be permeating at least some of the regional distributors. I have made no secret of my personal disdain for the Canadian distributor (Grigoros) who are an embarrassment and a joke in every single corner of the Canadian watch retail industry, but we are also hearing a lot more negative stories about BUSA, especially regarding customer service, and that’s a major concern. I don’t know if it’s bad training, lowering of hiring standards or simply that a larger forum here is resulting in more stories coming to light, but unfortunately the bad stories tend to stick and reflect on the people who do work extremely hard to give the best possible customer service.
I do like the direction that Breitling is taking with boutiques, obviously some consumers won’t like the lack of discounts, but better training, better selection and better access to services is a good sign, and I’ll repeat what I have said before – I would like to see some kind of AD accreditation program so that non boutique ADs can still reach a fundamental level of knowledge. Walk into any La Swiss in Canada and many Tourneau’s in the US and be prepared to deal with a shocking lack of knowledge – a generalised statement, but one that will resonate and is a major issue for any brand, especially one that makes so little effort to connect with its customers directly. Maybe Breitling can combine the two concepts of accreditation and boutiques to create in store boutiques where it doesn’t make sense to open a dedicated store.
I suggested in my 10,000th post that I would like to see an increase in haute horlogerie pieces and it was one of the comments that received the most criticism – people didn’t want to pay extra for their pieces to fund development of ultra-high end watches and I understand that perspective. However, I still feel that Breitling needs to do more on the watchmaking side to demonstrate that they are a serious player in the manufacture space. I spoke earlier about the lack of innovation, and that can easily be extended to complications.
To be taken seriously now manufactures need to be prepared to demonstrate high end capabilities, if only in small run pieces, but if Breitling doesn’t want to (or can’t afford to) go down that path then at least differentiate in some way from the competition. They’ve done that with high end quartz, but they need to do it on the mechanical side. They have so many models where the only difference is the (often polarizing) case design, the movements are effectively identical with variation being defined by the subdial layout. Give us power reserves, retrogrades, anything that is a little bit different.
Well that’s a lot of meandering complaints without a huge amount of structure – symptomatic of being written over a couple of weeks, so what the heck do I want? Well, I don’t expect Breitling to care about my opinions, but if nothing else I do hope that they start listening more to customers as a group. Just because they are a private company that is not accountable to public shareholders doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be building connections with their customers and understanding what they want, in fact if Breitling are being successful in drawing youth to the brand with recent models then it becomes even more important that you connect with that youthful element using communication mediums that the youth market embraces. To my mind the list of ‘must dos’ is:
- Bring in some strong external management with credibility in the watch industry and the ability to inject new ideas. Family control works well for Patek Philippe, but Breitling are not PP.
- Rationalise the offerings and make it clearer to prospective customers exactly what each range is saying – the target market, the lifestyle statements, etc, because I’m pretty sure that no one understands it right now.
- Offer pieces that are credible for the function that they are designed for. You introduce dive watches that are supported by an extreme diver as an ambassador, and yet those pieces fail to meet the ISO standard for being a dive watch. This is not difficult to achieve, and sacrificing functionality for design is not the mark of a serious producer.
- Give us focus and evolution, help us understand how Breitling is growing as a brand. Some companies will do that by focusing on a range each year and having their Basel / SIHH announcements concentrate on that range. Breitling right now feels like it is a much more scattered organization that is without direction.
- Expand in house calibres, or perhaps more accurately launch the second base calibre that must be in development.
- Be more open about what is going on with the company – we don’t have a right to know about the financials, but why be so secretive about the relationship with Sellita? Tell us what your plans are for ensuring a supply of hairsprings, we’re interested and there’s no harm in sharing that assuming that you have a contract in place (and if you don’t then there are bigger problems).
- Change your process for developing and approving marketing copy. It sucks, large. End of discussion.
- Give us value for money. People will pay a higher price if they feel that they are getting something substantive for it, but people will compare Breitling with brands at the same price point and that doesn’t always come out well for Breitling. That also doesn’t mean that you can’t also give entry level pieces at lower price points, that doesn’t devalue the brand in any way (unless you make them hideous, eliminate the mechanical options and give them an iconic name like Colt).
- Correct your mistakes, people will forget them soon enough, don’t stubbornly stick to bad ideas out of some misplaced sense of having to avoid changing direction. The best companies make mistakes, but what makes them the best is the way that they handle them.
- Be prepared to experiment with different materials. Breitling’s not going to be a brand that makes dials out of straw (please), and there are others doing that, but not every case has to be SS or precious metal. DLC was a good idea – but it got old some time ago. Some of the more recent examples have been better executed (BlackBird), but it’s time to move on to something else – something more innovative.
- Finally, and biggest of all, become more open as a brand. Create a dialogue with your customer base, talk to them about your plans for model ranges, explain how new models fit into the market space, describe the type of customer who buys these models, give us an insight into the concepts that you are working on. Not only will it get you more and better media coverage (true journalism instead of advertorial), it will help your customers – past, present and future, to connect with you and to become more engaged in the brand. I know that Breitling doesn’t have its own version of Jean Claude Biver (more’s the pity), but that doesn’t mean that the brand can’t do more than it is right now. Break down the wall that is perceived to exist and start talking to your consumers – both sides will benefit.
I could go on, but that’s probably enough, and 15,000 posts ago this would have been where I would have stopped. This time I am going to go a little bit further and talk a little bit about BreitlingSource. I have now been a part of this community for a little over 5 years and in that time it has changed and evolved a tremendous amount. It’s now a much larger and much more active community than I ever thought possible, and I spend more time on here than I ever thought I would.
I’m not going to start calling out individual members that make this site so great, it would take far too long, and the truth is that everyone makes this site what it is and keeps me coming back for more. Sure it has its moments, and a few ‘characters’, but that’s life. Admin has done an amazing job with this site and I wonder whether he would have believed that it would have got this big in only about 5 1/2 years.
Thank you for putting up with me for 5 years and allowing me to be an active member of the community. Thank you also for tolerating the posts (usually) in good spirits. I’ll continue to be ornery and cantankerous, but I’ll also try to give the best information and advice that I can and try and limit the screw-ups to less than ten a day!
So there you go, lots more material for debate and doubtless a few opportunities to tell me that I’m an idiot. I doubt that the discussion that follows this post will have any influence on Breitling, but I hope that they at least take notice of this community, because while it may be more of a general watch community than ever, it is Breitling that brought people here, and Breitling is a brand that members cared about enough at some point to register and contribute. Hopefully the company will recognise that there is a lot of passion and belief in the brand here and at least consider the sentiments as it moves forward.
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