How coronavirus has changed luxury watchmaking at Vacheron Constantin – fewer partners, but stronger partnerships, says CEO Louis Ferla
Formerly at Cartier and Alfred Dunhill, industry veteran Ferla is confident that with just one watch fair this year – Watches & Wonders – instead of two, greater competition will spur his brand on to innovate and connect customers with new digital tools
The latest instalment in our On Work series of interviews with luxury CEOs. This month: Louis Ferla, CEO of Vacheron Constantin
There seems to be a significant focus on the ladies market for Watches & Wonders this year with the Traditionnelle Tourbillon, the Égérie and the Overseas? How do you see that segment of the market growing?
We are seeing women making choices for themselves more and more and wanting the best in fine watchmaking. It made a lot of sense for us to make a collection dedicated to the ladies. Ladies watches have been part of the DNA of Vacheron Constantin from as far back as the early 19th century. But, what was a bit of a discovery for me when I joined Vacheron was that in our current collection before we launched Égérie, we were focusing on the technicality and the tech complications for ladies watches and therefore most of them are traditional cases and men’s cases but in smaller sizes for ladies. We saw that we needed something purely dedicated to ladies in our collection, where we could have a very strong work on the aesthetic, so it’s more like a bijoux, but yet we put technical and complications in it. We are really looking at doing belle horlogerie or beautiful fine-watch making. This is clearly haute couture.
Our clients have essentially become friends of the brand and with the Covid-19 situation I see a sense of solidarity which is even greater than before, which I say is good
Has the Covid-19 situation changed how you’re going to approach the business in the coming two or three years?
I often say to our colleagues that everything we do should make sense for our clients. Yes, we all have one boss at the end and it’s the client. So contacting them when we launched novelties or contacting them when it’s Christmas, Lunar New Year or birthdays, this is the basic. What we need to do is to contact them when we have nothing to sell, just make sure that they’re OK and we keep in touch. Our clients have essentially become friends of the brand and with the Covid-19 situation I see a sense of solidarity which is even greater than before, which I say is good.
As for the business, we [have been] distributing our watches on a very selective network and over the years, have reduced the number of multi-brands that we have to ensure that we have very strong partnerships. So it means fewer partners, but stronger partnerships. And today we are more retail oriented to have a better environment and better quality interaction. [The pandemic] is pushing us to develop more digital tools both commercially and from a communication point of view, so we can continue to provide information to our clients. And the group has acquired new platforms such as Yoox Net-a-Porter in recent years.
What is your strategy for this year?
Usually we don’t launch a large quantity of new models; what we do launch are watches that are very, very well finished, in terms of complications, finishing and craftsmanship, and I think the trend for us is to push the boundaries of fine watchmaking from an aesthetic and technical point of view but also from innovations. That’s why we took the theme of L’Imaginaire because we want to push the boundaries of what we can imagine and come with timepieces which are well executed technically and aesthetically.