Actu : Zenith Rediscovers Its Pioneering Spirit

Citation :

Zenith Rediscovers Its Pioneering Spirit

By NAZANIN LANKARANI

Published: February 25, 2013





PARIS — In October, Felix Baumgartner stepped from a balloon gondola built like a space capsule, 39 kilometers up in the sky, and plummeted to earth with a Zenith El Primero Stratos Flyback Striking 10th chronograph strapped to his wrist.




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Morgan Norman for Zenith

Felix Baumgartner has been a brand ambassador for Zenith since 2010.



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The 10th in the watch’s name refers to its ability to measure time in single tenths of a second — a useful attribute when time seems to be standing still.

Nine minutes and three seconds later, Mr. Baumgartner touched down in New Mexico, after establishing for himself and his watch the record of becoming the first person — and timepiece — to break the sound barrier in free fall. He had plunged the equivalent of 24 miles.

A high-risk proposition for both Mr. Baumgartner and Zenith, the feat was a spectacular illustration of Zenith’s pioneering spirit and celebrity ambassador marketing.

At 128,100 feet above the Earth, the height from which he jumped, temperatures can drop as low as minus 100 degrees Celsius (minus 148 Fahrenheit). To ensure that the watch would resist the extreme cold and loss of pressure when Mr. Baumgartner stepped out of his capsule, intensive tests were performed at Zenith’s manufacture in Le Locle, Switzerland.

“We tested the watch in conditions of weightlessness and in temperatures of minus 80 degrees Celsius” (minus 112 Fahrenheit), said Jean-Frédéric Dufour, the chief executive of Zenith, during a telephone interview from the factory.

Still, no particular modifications were made to the standard Stratos Striking 10th model that Zenith produces as an unlimited series and sells for a modest 8,100 Swiss francs, or $8,900.

“What is remarkable about this watch is that it is part of an ‘ordinary’ unlimited series,” Mr. Dufour said. “We did not limit the series, for fear of having too many frustrated clients.”

An inscription on the back of the watch, around an engraved portrait of Mr.Baumgartner in his space helmet, proclaims: “First watch to break the speed of sound.”

That claim may raise eyebrows among watch-wearing fighter pilots, former Concorde passengers and astronauts accustomed to re-entering the atmosphere at speeds fast enough to fry them alive. Still, stripped of the rhetoric, Mr. Baumgartner’s feat makes a good metaphor for Zenith’s own trajectory.

Founded in 1865, Zenith made the watch worn by Louis Blériot when he made the first flight across the English Channel in 1909.

In 1939, as Europe geared up for war, the French air force chose Zenith’s Montre d’Aéronef Type 20 for its aircraft instrument panels.

In 1969, Zenith introduced the world’s first automatic chronograph movement, its legendary El Primero caliber.

But in the late 1960s it lost focus and strategic long-term vision, and its reputation started to slip. Its acquisition by the luxury group LVMH Moët Hennessy-Louis Vuitton in 1999 did not immediately brake the fall.

“Zenith went from being a manufacture with a great reputation to a nonexistent brand,” Mr. Dufour said. “We lost a lot of terrain in 30 years.”

When Mr. Dufour was recruited from Chopard to take control of Zenith in 2009, in the trough of the global financial crisis, his challenge was to breathe new life into the company. “The crisis in 2009 hit us especially hard because at the time, Zenith products were flashy and expensive, and the market was unreceptive,” Mr. Dufour said.

Watch industry observers agree with Mr. Dufour’s blunt assessment.

“For some time, Zenith’s production was inconsistent with the brand’s DNA, the company was not adding to its historical patrimony and prices were artificially high,” said Felipe de Palma, co-founder of the watch reference and buying guide, The Watch Enthusiast, in a telephone interview from Madrid.

Since joining Zenith, Mr. Dufour has embarked on a reorganization of his teams and a communications program to turn things around.

“I started by studying the history of the brand to bring our production in line with Zenith’s heritage,” he said.

The choice of Mr. Baumgartner as an ambassador for the brand was part of his strategy to revive its aeronautical history.

“With Felix Baumgartner, we wanted to be on the same track as Blériot,” Mr. Dufour said.

To streamline the production, Mr. Dufour eliminated 850 models and purged old collections. He replaced them with 136 new models designed with cleaner, more classic looks.

Today, all of the collections produced by Zenith date from after 2009.

“The fact that so many collections were discontinued shows that when a poor concept lies behind a watch or a collection, the very survival of the brand is at risk,” Mr. de Palma said.

In 2011, Zenith embarked on an extensive renovation of its facilities. By 2015, the year of the brand’s 150th anniversary, it aims to have upgraded all 18 buildings that comprise its manufacture, one of the few remaining in Switzerland that produce their movements in-house.

“It has been a slow reconstruction for Zenith,” said Mr. Dufour. “It helps to have a solid shareholder like LVMH, but we are responsible for ourselves,” he added: “We do not get blank checks.”

Mr. Dufour said Zenith today was a new entity. “For the past four years, we have regularly posted 30 percent growth,” he added.

Since its founding, Zenith has registered more than 300 patents and earned 2,333 watchmaking awards, including more than 1,500 first-place awards for precision.

In 2011, Mr. Dufour was named “Man of the Year” by the journalists of the specialist watch industry media, less than two years after he took the helm of Zenith.

In line with his strategy, new designs combine technical innovation with a stylistic identity strongly rooted in the brand’s heritage.

Two new timepieces presented last month at Geneva, the Academy Christophe Colomb Hurricane and the Captain Winsor Annual Calendar, encapsulated its combination of renewed technical prowess and brand history.

“For the Hurricane, we took inspiration from marine chronometry,” Mr. Dufour said.

The defining element of the watch is a fusée-chain transmission system that ensures a constant and stable driving force for the duration of the timepiece’s power reserve. Marketed as a limited edition of 25 pieces, it is priced at 254,000 francs.

The Captain Winsor Annual Calendar was created in collaboration with Ludwig Oeschlin, curator of the Musée International d’Horlogerie based in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

For this timepiece, Mr. Oeschlin, whose credits include astronomical timepieces developed for the Swiss watch manufacturer Ulysse Nardin, came up with an annual calendar mechanism that adjusts itself for 31-day and 30-day months, and requires a single annual adjustment on March 1, to account for the short month of February.

“It may seem like a simple idea but it is extremely complicated to have a watch adjust its date every month,” Mr. Dufour said.

The Captain Winsor Annual Calendar, sold exclusively in Zenith stores, is priced at 9,400 francs in stainless steel and 20,200 francs in rose gold.

“It is easier said than done, but we are back with credibility and legitimacy,” Mr. Dufour said.

The Watch Enthusiast gave it the highest rating of any Zenith watch: “The Captain Winsor has a very competitive price, an annual calendar that is easy to read and, with its El Primero movement, is both a real bargain and something serious on your wrist,” Mr. de Palma said.

The next time Mr. Baumgartner jumps into thin air with a Zenith, he should perhaps consider completing the exploit by landing on a trampoline.

New-york Times http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/fashion/26iht-acaw-zenith26.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0