During his student years he was very active in sports, mainly in skiing, as a member for several years of the Swiss University ski team. His fascination with sports would allow him during his business life to follow in the steps of his father and grandfather who in the very early days of the firm already developed time pieces for sports applications.
Mr. Heuer joined the family firm as a young engineer in 1958. A year later he started the first Heuer sales subsidiary in the United States, the Heuer Time Corporation, which still exists today as LVMH W & J USA. In 1962 he became majority shareholder of Ed. Heuer & Co. SA. Two years later the company acquired its largest competitor, the Leonidas Watch Co., and subsequently the company changed its name to Heuer-Leonidas SA.
As managing director of Heuer-Leonidas he was instrumental in pushing for the development of the world's first automatic chronograph which was launched on March 3rd, 1969. In that same year Mr. Heuer's company became one of the first non automotive sponsors of the Formula One racing circuit as the means to promote the Heuer brand on a world wide basis. In 1971 he started a very close and successful technical co-operation with Ferrari in Formula One, which lasted 9 years and sealed TAG Heuer's position in the high technology auto-racing field.
Having anticipated that the technological revolution of solid state electronics would totally change the world's watch industry, he was one of the very early entrants into electronic timekeeping and helped launch several of the world's first electronic timing instruments, such as:
* The Microtimer (1966), a low-cost portable timing instrument measuring to 1/1000th of a second
* The Microsplit 800 (1972), a handheld quartz stopwatch measuring to 1/100th of a second
* The Chronosplit (1975) first quartz chronograph measuring 1/100th of a second
* The ACIT (1976), an Automatic Car Identification and Timing System which applied the principle of putting a radio emitter on every Formula One car, to allow for precise timing, lap counting and car identification. This System, although in the meantime modified and permanently improved is basically still the one used today in Formula One timekeeping
* The Chronosplit Manhattan (1977), an electronic wrist chronograph with analog reading of the time of day and digital readout of the stopwatch function
In 1982 Mr. Heuer left the company as a result of a major restructuring that took place in the Swiss watch industry when Heuer-Leonidas SA was acquired by the Piaget group. Piaget resold the company in 1985 to the TAG Group (Techniques d'Avant-Garde) which renamed it TAG Heuer SA.
Mr. Heuer thereafter joined a Swiss management consulting firm where he became a partner. In addition to his consulting activity in 1983 he started to build a European marketing organisation for a Hong Kong based consumer electronics group called IDT (Integrated Display Technology Ltd). At the time this firm employed only about 200 people. Over the years he opened sales offices for the IDT Group in Germany, Switzerland, London, Paris, Milano and Madrid and was appointed Executive Director for Europe. The IDT Group which employs around 5'000 people is traded today publicly on the Hong Kong exchange.
After retiring as Executive Director for Europe in 2000, Mr. Heuer continued to be active in an advisory role and as a board member of the IDT International Group in Hong Kong until 2005.
Over the past years Mr. Heuer stayed in contact with the management team of TAG Heuer and has been instrumental in the preparation of its well known history book “Mastering Time” and the 150th anniversary of the brand commemorative art book 150years. In 1999 the LVMH Group acquired TAG Heuer and subsequently Mr. Heuer was appointed in 2001 Honorary Chairman of TAG Heuer with a special advisory role concerning the history and technological heritage of the company in addition to adding the benefit of his long experience in the watch industry.
Mr. Heuer has lived for over 40 years in Bern. He is married and has 3 adult children, a daughter and two sons, as well as six grandchildren.
