Accessible haute horlogerie?

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Accessible haute horlogerie? - Montblanc
5 minutes read
Jérôme Lambert has only been in post at Montblanc six months, but already he’s making his mark, using SIHH 2014 to launch a new collection he commissioned, and with it a daring new strategy

Jérôme Lambert is sitting at the head of a large black boardroom table, which must seat 20-odd people, but which today is host to just him, a couple of his trusted lieutenants, and me. Behind him, the wall is dominated by a vast, rather lurid painting by Luxemburgish artist Michel Majerus. Like every other artwork in and around this building, it’s heavily influenced by the Montblanc logo.

It is, I must admit, a bit strange seeing Lambert here at Montblanc’s HQ, tucked away on a typically bland industrial estate in Hamburg. It’s less than 12 months since I last spoke with him, and then we were in Le Sentier in Switzerland’s snowy Jura Mountains. And we were talking about Jaeger-LeCoultre.

Lambert’s move 1,000km to the north to take up the reins at Montblanc was a big one. In 11 years as chief executive of Jaeger-LeCoultre he helped treble it in size, transforming the company from a bit-part player into one of the movers and shakers of fine watchmaking. But it was, in his words, ‘mission accomplished’ in Le Sentier, and time for a new challenge.

His new task is to propel Montblanc into the future, a mission for which his impressive watch CV is going to come in handy. At the moment, Montblanc’s watch division makes up 25 per cent of the company’s total sales. Last year it made a significant contribution to the six per cent jump reported in Montblanc’s total sales, which weighed in at a healthy €766m.

 

Montblanc-Jerome-Lambert

Of late, Montblanc’s watch offering has been spearheaded by the charming Nicolas Rieussec collection of monopusher chronographs and its sportier entry-level family, the Timewalker. Montre Montblanc SA began making watches in 1997 when its Le Locle manufacture opened, and in 2006, Montblanc’s parent company Richemont bought it Minerva, an old-school watch manufacture where a crack team of watchmakers produce a tiny handful of pieces every year – by hand.

Combined, Montblanc’s watchmaking activities amount to around 80,000 pieces a year – no small number for a brand that’s still known first and foremost as a maker of luxury pens, or writing instruments, as it calls them.

What then is Lambert planning to do with his new project? ‘We have to rediscover some of our pioneering spirit,’ he says. ‘We have a good balance with our three main activities (writing instruments, watches and leather goods), and we still have good potential within these activities, particularly with the two new ones where we have a tiny market share.’ 

That he sees watches and leather goods as ‘new’ is indicative of Lambert’s ambitions. Montblanc entered the luxury goods fray in 1926, and in many people’s eyes, the brand’s watches already compete with those made by companies that have been in the game far, far longer, a case made stronger by pieces such as the wonderfully imaginative horological landmarks Timewriter and Timewriter II.

He’s already initiated the first part of his plans for Montblanc’s watch division. At SIHH next week, Montblanc is introducing a number of new pieces that will, in Lambert’s words, ‘make fine watchmaking more open’.

He’s animated when talking about how the pricing of complicated watches has soared over the last decade (a trend Jaeger-LeCoultre bucked under his leadership, it should be remembered), and says he wants to bring fine watchmaking back into the reach of consumers who’ve been priced out of the market.

Backing that claim up are two pieces in particular, both of which feature in the new Meisterstück Heritage collection. The steel-cased perpetual calendar, which is powered by a Dubois Dépraz calibre, will retail for €10,000, while a gold monopusher chronograph made in Villeret will leave the nest for €27,000, which is a remarkably low price for a watch that’s made from the ground up entirely by hand. Note the round numbers too – no cloak and dagger, here.
 

Montblanc-Villeret-Minerva-manufacture

Lambert says Villeret (the name Montblanc now uses for Minerva) surprised him. ‘There are 50 people there and they make 50 watches a year,’ he says. ‘Tiny production. And they do movements in a way nobody else does anymore. The watchmaker makes a watch part by part. You see an escapement made by two or three people. At Jaeger-LeCoultre and Lange (Lambert was also chairman of the Glashütte brand for four years before joining Montblanc), we were making escapements with 180 people.

‘It was like thinking you know something, and then your eyes are opened and you see something new,’ he continues. ‘I visited Villeret while I was still at Jaeger-LeCoultre and I went back to Le Sentier and said to some of the team, “If you want to find out what the purest expression, the dream of watchmaking is, go to Villeret and you will see it.” It’s the privilege of very few to be able to maintain that kind of process.’

Lambert plans to leverage the expertise at Villeret and to extrapolate some of the rare skills found there in order to extend Montblanc’s collection of grandes complications and offer them at prices that, at the very least, will make some of the company’s competitors sit up and take notice. Long-term he also intends to bring movement production in-house. ‘More and more, you will see movement construction and modules developed by our own team,’ he says.

This year’s new Meisterstück Heritage collection could prove a turning point in the brand’s fortunes. ‘We have an ambition to share our passion for fine watchmaking,’ he says.

Montblanc’s Villeret pieces will now carry a diamond at 6 o’clock, cut into the shape of the Montblanc logo, a covert sign of the production process behind the watch. ‘We’ve not done that before – it underlines the fact there’s something special in the watch, that it’s made by hand,’ he says.

Elsewhere, the new collection includes the Villeret 1858 ExoTourbillon Rattrapante, another stunning example of the horological creativity and ingenuity the brand has as its disposal. It features a large balance positioned outside the tourbillon’s rotating cage, a chronograph with split-seconds function, and a three-dimensional regulator dial in gold and grand feu enamel.
 

Montblanc-exotourbillon-rattrapante

Other highlights are the Star Twin Moonphase, which shows the phases of the moon in both the northern and southern hemispheres, and the Timewalker Extreme Chronograph DLC, which has a natty rubber-cum-leather strap that is apparently resistant to abrasions, water and – get this – fire.

All good pieces, but what will live long in the memory this year is Montblanc’s new strategy. First we had accessible luxury, and now it appears Montblanc has given us ‘accessible haute horlogerie’. An even greater oxymoron it might be, but one that just might be here to stay.

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