Bvlgari is nominated in four categories at this year’s Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève. Did you expect this?
These four nominations are a source of real satisfaction because they reflect Bvlgari’s DNA. They recognize our watchmaking expertise while also highlighting our creativity in jewelry. The Octo Finissimo 37 mm in satin-polished titanium was selected in the Time Only category. After twelve years of development in 40 mm, with various complications, the Finissimo saga is reinventing itself in 37 mm with a new caliber, a new case and a new dial. Being nominated in this category is already a crowning achievement for those twelve years of history.
I am equally proud of the selection of three more jewelry-oriented pieces: the Serpenti Aeterna, a stylized version of our iconic model, in the new High Jewelry category, the pavé-set Tubogas Manchette in the Jewelry category, and the lacquer-adorned Serpenti Misterosi in the Artistic Crafts category. It is a range that clearly illustrates the richness of our collections.
The nominations prove that our vision for the brand is understood and recognized, which is the most important thing. That said, I am still looking forward to November.
To what extent can we say that Bvlgari has a special relationship with Switzerland?
To a very large extent, and this is not just a figure of speech: this year marks the 120th anniversary of our St. Moritz boutique, one of the oldest Bvlgari addresses in the world. As for the Geneva boutique, which dates back to 1951, it is going to be transformed into a flagship and become one of the most beautiful addresses on the planet by this winter.
It turns out that the family established itself in Switzerland very early on: we are among the luxury houses with one of the longest histories in Switzerland, while others only established themselves there forty or fifty years later. This connection is no coincidence: if our watchmaking business has developed so significantly over the past twenty-five years, it is also because the birthplace of watchmaking has embraced Bvlgari. It is a relationship that has been nurtured in both directions for a long time.
You also made headlines for Bvlgari at the Geneva Watch Days; your collaboration with Vianney Halter certainly stood out…
This collaboration was born from Bvlgari’s DNA, from this creativity that knows no limits, which is one of the Maison’s strengths. Our designer Fabrizio Buonamassa has appreciated Vianney Halter’s retro-futuristic universe for years, and particularly the Antiqua from the late 1990s. The desire to collaborate was already there when I met Vianney at GWD two years ago. I immediately found the project extraordinary.
The creation illustrates both our creative capabilities and the watchmaking legitimacy we have built over the past twenty-five years. The design combines the world of the Antiqua with that of the Finissimo: we find the highly distinctive aesthetic of the Antiqua dials in a case less than 8 mm thick, with the overall height remaining below 10 mm.
What I like is that Bvlgari itself created and produced this piece, working with Vianney on his own technical approach. We are producing 30 pieces in titanium and 15 in rose gold. While the collaboration is rooted in the Maison’s DNA, it also involves taking a risk: entrusting our design to other hands. I appreciate that, as well as the opportunity to work with someone who has such strong legitimacy in the industry. The collaboration was a welcome addition to Geneva Watch Days, where collectors expect surprises.
The story told by your GWD novelties seems to revolve around titanium. Is that correct?
Yes. Today, Bvlgari has acquired real legitimacy, and that allows us to address broader themes, not just an individual model, but who we are. Revisiting titanium is exactly what we wanted to do for GWD: the material is demanding and difficult to work with, but it offers extraordinary lightness and ease of decoration. We are now exploring it across several lines, starting with the Vianney Halter, available in both gold and titanium.
We are, of course, exploring it on the Finissimo 37, presented with a sandblasted finish at Watches & Wonders and now in a satin-polished finish, in a style closer to steel. We are then exploring it through pure creativity: Fabrizio, who is as passionate about automobiles as he is about watchmaking, came up with the idea of camouflaging the 40 mm Finissimo, inspired by “dazzle” camouflage, which disguises car prototypes—a play on a form that has become iconic, achieved through in-house expertise in laser processing on titanium.
Finally, we wanted to extend this story with the Bvlgari Aluminium, launched in the late 1990s and still highly popular with a loyal audience: making it in titanium rather than aluminum makes it, in my view, even more consistent with the rest of the brand’s production. And that is the quality I would like to conclude with: consistency.
This is a complicated year for many players in the watch industry, including Bvlgari?
The market is demanding, but things are going well. At the moment, the major challenge is to restore growth in volume in the men’s watch category. On our side, we are doing relatively well, limiting the decline in value to around -1% to -2%. For the division, the real challenge remains increasing volume, which has declined by more than 50% over the past few decades: how do we attract new customers and demonstrate our added value?
At Bvlgari, it works because the brand is strong, and our jewelry heritage helps us enormously. Jewelry is doing well and has broad appeal, including among men. Major houses such as Bvlgari, Cartier and Tiffany have overtaken local jewelers thanks to their icons: Serpenti, Return to Tiffany and Love. The segment is proving highly resilient, unlike pure watchmaking, and Bvlgari sits at the intersection of these two worlds. On the one hand, Serpenti, in all its versions, offers a real growth driver; on the other, our watchmaking expertise, embodied by the Finissimo, maintains our strength even in a difficult market: this year, the 37 mm has been so successful that all our indicators are in the green.
So are watchmaking and jewelry two worlds that are destined to converge?
As far as Bvlgari is concerned, they are indeed two worlds that I would like to see converge more and more. And in my view, this will happen through women’s manufacture movements. We gave an example of this two years ago with the mechanical Serpenti Seduttori, equipped with the BVL 100 caliber: all the finesse of the Finissimo combined with the miniaturization of a women’s movement… a huge success! In my eyes, this watch sums up what Bvlgari has built.
Over the past two years, we have observed a real transfer of customers: women who were regular jewelry clients have started to take an interest in watchmaking, moving through jewelry watches before developing an interest in mechanical timepieces. Across the brand as a whole, female customers remain by far the majority, accounting for around three-quarters of our clientele. The same is true of watchmaking, even though the men’s lines still have significant room for growth. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the evolution of women’s watches is only just beginning.
That is why I am very fond of the Lady Solo Tempo caliber that powers the Serpenti Seduttori: it combines Roman jewelry heritage with a level of watchmaking expertise that few Maisons possess, as small mechanical calibers have almost disappeared since the quartz crisis. Bvlgari anticipated this trend: the real challenge is to continue innovating technically, as we have done for the past fifteen years, while increasingly bringing watchmaking and jewelry together.
Laura Burdese, the new CEO of the Bvlgari Group since July 1, seemed very comfortable during GWD. How are you experiencing this transition with her?
Indeed, after transforming Bvlgari over the course of 12 years, Jean-Christophe Babin handed the reins over to Laura Burdese, while remaining Chairman of the Board of Directors. What pleases us is that this appointment represents continuity: Laura has been working with us for nearly five years, two of them as second-in-command, and she is fully familiar with the strategic discussions surrounding watchmaking. In addition, she spent a large part of her career at the Swatch Group, so she knows the industry well.
I see this transition as a continuation: we will remain faithful to what Bvlgari has accomplished in recent years, and Laura will embody the Maison in her own way, with a vision that will naturally evolve from Jean-Christophe’s. On my side, it has been two years since I took over the Watches division. Coming from another sector, although I had already been part of the brand for a decade, it was important to me to move forward step by step, listening before speaking. Today, I feel clear about the direction to take for Bvlgari watchmaking and ready to express it more fully.
