While brands and institutions have no trouble capturing their attention, they sometimes rely on a polished image that doesn’t reflect the reality of the solitary watchmaker at his workbench. This disconnect is difficult to correct for schools engaged in daily interaction with young people.
We receive 170 applications for 36 spots." When the Geneva Watchmaking School is asked whether it has launched a specific outreach campaign targeting Gen Z, the immediate response is: "We have far too many appli-cants. We have even had to change the rules."
The school will no longer accept any students who are not from Geneva or enrolled full-time.
So is Gen Z a generation glued to the couch and hooked on TikTok?
Perhaps, but not in watchmaking. The industry's institutions (schools, trade shows and committees) are very active and young people are particularly receptive. Since Watches and Wonders opened to the general public, 25% of tickets have been sold to those under 25, while 10,000 young people participated in the "In the City" program and 350 students were invited to the fair. The numbers don't lie.
Reconnecting the virtual and the real
There is, however, a gap in the communication aimed at Gen Z. On one hand there are the brands, which post images of a luxury industry, prestigious ambassadors and extraordinary watches on social media, making it all about tuxedos and red carpets. On the other is reality on the ground, years of study, CNC machines, the vagaries of subcontracting and industrial production. What Gen Z sees on Instagram rarely matches the reality of the trade. This is the key challenge for watchmaking institutions: to show young people not watchmaking fantasy 2.0, but instead its day-to-day reality.
Witness the Hazemann and Monnin duo (respectively born in 1999 and 2000) who have just won the second edition of the Louis Vuitton Watch Prize for Independent Creatives: “When you’re young, you don’t know the pitfalls of watchmaking.” Starting with the difficulty of the studies. “It takes seven years to become a fully qualified watchmaker. The school in Morteau where we studied only accepts 15 people per cohort and only ten of those in our class made it through to the final two years. Among those ten students, only six completed their official ‘school watch’. Young people don’t realize how difficult it is. You have to be good at math, physics and history on both theoretical and practical levels. If you don’t get an average grade of 16 or 17 out of 20 for the entire year, there’s no point in applying within the watch industry”, says the pair who are now benefiting from LVMH’s mentorship to grow their business.
Unusually, Hazemann & Monnin had already won the Young Talent Award created by F.P. Journe in 2015, which has a strict age limit of 30 for applicants.
The role of schools and trade shows
The whole challenge of communicating with Gen Z is therefore to help them grasp the true reality of the watch industry. To achieve this, the École Technique de la Vallée de Joux has two programs. First, the essential Open Days. The institution’s director Frédéric Schütz explains with a smile that they “had to replace the old khaki-green workbenches with slightly sexier furniture, so that young people can see themselves there.” Next come classroom visits: “our apprentice watchmakers go out to meet young people in secondary schools.
They explain that not all of them will become stars like Philippe Dufour.” A message that the young people take home because, as Valérie Ursenbacher, Head of the Chair in Watch Design at HEAD – Genève, points out: “at that age, between 15 and 18, talking to young people isn’t enough. You also have to talk to their parents.”
Blind sport
Communication and dialog are therefore at the heart of the process of attracting Gen Z. Organizations are aware of the fact that you don’t approach a future watchmaker the same way you would a future trader. Every watchmaking institution is basing its Gen Z communication on this premise.
The Comité Colbert, a trade association representing 96 French luxury maisons including Cartier, Chanel, Hermès and Van Cleef & Arpels is working toward this goal. Its fifth edition of “Les Deux Mains du Luxe” drew 35,000 visitors in Paris and across the country, with two days dedicated to 12 to 18-year-olds, “because the luxury sector has 10,000 job openings this year alone, a figure set to double by 2030”, as the Committee’s press release notes. Its TikTok account launched in 2023 has nearly 70,000 followers and notably provides a chance to see Emmanuel Breguet discussing the souscription watch; or scenes from the daily life of high school student and Cartier watchmaking apprentice Arsène. Brands and schools are present – but where are the suppliers?
Aside from the Lab provided by Watches and Wonders, which showcases the industry’s R&D to the general public, this area remains the neglected poor cousin of communication efforts targeting Gen Z. However, things are starting to change. Alexandre Catton, director of the EPHJ trade show, notes that subcontracting “interests young people. Microtech fields are professions of the future, driving innovation and offering job prospects. Already, over 7% of our visitors are between 15 and 24 years old.” Similarly,
Positive Coating, a specialist in PVD and DLC technologies, has “recently been approached by influencers to create content”, as the firm based in La Chaux-de-Fonds explains. A fact that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. This is the key difference between “becoming a watchmaker” and “working in the watch industry”. A subtle semantic distinction that highlights the urgency of adopting a B2B approach: the next major focus of communication efforts targeting Gen Z.
