According to the latest Morgan Stanley report on the Swiss watch industry, A. Lange & Söhne is one of the bright stars at parent company Richemont – and indeed in watchmaking generally. Alongside stablemates Vacheron Constantin and Van Cleef & Arpels, A. Lange & Söhne was one of the few watchmakers to gain market share last year, with Morgan Stanley estimating turnover at the Glashütte house of CHF270m. This places Lange right in the middle, at number 25, among the top 50 Swiss watch brands.
Asked about this enviable position, CEO Wilhelm Schmid – who embodies Lange’s signature understated, modest style – takes a measured view. “We go from day to day. We have a clear strategy but you know how it is…life gets in the way. Markets get in your way. Some countries invade other countries. So, you have to adjust and adapt all the time. That for me is more important than anything else,” he says.
What is perhaps most enviable is how the brand has remained consistent over so many decades – Schmid notes that the watchmaker has always been profitable – which builds trust over time. “We are pretty authentic. We never lost ourselves,” he continues. “In the good days we don't milk the brand. And in the tough days, we don't take shortcuts. I think if you do that over an extended period of time, you gain that sort of trustworthiness… We give the security that we around tomorrow.”
In a watchmaking landscape where independents are gaining ground over big brands, and both old and new collectors are enticed – cue indie names like F.P. Journe or H. Moser & Cie – Lange sits in a kind of “sweet spot” between a global and independent brand.
“We have the financial firepower to survive basically any crisis. But we are a lot smaller than the mainstream, industrialised brands that we compete with,” says Schmid. “But we also offer what the independents offer in a way. We are bigger than any independent and smaller than any global brand. It means that we can stay in contact with our customers globally.”
Sitting at the high-end, luxury end of watchmaking, the starting price for an A. Lange & Söhne watch is around CHF25,000, while its key price range sits between CHF80,000-150,000, says Schmid, who cities popular models from all the chronographs to the 1815 and Zeitwerk collections. The company produces about 5,000 watches a year, a figure that Schmid suggests will be slightly lower going forward. This is in response to growing demand for more complicated pieces that ultimately take longer to produce. There are waitlists for its most complicated watches, such as the Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon Honeygold “Lumen” (CHF650,000), which launched at Watches and Wonders in April.
In recent years, the company has notably concentrated on revealing only one novelty during Watches and Wonders, a more focused and streamlined strategy that has been welcomed by press and collectors alike. In the past, the brand could have easily launched six new novelties – like many brands still do – where “the one novelty becomes the enemy of the other,” says Schmid. “I think it's a lot better now. The rhythm is more digestible. It gives more contact points.” A. Lange & Söhne’s distribution has likewise been streamlined: there are now 58 points of sale, a number that has fallen in recent years (and nearly all are monobrand stores).
Schmid was speaking to World Tempus at the Concours of Elegance luxury car event in London, which it has sponsored for three years (it is halfway through its running contract). This year, for the first time, the house launched two new watches at the event, which commemorate 25 years of its iconic Datograph. Schmid said that he envisioned more products to be launched over the course of the year (“More and more, we link our rhythm with our events,” he said). But, he was quick to add that it has to make sense too – and done in the Lange way, which is evidently focused on consistency and craftsmanship.
“Remember what I said about authenticity?” Schmid asks. “We don't want to become a marketing company – so we have to make sure that what we do is very clear.”
