Interview with Mario Peserico, CEO of Eberhard & Co.

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Interview with Mario Peserico, CEO of Eberhard & Co. - Eberhard & Co.
3 minutes read
WorldTempus spoke to the CEO of Eberhard & Co. on the eve of the brand’s 130th anniversary celebrations.

What does the success of the Eberhard & Co. Scafograf model mean for the brand?

We weren’t expecting it. It was a great surprise and we are very pleased with the prize. On the other hand, the watch has already sold very well. We presented it at Baselworld, it has been on the market since June and we have already had to start a second production run. Next year we will have another new product in the Scafograf line. The GPHG is very important because it gives us notoriety and prestige. The Scafograf costs 2,500 Swiss francs and the average price of the preselected watches in its category was 180,000! So it’s important that a watch that is so attractively priced can also win.

Do you think the fact that the watch has a clear identity and that it fits clearly in the category was a help in the GPHG?

Yes, absolutely. If there is any doubt about whether a watch belongs in a particular category, particularly for a less well-known brand like Eberhard & Co., then I think it can make a big difference.

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Tell us more about your plans for the new association between Eberhard & Co. and the Guide Michelin.

The Guide Michelin is a global reference in gastronomy. It is the only one with a global distribution. There are several national guides that are similar, but the Guide Michelin is the one that makes the difference. We have always followed gastronomy because man has a passion for cars, watches and food. We already have associations in the automobile world, so it was logical to get involved in gastronomy. We already did joint communication with the Guide Michelin in Italy and partly in Switzerland but the idea is that this becomes a long-term partnership. The link is the passion that a customer has for one side or the other. We need to communicate where our target customer is. So we will do this very elegantly with the Guide Michelin, which fits perfectly with our target.

There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding Baselworld 2017. Will you be there?

Yes, we are taking the location formerly occupied by Girard-Perregaux in Hall 1.0. We have to review our stand construction a little bit, for example changing the entrance, but we will be there, back in Hall 1.0 as we had been for 65 years before the recent remodelling.

What can we expect from Eberhard & Co. in 2017?

The presentation of the Guide Michelin 2017 in November was our first opportunity to announce the communication we will be doing around our 130th anniversary. It will be a year full of interesting news in terms of products (we will have some new Chrono4 models, for example) and a number of activities for the anniversary, plus a commemorative book.

eberhard-history

We have 130 years of uninterrupted history. Even in the more difficult years of the quart crisis, the company never stopped. We will have some major revival watches and we can see that the brand is even doing well at auction. People are looking for something different and we are seeing watches with estimates that have jumped from couple of thousand Swiss francs to tens of thousands. We aim to talk about this as well.

Do you have a collection of vintage models?

We have a collection of split-seconds chronographs that I think would be the envy of many other brands because we have around 30 different types of split-second chronograph model. We also have a lot of other watches. Unfortunately, we don’t (yet) have a physical place to show them off. But they will be an important part of our anniversary celebrations.

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