»  bg thoughts

I am obsessed with watches. I love the design, the technology in the movements and just about everything else about them. While perusing one of my favorite watch blogs I came across this fascinating article about the man who reinvented Blancpain by emphasizing what they didn’t do.

Blancpain was a watchmaker that was started as a family operation in 1735, one of the very first Swiss watchmakers. They were considered to be some of the most complicated and precisely made watches available and they were even worn by Jacque Cousteau in 1953 when he filmed “The World of Silence”. By 1970 however, the more accurate Japanese quartz movement watches had taken over the watch world and Blancpain was left behind and closed its doors.
 
In 1984 a man by the name of Jaune-Claude Biver bought the rights to the Blancpain name for $19,000 and started reimaging the company. Considering the company had gone out of business for not producing quartz watches, you might think it strange for that to be the cornerstone of the brand but that is exactly what Biver did. He coined the phrase “Since 1735 there has never been a quartz Blancpain watch. And there never will be.” The combination of design and history appealed to luxury watch buyers all over the world and he later sold the brand to the Swatch group for $43,000,000! Talk about a return on investment.

The bottom line is that sometimes what a brand needs isn’t a new feature or gimmick, but to take a stand.