Interview with Mr. Laurent
Ferrier.
Messrs. Laurent Ferrier and Olivier Muller
came to Japan to hold events for the owners and those who are interested
in the brand. I had a lucky opportunity to meet with Mr.
Laurent Ferrier himself for the first time and fairly long time to
discuss (via Mr. Muller's translation) his brand and himself.
Please note that the responses also include Mr. Muller's
comments.
Mr. Laurent Ferrier on
the left, with Mr. Olivier
Muller (CEO).
PPro: Thank you very much
for making time to meet with me at this time. Welcome to
Japan. Is this your first time
here?
Mr.
Ferrier ("LF"): No, I came here in 1984 for the 1000km Mount Fuji Grand
Championship at Fuji Speedway. There are many nice GT races in
Japan. So, this is the second trip to Japan in my
life. As with 30 years ago, very clean streets, polite, kind,
rational and sensible people, on-time and safe public transportation,
wonderful foods - no wonder many people love and admire this country and
it's culture. I would love to come here more often.
PPro: I will
come back to your race career later, but let me ask you first about your
career at Patek. What was your responsibilities at
Patek?
LF: I
worked for Patek for 37 years, having finished watchmaking school in
Geneva in 1968 (22 years old). For the first four (4) years, I
worked for the Movement Department - within which in the Prototyping
Group, and then moved on to other Group to be trained for the different
parts of the movement. Then I was involved in a special project
- to develop very precise QUARTZ watch for Boeing airplanes.
In 70s, Patek worked a lot on Quartz technology but the Quartz watch
development came to an end and Patek came back to entirely mechanical
watches. Then I moved on to the Technical Department which
dealt with "everything BUT the movement". Then I took a leave
for a short while for racing and when I came back, I worked for Product
Development Department. Back then, we did not have watch
designers. We did have some people working on the movement and
some people drawing the sketches,etc, but there was not a general
concept of "Product Development" to oversee the new product development
process. But as the collection of Patek grows, Mr. Stern
realized that it is necessary to better coordinate when launching new
products. So, I was assigned to set up such new department,
and in that project I worked closely with Mr. Stern (the
father). I have very fond memories working with Mr.
Stern. And I left Patek in 2008, at the age of 62.
PPro: Why did you leave
Patek? Did you already have a plan for your own brand when you
decided to leave?
LF: The reason for leaving is that basically any
watchmaker has a dream of one day making his own watch from A to Z.
Some actually do it, some just keep dreaming. Most watchmakers
do the job for the watches designed/ created by someone else everyday,
and at night s/he dreams that s/he can do better here and
there. In my case, I was happy at Patek. But, in
1979 when I finished Le Mans 24 hours at 3rd place, I gave Nautilus to
my co-driver (Mr. Francois Servanin), who happened to be the owner of
the team (3rd place is the best result among the privately held team)
and an entrepreneur and knew nothing about watches or luxury industry
has kept insisting I start my own brand with such knowledge,
etc.... Long story short, it took me 30 years to listen to him
and decide to do what he had kept saying. And, yes, he and
his family are now the main investor/ owner of Laurent
Ferrier. Also, if I may add, like I said, from Day 1 until Mr.
Muller here joined, we were all bunch of watchmakers and hands-off
investor - we started as a "pure" group of watch making
without any marketing or business plan. The new watch of our
own brand came first, above all. So, when the first watch was finished, we got all excited and celebrated but when we got back to ourselves, we all look others' face and said "well, does anyone know how to sell watches?". We didn't think of anything
else other than making what we wanted to make, including the name of the brand (!). Honestly, I didn't
even want my name on the dial first.
Of course, Mr. Philippe Stern reacted very positively
and
wished me good luck. We keep a good relationship with the
brand but
don't have any closer contact.
PPro: What is the
goal of Laurent Ferrier? What do you want to
accomplish? What do you envision?
LF: That is the most
difficult question simply. My vision as a watchmaker is to
make simple and clean design watches, but with innovations not relying
too much on what has been done in the past. In other words, we
will try to take good things of the past and adapt with the modern
technology, not trying to mimic everything. Establish Laurent
Ferrier as a really legitimate player in high-end Swiss made watch
making, with hand finishing of the movement, chronometric precision, and
real nice mix of products. Gallet Tourbillon which won the
Grand Prix is what I had been dreaming - clean and simple enamel dial in
YG case, just like the good old pocket watch, AND behind it is the
modern technology. Tourbillon is not new innovation at
all. It is just one tool to make the pocket watch more
accurate, thus just a part of the movement. That is why our
tourbillon is on the back or movement side. Now tourbillon is more common
and some think it like "fashion" and there are many tourbillon watches
with it on the dial side. It is simply not our idea or our watch is not for such people. But of course, we added innovation - the first double hair spring tourbillon to
try to average the torque as much as possible.
The brand identity is found on the dial -
Micro-Rotor's dial is definitely Laurent Ferrier, people
easily recognize.
From the perspective of business side, we already
have the plan of how to establish ourselves as the legitimate watch
brand. There are reasons why we introduced from Gallet Classic
Tourbillon and then after a few years Gallet Micro-Rotor.
People who are skeptical about us can enter from Micro-Rotor and then go
up to Tourbillon. We also have plan to introduce something in
between soon, and then higher complication than Gallet Tourbillon and
further above in the future. We do not rush. We are
already making break even this year only after two years of operation
since the launch of the first model. We cannot be a brand who
can make 2000 per year and we should not be. We are still on
the curve of growing, but we know how big is optimal and the cost
control based on the assumption that this entity last for a long time to
come. Our business model also prioritize
"continuity" - that is the best customer service. We are not
structured to too much rely on the "Name" person - in our case, me
(LF). We are structured and have plan to continue even after I
have passed away. One-man show or shop is not really for the
customers who buy our products in the long run. Patek, Lange, Franck Muller -
they all survived after the person or the heir whose name is the brand
name left the company. But, for now, I'm
still overseeing the product development and I still have
lots of new ideas
PPro: In doing watchmaking, what
is the "principle" that you always do or you never do?
LF: We never compromise
on the quality. One very important principle that we never
drop is that the watches, movements remain functional all the time - I
know it sounds very stupid thing to say, but the point is that we do not
take the risk to reach the technical audacity sacrificing the
reliability or durability. We would rather choose less
complicated design to make the more reliable and durable
watches. Our watches are for daily use.
PPro: Does your "principle"
above has anything to do with the delay of delivery of
Micro-Rotor?
LF: Yes, actually very much. First of all,
we realized that we were in rush - we realized that we should take a bit
more time between the Chapter 1 - Gallet Clasic Tourbillon, and Chapter
2 - Micro-Rotor. Micro-Rotor may seem less complicated and
even easier to make, but it is still hand finishing and the resource
required to make it is not as different as Gallet Classic
Tourbillon. So, with that price of Micro-Rotor, we had to sell
much more to make the product break even - in retrospect, that made us
rush a bit. And we also realized that we had underestimated
the technical audacity risk we took by applying the Natural Escapement
which not so many people implemented successfully. Maybe we
were too confident. We would not want to 1% risk that
something wouldn't work. So one day we decided that we prefer
to call customers/ retailers to apologize and explain the
delay. We are very aware that we are or will ever be never at
perfection. We never consider the product, even after the
launch, perfect or finished. Watchmakers and Technical
Department, headed by Christian, my son, always have close communication
whether there is any tiny problem in the movement or any idea to
improve it.
PPro:
Thank you very much, Mr. Ferrier and Mr. Muller for your time.
I believe all the stories I heard today will excite PPro readers as
well. Again, welcome to Japan, Mr. Ferrier, and hope you have a
great time here.
They are of course wearing the Micro-Rotor.
Through this interview, I felt
strong "differentiation" from "others" in terms of their "quality comes
first" philosophy and implementation as well as emphasis on the
continuity of the brand. Also, I was surprised to hear that
they are already making break even financially this year. Very
much looking forward to their "Chapter 3" at the next
Basel.
=========================================================================
Presentation
by Mr. Muller:
This is the key technology of Micro-Rotor. Similar
to Detent Escapement. Created long time ago, but even the
creator (Mr. Breguet) gave up after making only four (4), due to lack of
precision machinery to make precise parts, thus could not execute as
efficient operation as it was expected to
be.
==========================================================================
Special
thanks to:
Mr. Laurent Ferrier - Founder, Laurent
Ferrier
Mr. Olivier Muller - CEO, Laurent Ferrier
Mr.
Momoi - President, The Hour Glass Ginza
Mr. Hirota - Watch
jounalist, who explained the technical aspects in plain
Japanese
===========================================================================
Addendum
- I just learned that Laurent Ferrier now has the second Point Of Sales
in Japan - Kamine (pronounced ka-mi-nei) in Kobe, the major city in the
western part of Japan. This must show the enthusiasm and
potential they feel in this (smallish, in today's standard)
market.
===========================================================================
Thank
you!
Ken
This message has been edited by KIH on 2012-09-29 10:35:30 This message has been edited by AnthonyTsai on 2012-09-30 19:20:58 This message has been edited by MTF on 2012-10-03 20:44:34