Jean-Claude Biver is a talented salesman. At Hublot, a watchmaker that he has run since 2004, sales are down by only 15% this year—a considerably better performance than Switzerland’s luxury-watch business as a whole, which has seen sales slump by about 30%. Hublot’s sales increased more than fivefold between 2004 and 2007, a record that enticed LVMH, a luxury-goods conglomerate, to buy the firm last year. This case study describes the three approaches he has taken to crafting a unique value proposition in this market, or, as he puts in, "selling the irrational to the rational."

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3. A. Patek Philippe: $200,000
B. SNT 006 Seiko Men’s Watch on Leather Strap: $205.50
C. Blancpain Watch: $1,000,000
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5. “Keeping inventories tight is a strategy Mr Biver refined in 1981 after he and a friend
bought the rights to the name Blancpain—all that was left of a firm that had once
supplied watches to divers in the American navy but had gone out of business in the
1970s. Two things attracted him to the brand: it claimed to be Switzerland’s oldest
watchmaker and it had missed out on the technological revolution of quartz timers
powered by batteries.
Mr Biver decided to turn this anachronism into a strength. At the time the Swiss
watch i d t h d b
t h industry had been i d li f 15 years as A i di it l watches selling f
in decline for Asian digital t h lli for
$20 displaced Swiss ones costing ten times as much. Even Rolex, the undisputed
champion of Swiss watchmakers, eventually relented and started adding electronics
to its timepieces.
Mr Biver developed a new, backward-looking slogan for the firm: “Since 1735 there
has never been a quartz Blancpain watch. And there never will be.” It turned out to
be an industry-changing move. Last year mechanical watches accounted for 70% of
move
the value of Swiss watch exports. A decade after restarting Blancpain, Mr Biver sold
it for SFr60m ($43m) to the Swatch Group, having initially paid SFr22,000.”
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6. Additional Background Information On Blancpain Watches:
“Million dollar watch sold in Guernsey
A local jewelers broke a record in June 2009 when they sold the world's most
expensive "non-jewelled" watch.
The 1735 watch was produced by the world's oldest watch makers, Blancpain, and
took 24 years to produce from the original concept in 1985.
The watch consists of more than 740 parts, all of which were handmade, and took a
single watchmaker a year to assemble. Most of the parts are so small they can only
be manipulated with the aid of a microscope.
Some parts of the watch took 80 hours to engrave
On top of this the watch features six "complications" which Martin Search of Ray
and Scott Jewellers said were "complicated pieces of engineering" such as the date
or moon phase indicator
indicator.
He described the watch and the workmanship involved as being "to the finest point"
of the craft.
The watch was brought by a Guernsey based collector for $1,024,000, Martin said
the collector had "a great passion" for watches and commented that he would
actually wear the piece, unlike some collectors.
Martin added: "Part of its beauty is it s ordinary to look at until you look at the
Part it's
mechanisms".
*The source for this article and the 2 pictures above is the website:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bbc.co.uk/guernsey/content/imag
es/2009/06/12/expensive_watch_203_203x152.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.bbc.co.uk/
guernsey/content/articles/2009/06/12/record_breaking_watch_feature.shtml&usg=_
_2KDfodISYgp_v38q7F4WaQqvuSo=&h=152&w=203&sz=9&hl=en&start=16&tbnid 6
=3HLZqDTzKQ4ZJM:&tbnh=79&tbnw=105&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpicture%2Bof

7. “Swatch promptly charged Mr Biver with turning around its own ailing brand, Omega. Although Omega had made the first watch taken to the moon, it had become
something of a national joke by the 1980s. Mr Biver’s approach was pure marketing. He pioneered techniques that would seem commonplace now, such as product
placements in James Bond films and celebrity sponsorships Under his leadership Omega’s sales almost tripled ”
sponsorships. Omega s tripled.
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9. “Oddly, Mr Biver is also a talented salesman. At Hublot, a watchmaker that he has
run since 2004, sales are down by only 15% this year—a considerably better
performance than Switzerland’s luxury-watch business as a whole, which has seen
sales slump by about 30%. Hublot’s sales increased more than fivefold between
2004 and 2007, a record that enticed LVMH, a luxury-goods conglomerate, to buy
the firm last year.
Hublot’s success stems in part from Mr Biver’s penchant for rationing his products.
He
H was careful t restrict supply when b i
f l to ti t l h business was b booming, d li i only seven
i delivering l
watches, say, when ten were ordered. Jewellers pay cash for stock, so it seems
foolish not to sell as many watches as possible. Yet for Mr Biver it is an essential
strategy. “You only desire what you cannot get,” he says. “People want exclusivity,
so you must always keep the customer hungry and frustrated.”
This approach has helped shield Hublot from the downturn in two ways. Cash-
strapped retailers who have cut costs by running down stocks of other firms’
firms
watches keep buying his, since they did not have many on hand to begin with. And
they have not slashed prices for Hublot’s watches, as they have with those of its
rivals (watchmakers get only about a third of the final selling price of a watch). That
has helped preserve the brand’s image of luxury and exclusivity.”
*The source for this case study is: The Economist, Salesman of the irrational,
November 12, 2009.
,
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11. “The Story Of Hublot
A young b d b any standard, H bl t i i d d an i f t among th centuries-old S i giants with
brand by t d d Hublot is indeed infant the t i ld Swiss i t ith
which it competes...Yet within years of its founding in 1980 became known as the watch of European
royalty. Few brands can claim such a speedy successful rise as Hublot, a feat made possible by the
purity of vision belonging to Carlo Croco. The vision was indeed simple at first, he just wanted his
own watch, to break away from his uncle’s watch company, the Italian firm Binda. What he ended up
breaking away from were the traditions of luxury watchmaking, in the rubber strap. Hardly a watch
enthusiast can be found today without at least one rubber strapped watch in their personal collection.
They are standard equipment on sport watches and can be found in the collections of many of the
centuries-old Swiss giants: Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, Blancpain and others.
At the time Croco introduced his Hublot (French for ‘porthole’), rubber was not to be found on a fine
porthole ),
timepiece and much less paired with a gold case. Luxurious black leather or reptile would have been
an acceptable material to the purists, but it just didn't offer the clean line that Croco found himself
suddenly obsessed with. It cost Croco nearly three years and over $1 million to find just the right type
of rubber. A rubber specially formulated to not crack or stain. It had to have the right combination of
strength and comfort - found by chemically fusing steel with the rubber. It was mixed with an
especially rare and potent vanilla to eliminate the odor associated with rubber. In 1980 it was ready
for Basel, but not for the watch purists. Luckily for this brand, their advertising caught the eye of the
King of Greece, quickly followed by the King of Spain, then the King of Sweden and the Prince of
Monaco. The Hublot had found a niche market for it was luxurious, but not flashy, comfortable, but
not dressed-down. There was only one Hublot style: porthole-case, black- dial and black rubber
dressed-down porthole-case dial,
strap. It was perfect for the jet-set of the 1980s.
- Hublot Watch Selection from Bernard's -
Trouble came slowly for the Hublot brand, after surviving rashes of copycats by holding to the purity
of the Hublot style, change seemed inimical to the company and popularity began to wane. There
were small steps toward the evolution of the Hublot. In 1987 Croco allowed the watch to be made
with a white dial and began bringing in mechanical movements to replace the ETA quartz that had
been the soul of Hublot. Croco added two models to compliment the Hublot Classic; the Hublot
Elegance with dial markers and no bezel screws and the Hublot Sport. The company seemed to have
lost direction until it caught the attention of a man in search of a brand.
brand
While Croco’s Hublot was capturing the wrists of royalty and the trendy, Jean Claude Biver was
capturing the imagination of watch purists with his relaunch of Blancpain as an all-mechanical line.
He describes himself at Blancpain as an extremist concentrating exclusively on the mechanical
movement. This attitude so well described in marketing parlance -- "Since 1735, there has never
been a quartz Blancpain watch, and there never will be." A series of personal tragedies in the late
1990s had left him in search of a brand. His analyses over the years of Swiss watch companies gave
him a clear target: Hublot.
Months after approaching Croco, Biver found himself struck by the message of the original Hublot. 11
The porthole form had originated in a purely functional manner: steel bound to the wood of a ship.