How To Move Forwards While Looking Backwards – Innovation In The Watch Industry Part.3
In Part.2 of our exclusive special on innovation in the watch industry we talked about the truly baffling achievements of Montblanc, made all the more amazing by the incredibly short time frame within which they were realized. Remarkable as they were, however, we should acknowledge that Montblanc did not go it alone. Rather they had the luxury of being able to count on the generous funding and support of an immensely successful and experienced global organization.
With this is mind we have to ask how then can young brands with little to no backing even contemplate, let alone succeed at, creating highly-innovative, credible pieces?
To find out we went to ask Romain Jérôme.
The Opposite End Of The Scale
Romain Jérôme couldn’t have less in common with the Richemont empire Montblanc belongs to: only around fifteen employees, and barely out of diapers and yet this young company continues to box well above its weight. In this year alone the company took 50’000’000 CHF in orders just during the SIHH!
So how then has such a little company, which was no more than a start-up just a few short years ago, risen so quickly? The answer is not strategic like Montblanc, nor marketing like Hublot; it’s product-based.
Around its “DNA of Famous Legends” tagline, Romain Jérôme based its business model almost purely on a highly unique concept. Although timepieces have often been used before to commemorate historic events, this idea was taken one (or several) steps further when the brand introduced watches that would actually incorporate physical aspects of the events within the piece’s design, for example dust from the moon, or parts of the Titanic (and more recently, ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano).
That the young brand actually had the audacity to try something so different in what is a very traditional industry speaks volumes about their approach to be business. Especially when you consider that typically R&D dollars are generally invested in exploring and discovering the new materials of the future, not the past!
Being bold and different is all well and good but what about tomorrow? How will the brand continue to evolve itself, when its name is so tightly linked to one unique concept?
Building A Brand, Or Building A Concept?
We thought this was a pretty relevant question for the young brand and so we asked Romain Jérôme CEO, Manuel Emch. At age 38, Emch is the combined product of a background in marketing studies and a career within the Swatch Group. An intelligent entrepreneur he is able to rely on the support of an investments fund to help in the continued development of Romain Jérôme.
Still, is this enough?
Critics of the brand often draw attention to the fact that Romain Jérôme has little credibility as a traditional watch-maker and instead relies on gimmicks and publicity to sell their products. This could be an issue but for the fact that Romain Jérôme is not looking for acceptance into the traditional watch-making world. A for those who continue to doubt they are able to demonstrate commercial viability. In other words, they are creating a product people want, and they are selling. Just ask their customers.
It is this success then that Emch intends to build on.
“The backbone of our brand is the 3 collections of legends, Air, Sea and Earth. Two of them are already available: the Moon-Dust for the Air collection, and the Titanic for the Sea. We are currently looking for the third legend to illustrate the Earth collection. We don’t have a specific time-frame, it could be 2011 or 2012.”
And so it seems that Romain Jérôme will stay faithful to its “DNA of Famous Legends” strategy. But will this be enough for the brand to remain visible and relevant, especially if we take a more long-term view, say after 10 or 20 years of production?
“We don’t see so far. There are still a lot of things to do on our 3 DNA collections. The Moon-Dust worked very well because we launched it when the 40th anniversary of the man on the moon was celebrated. The Titanic also has bright days coming as 2012 will be the 100th anniversary of the liner. And we will of course follow the same principles with our forthcoming Earth collection” explains Emch.
Perhaps this is the right strategy to adopt? It certainly seems to be working well for Hublot, a company famous for producing almost exclusively just one style of watch, the Big-Bang. And in all honesty, when Hublot CEO Jean-Claude Biver explains his strategy, it all makes a lot of sense;
“We’ll stay mono-product as long as the market will let us! We do 70% of our business with only 10 references or so, and 30% with limited editions that allow our clients to buy a second or a third watch from our collection.”
The Final Word
Romain Jérôme is just one example, albeit an extreme one, of a young brand that is approaching watch-making in a completely new and innovative way. It’s important to note though that when we talk about innovation we don’t just mean the use of new materials or different designs, we’re also talking about taking a completely new approach to the business model, which includes marketing, distribution and so forth.
Naysayers may criticize Romain Jérôme for using what they regard as gimmicks but at the end of day the company is selling watches, and with the exception of only a handful of watch-makers in the industry, that is what everyone else is here to do too.
Like it or not this is a business, it just so happens that companies are better at it than others.
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