In Conversation with Frédéric Arnault

I'm in Singapore. I've been here for eight months straight, so it's the longest I've ever been in Singapore.

I'm in Paris right now.

You know, I think it's in a year like this where I think back on the memories that I treasure the most, and I have to say I really look back at the time we spent together in Monaco with such fondness. And when we could be so convivial, I hope you can come again next year in Monaco. Hopefully the Grand Prix will happen.

Thank you very much. It's really a teamwork. We have great teams that have been working on these watches for years. You know how long the development process is in this industry. And it's also great to see you again. It's a pity we didn't have a chance to talk before this year.

Yes. When we thought of the 160 years anniversary of the brand, we really wanted to have a focus on one collection in particular, and we thought that Carrera was the one that made most sense. It is one of the leading names today in our brand and in the watchmaking industry. And to relaunch it, we wanted to recall the past and look at the first versions that made this watch special. Actually, this collection, unlike some others, was really successful from the start. The name was great, the design was great, there were good collections with different models that were very complementary. Once we gathered, it's a chronograph, which is very important for Heuer at the time and for TAG Heuer today. And this watch in particular we thought was very interesting with the color of the dial. We didn't want to do a strict re-edition, but we really wanted to bring modern techniques to it. So we have our modern movement, the Heuer 02, we have an interesting faux patina on the hands that is sort of a modern retro-vintage look. And it was really to show the anchor of the Carrera in the past. It's a collection that has almost 60 years of history, it's an icon. Very few watches have this status.

Yes, definitely. I think you summarized very well the division we had for this launch. We really wanted to recall the top models that were launched in history. If we look at the first models, it was a chronograph with a thin bezel with a three-compax display, and this is the first time that we bring it again with a classic dial. We had the Heuer 02 with the skeleton dial, but it's the first time on the Carrera we bring it again with a classic dial. And on the sporty one, we wanted to recall one of the leading SKUs that was launched in 2004. It's actually the first time that an external tachymeter was launched on the Carrera. There was initially some internal tachymeters on the dial, not on the very first ones, the very first ones were without tachymeters, but later on we saw some internal tachymeters, and in 2004 that's the first time that we saw an external tachymeter, and then it started becoming one of the iconic looks of the Carrera. This watch we will call the Calibre 16 black watch, that was also nicknamed by collectors the Brad Pitt watch because at the time Brad Pitt was the ambassador of TAG Heuer, and it was extremely successful. So we really wanted to find these two tastes and flavors in the Carrera: one more elegance, and one a bit more sporty with an external tachymeter. But there are many details that we changed that we can see in both models.

Very proud, very proud of the teams. I've been working tirelessly on this project for more than one, two years. We recalled the disposition of the counters, the legibility of the dial which was very true for TAG Heuer. We added small hands for the seconds, and this is quite new for the Carrera and it looks quite good on the dial. On the case, we kept the lugs, and the lugs are what make this watch special, but we added a chamfer from lug to lug, recalling also some shapes. We kept the disposition of the pushers, round pushers, very true to Carrera. We had thoughts about bringing different designs, but we always came back to this design. And the steel strap is quite new, a new shape, we worked on the integration so it looks very smooth with the case.

Well, thank you very much for your kind words on this watch. It was very well received by clients and we also had positive comments by journalists as you mentioned, Jeff Stein, great collectors for the brand. I was implicated since the beginning, first on defining the objectives, and it was to bring a classic look on the Carrera with our modern in-house movements, always improving quality and perceived quality. We have this three-compax design as we're calling it, and we had discussions on all these topics we mentioned one by one. So we started by the case, what should we do, how should we recall the historic codes, and that's when we had the idea of this chamfer that was actually not possible at the time 60 years ago, and it's a new technique that allows us to do it smoothly while keeping very good quality for the watch. Also on the dial, there were many discussions on the disposition of the indexes, the definitions, the finishings on the counters, the sub-dials. How do we really make this watch modern, natural, but keeping the flavor of what Carrera is and was in people's minds? The idea was not to do revolution, but to bring something fresh and new.

Yes, there are many codes we brought. The panda dial, of which we have many examples in history. I really love also the details on the sub-counter at three with the red lines, and this is very unique to Heuer's history and we can see it also in the real watch that we launched. It was in yellow, the red hand and touches of red like this was very true to us. Of course, as you mentioned, the red date at 12 is something we don't see nowadays too much, and we had it in the past. We thought it was a very cool detail and it's actually very legible. So thank you for your comments on this watch. We launched it at the dates of the Carrera, you know, this was the inspiration for the name, a very dangerous race, iconic race happening in Mexico. And we launched this watch just at the dates of this race.

Thank you. We have a fantastic history. I love spending time in the museum, in the archives, and also some blogs on which I discover stuff about the brand. We have great periods of design and we have to leverage that. It's a very strong element for us. We have 160 years of history we can rely on. It gives trust and confidence to consumers. They know we've been around for this much time, they know that we have real codes that we nurture and believe in, and that makes our watch live through time and not become obsolete. So this is the spirit, but always making them modern and bringing a modern touch with the techniques, having the latest sapphire glass, the latest techniques on the movement with the best quality you can find, and improving these elements. Quality is very important for us.

Definitely. To talk about Hiroshi Fujiwara, we have a great partnership with him. This is the second watch we've actually launched with him. We did a first Carrera 39 millimeter with a quite innovative strap for the brand, the alligator strap. And there we wanted also to maybe push the brand in directions where we've never been. We took inspiration from a Formula One case, which is our entry price watch usually on quartz movement, and we thought, why not try bringing our in-house manufacture movement in this watch? It was something we had never done in the past. Also redesigning the complete bracelet. So this was Hiroshi's idea, some of it really came from him, some of it came from us internally, but it was really a discussion. I think that's what makes products great. It wasn't just he or she saying I want this, and we have a point of view. It was really a discussion between him and us that brought this product. We know what's great in our brand, he knows what's great in his and what point of view he can bring. The strap, the finishes we brought on the case, and actually it's from a Formula One but it also recalls some vintage Autavias from the 70s. All the finishing on the dial was printed. We had some thoughts of having some specific indexes, but we thought collectively that having a full printed dial was quite cool and quite new. This watch was extremely successful in Japan and China throughout the world. Collaborations will play an important part, and I think that's what the watch community wants to see as well—some creativity that we couldn't bring by ourselves. We couldn't do this watch just as Heuer; we need some external inputs, external branding, external point of view to bring this creativity. And we will have some future collaborations for the brand. One of our objectives is really to bring creativity that only TAG Heuer plus another partner could bring.

When I joined the brand, there were many discussions about the metal strap on the Monaco, and we saw many different versions, none of which we thought integrated well with the watch. I think we need to recall some codes of design we could see on the case and on the dial, and to feel the watch as one, not just we designed first the case and then we designed a bracelet. With this watch, it's already quite big. The big risk was to make it very heavy with a steel strap. With iterations, we found this strap, and we believe that we've had in the past a lot of central connections for the forest strap, and it works really well for the Monaco. Also the square shape really recalls the square shape we have on the case and on the sub-counters, and I think that's what makes it look like one watch and not just a strap on a case.

Personally, at TAG Heuer, we are strong believers in e-commerce. I think the trends in e-commerce in general, not just for the watch industry, are booming, and it's reinforced even this year with the crisis we know. We are seeing less and less barriers in buying a watch online. When I joined, we really put as a first priority the redesign of our website. I think it has to be our number one flagship because that's where we have the most traffic, that's where we want to bring the best expression of the brand and our collections. We invested a lot on the representation of the products, so we have great 3D visuals that can make you feel as if you had the watch in front of you. People more and more want the ease of purchasing online. Sometimes they can't easily access a point of sale, and they're used more and more to purchasing online. I think it's a complementary service to offline distribution. Today it's still very small penetration compared to other industries, but I believe it will grow still by a lot. We need to bring services. We're investing a lot right now on how to bring a human touch online, how to make sure that when you are browsing, you can have easy contact with a sales advisor who will be able to give you the best advice for you as a customer, as you would have in a boutique. Human contact is very important, but we can also bring this human contact online, and it's a question of organization and investment. Customers are more and more wanting this type of service.

So, we had a target audience and then an audience that we observed. Of course, on many launches, there's some of the target audience we had right, some that we discovered and hadn't necessarily thought of. First, it's the TAG Heuer fans, people who own a few TAG Heuers, love the brand, and who are interested in this type of technology. But we have a lot of customer acquisition with this watch. More than 60% of the people purchasing this watch, it's the first TAG Heuer for them, and they were not necessarily purchasing a watch from us before. We have watch fans and watch collectors who have a strong collection and who wouldn't want to compromise on the aesthetics and what they love in watches when they have a smartwatch on their wrist. We invested a lot on the materials: stainless steel, titanium, a great ceramic bezel, the straps, the interchangeability of the straps, the versatility. When you have this watch on, it could feel as if you had a mechanical watch in some aspects. So a lot of customers really value that. Then we have some specific audiences. One of them is golfers. We've invested a lot on this watch with software, and I believe success in this category comes from the alliance of mechanical engineering and design, hardware engineering and design, software engineering and design, and services. There's extra complexity with this product, but we have a vision on all of that. We've invested a lot on use cases and software, building our own ecosystem focused for now on sports. TAG Heuer is so relevant in the world of sports, and measuring sport performance on the watch is something that's becoming more common. We have extra sensors: GPS, heart rate monitor. We saw golf as a great opportunity. We have our own app, and it's the leading experience on the watch. We have interactive display with the shape of the golf course, you can see with our own 3D maps. We have a database of all the golf courses in the world, and this is performing very well. Golf is really one of our leading sports, but we also invested in more mainstream sports like running, fitness, and we have a strong roadmap with dedicated teams internally working on that.

Definitely it's a companion doing sports activities. I run once or twice a week. I started golf actually after the confinement, and one of the reasons was because we had a product in golf and I thought I had to use it in real life to be able to challenge the teams on the product we were building. So on the golf course of course, but a lot on my day-to-day, and that's what's great with this watch. It's not just a sports watch; it's really a watch that accompanies you in the day-to-day. Simple use cases like notifications, I love changing the dial very often. We have so many different configurations and great creativity to come also on the watch faces. The latest one we launched was the Helios watch face, which is an inspiration again from vintage cameras, but we reinterpreted the contours and now bringing them completely digital. You can have a GMT or a sunset sunrise, or even the weather, that's completely designed by us. I think the design looks really great, and I love changing the dials and the expression on the watch very often. And yes, simple use cases like notifications, seeing my next appointment on the day-to-day business life, I find that very useful.

So I think 160 years is a very long time, and we're not thinking in the brand 160 years ahead. We really are thinking that everything we do should last and should last through time, but already decades is long enough. What we're looking for is that this brand is one of the leading brands in watchmaking and it should stay one of the leading brands in watchmaking. For that, it has to be true to what it was, but it also shouldn't be afraid of reinventing itself and finding new milestones of things we can do in 2020 that we couldn't do before in terms of innovation, creativity, and building new milestones for the brand. One of the ambitions we have is to continue building founding acts for the brand today. The founding acts: the foundation of the brand in 1860 by Edouard Heuer, some key innovations that came, and also when Heuer becomes TAG Heuer, which is a great moment for the brand. People today know the brand a lot as TAG as well. TAG brings a lot of flavor to the brand: technique, innovation, the avant-garde is in the name. The ambition we have is that we will in this decade continue building some founding acts that will bring the brand forward.

Thank you. It was a great discussion. I really love your background. Well, let's do more.

Bye.