George K, how are you, sir? Very well, thank you very much for the invitation. So I know it's your 140th birthday, but I want to go back in time just a little bit to the beginning of the COVID pandemic, where we saw an accelerated growth for watches, and now we're in the first year where we have a little bit of a market correction. But as we know, these things go in peaks and valleys, minor valleys actually. To be honest with you, I would say that one thing that people forget is the net benefit of the massive growth that we had during COVID made watches relevant to everyone, and that's not going away. Would you agree?
I fully agree, I fully agree. And again, we have to put everything in context. The post-COVID year was a totally abnormal year. We are talking about revenge buying. The second year after COVID was revenge traveling, so you had revenge buying and revenge traveling impacting obviously the whole luxury industry. I truly believe, and I agree with you, that the analog watch industry will be growing tremendously over the next decades because you cannot fight demography, you cannot fight rise in average income. You have new markets in India, in Indonesia, in Asia, everywhere, even in the Western world, in the US. So the market will grow. What we have to look at is the global trend of the industry, and within that trend, you might have a bumpy road, and we have a bumpy road right now. But fundamentally, I truly believe that we will still have a golden decade in front of us. And yes, also the digital watches, but the access after COVID to more products enlarged the market.
Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think one thing that you can't change is the incredible cultural relevance of the watch today. There's not a sporting event, a red carpet event, a movie event that doesn't happen without everyone looking at what's on everyone's wrist today. And I think that's amazing. Now you have an incredible ambassador, Giannis, who's this incredible basketball player, but the story of him as an immigrant, as a refugee, is so compelling. You know, you are really selective in your ambassadors, but he is an amazing one.
He is such a good-hearted guy. We had an event to launch his watches in Greece. I mean, they made a movie. There's a Disney movie and there's a very good documentary on Amazon which is very cool, and it tells an incredible story of somebody, as you said, who was a refugee, who was extremely poor, but with amazing family ties, and they fought. And he was discovered as a basketball player, and he was most valuable player in the NBA, he won the championship, and he's still modest. He's charming, extremely funny. He's such a great guy, and we're very happy to work with him.
You know, I was watching this documentary on the plane, and what I loved about it was he said, 'I'm not going to go join the NBA unless you bring my family over as well,' because his family is so important to him. And the fact that he was willing to sacrifice his entire career if his family couldn't also benefit from what was happening to him. Like, I'm on a plane, you know, I don't know if it's the altitude, I start crying because this movie is so compelling. What's interesting too is that because of globalization, everyone's able to now watch this film because of streaming services. But I would go even further. I would say globalization, social media, streaming platforms have kind of homogenized taste around the world, and a few very strong brands have benefited from this, and I think that's only going to increase. Would you agree, sir?
I fully agree. I think this might be controversial what I would say, but the classic segmentation we had of the last decades, 100 years, where you said Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Asian, or Caucasian, or what have you, male, female, these are blurring. This is a blurring situation today. You have a kind of new communities, and these are cross-gender, cross-country, cross-everything, because these brands or these trends, also in music as you said, we all listen to the same music, we all see the same movies. So again, you have new gods which might be designers, you have new heroes which might be very different from what was the case in the last decades. So the world is changing, and I truly believe, to be very concrete for our industry, in globalization of taste. And this is why I think for the big brands, at the end of the day, there will be only five to ten really being significant in the market.
I mean, we see it already. You know, I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and I remember as a journalist in the 90s, you would hear brands saying, 'This is going to be my China watch' or 'This is going to be my Middle East watch.' But today that doesn't exist. If you want to be successful, you have to be successful around the world. And that's always been your philosophy, right?
No, absolutely. You can, for instance, China is a very good example. You cannot be today successful in China if you're not successful outside of China. And they don't want Chinese products, they want international products. And everybody's traveling, right? And this is why these global brands have the same appearance all over the world, because again, you're part of a club, and that club should be the same in Shanghai as it is in Paris or in New York. And this is why you shouldn't try to be too local. Of course, you always adjust sizes, I mean, but think global, act local in the final execution.
Let's talk about what's going on today. I would say what really is interesting is we've decoupled watches from being speculative objects. No one's buying them anymore to try to flip them and make money on them. So what's cool is we're now in a period of real end users, real customers, and real customers want really authentic watches. I feel that Breitling is one of those brands because in its category, it's the reference. Would you agree that the future belongs primarily to those brands?
No, absolutely. The world is totally transparent. Everybody knows what you're doing in everything. People can check about your ambassadors, people can check about your ESG policy, people can check about your manufacturing capabilities and what is inside. You need to be totally authentic, otherwise the social media will kill you, right? And this is why we are so happy to talk about the 140th anniversary, because we are a brand of substance. And you see now, when the tide goes down, you see who was swimming naked. Today it's all about strength of the brand, of content, of design, but also of substance, of history. And if you have all these elements, I think you will be part of a winning formula and will be part of a winning brand.
Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think we have clearly exited the hype era, and the era that has come up, and I think will remain for at least the next decade, is the era of authenticity. That can be expressed in many different ways: ESG policies as you mentioned, also in terms of craftsmanship, but really in terms of watchmaking content. That's huge. So let's talk a little bit about the perpetual calendar. Tell me what this means to you and why you decided to implement this to celebrate your 140th.
So first of all, as you know, we have an in-house chronograph, the B01. Once you have a very solid movement, you can build complications. And we are a chronograph brand, and this is the smallest and, I would say, today chronograph perpetual calendar on the market. There are other chronograph perpetual calendars, but then it's 48, 49 mm diameters, and that's the difference versus the other perpetual calendars. And we wanted, and we're building more complications now on our base movements, be it on the chronograph or on the automatic, in the near future. And we thought, it's a new movement, let's use it for the 140th anniversary. We took three pillars historically strategically important pillars of our brand: the Premier, you know, where for the first time Breitling went from instruments to style; then obviously the Navitimer, which is the most iconic pilot watch in the market; and the Chronomat, which was the revival of the classic watch industry after the quartz crisis under Anna Schneider.
Yeah, I love it. Also, you know, you've got the Premier representing the era of the 40s, and Navitimer representing the era of the 50s, and then the Chronomat, one of my favorite eras, the 80s, of course. But let's talk about the perpetual calendar complication. Why is this so appealing to you? And you were also previously in a brand that was very famous for its perpetual calendar. You've done a different type here this time.
First of all, it's beautiful, it just looks nice. Second, as I said, we did it differently from my previous companies because it's a chronograph. And third, we need to be in a price point which makes sense for our brand. I always said we want to do complications, but there are some complications we don't want to do, we don't need to do, because you need to be a compact brand also in terms of pricing. Our average price today is $7,200 as a basic product. I don't want to go to $100,000, $200,000, $300,000. There might be one or two pieces, but that's not our market. Our market, and by the way it's a sweet spot, is really between $5,000 and $20,000 with an average price of $7,200. And now for a jubilee piece, we can have a product at $52,000, totally reflecting what we are, which is a chronograph brand, but now with a new complication.
It's really nice to look at these watches. When you look at the quality of the finishing of the dials, it's really nice to see what Breitling is able to achieve in a slightly higher price segment, but still there's a value there. And I think that's important to you. There were other brands that made their reputations on introducing complications, but always with a value proposition. Some of them have kind of lost that a little bit, but it's nice to see Breitling is really embracing that.
