Vuelve UNIVERSAL GENÈVE: Entrevista a Georges Kern

It's a very interesting question. Considering indeed that we don't want to be a vintage brand. But there's a very fine line between being a vintage brand and modernizing a product in keeping the DNA of the product. In particular, the Polerouter, which was the first big design of Gerald Genta, was for me in the whole collection the most difficult product to get in. And we sat down with the designers. We identified the key elements of that watch with a cross, the rehauls, with the twisted lugs, with bracelets we redesigned. And it took us three, four, five iterations. But again, it's not about being an old brand. We want to be a modern contemporary brand. Yes, we have huge anchor in the past. But when we thought about it, because it's a sleeping brand since 50, 60 years, it's like what was the design of a Porsche 50, 60 years ago and what does this Porsche look today? And we had to jump and then you have every five, six years usually an iteration. So we had to jump six, probably, iterations of redesign to achieve what you have seen today. There exists the concept House of Brands with Universal Geneve, Breitling, and mass gallery. Breitling operations logistics. Yeah. You have basically two phases when you relaunch a brand like Universal or Galet, which we're going to relaunch end of August, beginning of September in Geneva. You have the incubation phase where obviously I use all my teams. Even though in the meantime at Universal, we hired obviously designers, marketing people, etc. So, the incubation phase is with our existing infrastructures. Then implementation you need your own team. You need a dedicated independent team because the organization is not big enough to manage. And that team will be based in Geneva Rue du Rhône. We have a kind of head office over there. We work with suppliers. For instance, the Mico Auto automatic movement is produced by a company called LTM, Le Manufacture du Temps. And we produce at Breitling the chronograph because we are the biggest specialist in chronograph in the world. I think we produce the highest amount of chronographs in the world. But it's a totally new move. 95% of the value of the Mico Auto Chrono is basically new. But we have the engineering capabilities to do so. And my general manager Gregory Boutte, probably who I hired from my previous life, is probably the biggest specialist for Mico Autos in the market. So, we worked with him on that. But again, two phases, incubation, and then you need to have an independent team to run these brands.

First of all, we clearly want it to be different. There's no need for another brand.