“In the old days, we said, ‘30 to 40 years, male, income […] whatever.’ This was the structure. Today, it's more of a lifestyle; you buy a brand, then you buy design and then technical features.”

Neither critique nor commentary, but an apt observation of how consumers pay with their values and emotions. That this was stated by the man behind one of the best watchmakers in the world, Breitling CEO Georges Kern, is even more intriguing.

During a brief encounter in Jakarta some time ago as part of the Swiss luxury watchmaker’s 140th anniversary campaign, he was nothing but affable and discerning.

Kern, who assumed the post of CEO in 2017, is intimately acquainted with the inner workings of Breitling both as a company and as a brand. In the industry, he explained, everything has to be intuitive — you have to feel something.

“The first decision we took as a brand was to try to become a cool alternative to the very conservative Swiss brands. So we didn't go into golf or tennis for instance, we went into surfing and triathlon, which by the way helped us a lot in the post-COVID area, because everybody was about going out, enjoying life, carpe diem,” he said.

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Breitling, which took root in a small workshop in Saint-Imier, Switzerland in 1884, has historically been associated with aviation, motoring and seafaring as per its Air, Land and Sea categories. In modern times, however, its partnerships range from classic motoring icons like the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Corvette, elite sporting events including Six Nations rugby and IRONMAN triathlon, to fashion labels such as Victoria Beckham’s namesake brand.

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