After more than a decade Jérôme Lambert has returned to the helm of Jaeger-LeCoultre, and in some ways nothing much has changed.
The brand’s Atmos clocks, the self-winding beauties created in 1928, are still ticking in perpetuity, while trainees are studying watchmaking, enameling and miniature painting. The staff who remember him are still calling Lambert by his first name, even though he most recently served as chief executive officer of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s parent, Richemont.
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“After seven years of corporate culture, I was more used to ‘Mister’ than to Jérôme, but that’s fine, and a good way” to return, said Lambert in an interview, adding that he likes being closer to the creative process and interacting directly with the teams that are making and marketing watches.
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While some things have stayed the same at Jaeger-LeCoultre, times have changed considerably since he left in 2013 and Lambert would argue that he’s running an entirely different company.
The collapse in demand from Hong Kong, once the number-one export market for Swiss watches, the onset of COVID-19, the rise of digital sales, and the industry’s shift from wholesale to retail have completely reshaped the market for fine watches, while political and social changes continue to impact how watches are bought and sold.
Lambert would argue that while it’s a tough moment for high-end timepieces, there is great opportunity to lay the groundwork for better times by keeping top customers close, cultivating a local clientele and focusing on the “intrinsic value” of the watches.
He said selling watches today is more dynamic because the end customer is much more educated and engaged, and the watch brands have greater scope to use their stores, and their social media, to interact with them.
Twelve years ago, he added, watch brands were interacting with the customers through “large, mainstream channels,” and didn’t have the opportunity to tell their stories properly and engage fans and collectors.
Instead of speaking to end consumers directly, brands relied on wholesale clients and traditional media. He said that now, Jaeger-LeCoultre can use its 60 boutiques around the world and its own social media channels to speak to clients whether they’re in Boston, London, Dublin, Turin or Shanghai.
“Brands can also express themselves as individuals in a way they couldn’t do before,” said Lambert, adding that Jaeger-LeCoultre is now speaking to a highly educated — and captive — audience about grand complications, tourbillon mechanisms and the nuances of watch case design.
Today, the house regularly invites clients to its stores and even to the workshops in Vallée de Joux, Switzerland, for masterclasses about watchmaking. This week, key clients will gather at the brand’s Watches and Wonders stand to get a first glimpse of what’s to come and experiment with watchmaking as part of an interactive experience.
At the fair, there will be a viewing room dedicated to the hundreds of skills involved in making a Jaeger-LeCoultre watch. That room will also include a video series called “In the Making,” which goes behind the scenes of Jaeger-LeCoultre to tell the story of various watchmaking skills from the perspective of the artisans.
Another, specially designed space will be dedicated to a series of dynamic, interactive sessions, where participants will be able to dive deep into the Reverso story, viewing rarely seen documents from the archives. They’ll also be able to take on the challenge of assembling a Reverso case, guided by experts from Jaeger-LeCoultre.
“Our clients have a very strong passion for these watches,” said Lambert. “They wear them not only because of their style, value and history, but also because they are expressions of fine watchmaking. Many of them know our products and brands so well that spending time with the maison is really seen as a privilege.”
As Jaeger-LeCoultre cultivates the super-knowledgeable buyers and collectors, it is also working to drive sales to a wider, more diverse — and local — clientele.
“With watches like ours, you need to maintain local connections. Clients may buy a watch and then decide to personalize it two to three years later, or maybe they want to change accessories. It’s another dimension of service,” said Lambert, adding that the relationship cannot end when the client walks out of the store or showroom.
With the slowdown in luxury demand, that job has become harder but Lambert is taking the long view, which is not surprising given his three decades of working at the hard luxury giant Richemont.
“Over the past 10 years, there have been ups and downs [in watches], but there has been a constant quest for intrinsic value — especially after the drop in demand in the secondhand market.
“That drop put an end to the speculative bubble when people were buying watches just to resell them. But that ‘watch-in-a-box’ time is over” and there is a renewed focus on value rather than price, he said.
Lambert argued that Jaeger-LeCoultre is grasping the value opportunity with sophisticated mechanics, and creativity, too.
This year he said the focus will be on the Reverso, the reversible watch created in 1931 during the Art Deco movement that is marking its 100th anniversary this year. Lambert described the watch as “our perfect Art Deco child.”
The Reverso watch was made especially for polo players who could flip the case to protect the dial from the swinging wooden mallets, and fast-flying balls.
At Watches and Wonders there will be an immersive booth that reinterprets the grand stables of aristocratic houses, where polo was played on private fields. At the center of the booth there will be a 6-meter-high horse made using volumetric LED technology to create a three-dimensional sculpture.
In different areas of the booth, visitors will be invited to immerse themselves in the story of the Reverso, through a variety of hands-on experiences, and to discover the new timepieces.
Jaeger-LeCoultre plans to introduce nine models to the Reverso collection with new complications, movements and colors. There will also be a Reverso Tribute Enamel Shahnameh series, similar to the Monet-inspired one last year.
Over the years Jaeger-LeCoultre has used the flip side of the watch case as a canvas for clients’ personal engravings, but also for enameling, miniature art and gemstones. The idea of enameling was born in India, with one of the earliest commissions coming from the Maharajah of Kapurthala. He ordered 50 Reversos with enamel portraits of his wife.
Last year, the brand unveiled the limited-edition Reverso Tribute Enamel Monet watch, with miniature replicas of the artist’s Venice paintings. The artisans reproduced the paintings by creating an illusion of Monet’s thick impasto strokes and recreating the fleeting effects of light on the water, and buildings of Venice.
This year, the artistic inspiration is Persia’s epic poem, the Shahnameh. There will be a collection of four watches featuring miniaturized reproductions of illustrations from the narrative, each of them featuring horses in keeping with this year’s polo theme.
“We will continue to push our creativity in everything we do. We’ll continue to invent and come up with strong elements to our watches,” said Lambert, who is also proud of the work that Jaeger-LeCoultre is doing with apprenticeships and training across watchmaking, and enameling in particular.
“We are teaching, caring and learning. We have our own internal school with 30 to 40 students learning watchmaking crafts. We teach enameling — there is no school for that anymore. We are transmitting knowledge and investing in the future of fine watchmaking and it is an immense privilege to do so,” he said.
The Jaeger-LeCoultre team has always had one eye on the future and nowhere is that more evident than with the Atmos clock, which is designed to tick into eternity due to an energy-efficient, self-winding mechanism powered by subtle movements in air pressure.
The team continues to reinvent it and invite creatives, including Marc Newson, to put a fresh spin on it. In 2000, the brand created a special edition dial that marks the years from 2000 to 3000.
Lambert recalls giving Queen Elizabeth II the special millennial Atmos for her Diamond Jubilee in 2012.
“She was the only person who ever asked me, ‘What will you do in 1,000 years’ time when the dial is [obsolete]?’” said Lambert, who admitted during the interview that he really didn’t have a comeback to the question.
During the interview he agreed the question was a logical one coming from a woman who could trace her lineage back to William the Conqueror.
“I guess that if you’re part of a monarchy with a very long history, you are always projecting into the far future,” he added. Although Jaeger-LeCoultre may be youthful compared to the British monarchy, it aspires to do the same.