Breitling heading in the direction of cool

“IN (THE) luxury (business) you don’t respond to a need, you create a need,” says Breitling’s CEO Georges Kern in a Zoom interview recently. After nearly 25 years in the high-end watch business, the veteran should know. 

The straight-talking 58-year-old isn’t suggesting that Breitling’s luxury timepieces are fabricated in a vacuum, totally oblivious to the outside world. On the contrary, according to Kern, who swapped a highly successful career in the Swiss luxury group Richemont in 2017 for his present job, the watches which roll out of the brand’s factory in Switzerland reflect its belief of what today’s society is: cool and relaxed.

“It’s very much a post-Covid thing,” Kern says. “Everything is informal.”