Unfinished business

THIS year is Jean-Claude Biver’s 50th year in the watch business, which makes the launch of a new watch by him and son Pierre last month a timely event.

It’s also a fitting milestone marking a long career that saw him rebuild Blancpain’s watch business, turn Omega around and shape Hublot into the hip watch brand it is today.

Five years ago, when Biver turned 68, he called it a day at LVMH where he was the boss of its watchmaking division. By then, he was a living legend in the industry.

The Bivers, who are based in Givrins, a municipality in Switzerland, didn’t time the roll-out of the watch — which took 13 months to make – to coincide with the career milestone.

Instead, they took their time – four years, to be exact – to unveil their eponymous watch brand. 

“It’s unthinkable at first to start our own brand,” Biver told The Business Times last week in an interview at L’atelier, a watch boutique owned by local watch retailer The Hour Glass. “Only watchmakers can start their own brands; we’re not watchmakers.”

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But he was inspired by the success of watch impresarios Richard Mille and Max Busser, who have given the lie to that old belief. Each of them has founded a watch brand with big followings, though they’re not watchmakers.

He was driven to start Biver by a passion for watches and a mission to pass on his knowledge and experience to the next generation. “You can’t retire from your passion, or you will die,” he says. “And it’ll be a tragedy to die without giving back!” 

He could have spent time tending his impressive watch collection and mentoring students instead, but Pierre thinks his father just couldn’t shake off the long habit of building watch brands and making watches.

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“Once you taste that creative process, you can’t live without the possibility of doing it. Biver allows him to continue to do it,” says the 23-year-old.

He certainly felt the need to launch the watch brand, especially at this stage of his life – “It’s now or never,” he says – but for a different reason.

There’s an unfinished business to settle and the brand Biver provides the platform for it.

After nearly 40 years, Biver still can’t get over the regret of selling Blancpain, which he co-owned.

Though he’s credited for reviving Blancpain – and he also acknowledges its sale has paved the way for his subsequent success – it continues to nag him as his “first (big) career mistake”.

The unspoken thought is he could have grown Blancpain even bigger had he not sold it.  Hence, Biver is Blancpain Part II.

“What we’re doing is so close to what I’d been doing for Blancpain – this will heal me of Blancpain’s sale,” he says.

Rolling out Biver and the first watch under the brand wasn’t exactly a piece of cake, but it went without a hitch, thanks to the resources and “enormous” support which the highly regarded industry veteran could marshal.

The watch is called the Clarion Tourbillon Biver and is a minute repeater with a tourbillon and micro rotor.

The veteran explains that Biver has debuted with a high complication, rather than a basic time-only, watch because he’s not a novice in the game: “I’d reached the peak of the business so I’ve to start at the top.”

Pierre points out that they also have to prove to the sceptics “we can do it even if we’re not watchmakers”.

Carrying a price tag of US$550,000 (S$731,500) each, the first 10 watches are already sold, while the prototype is being put up for auction.

Biver’s business model is similar to MB&F’s (Maximilian Büsser & Friends) in which the brand owner conceives the watches, but relies on a network of watchmakers and suppliers to realise them.

However, while MB&F creates avant garde time machines, Biver focusses on “neo-classical” round-cased timepieces rooted in traditional watchmaking, but with a modern twist.

“We want to make the modern version of a collector’s watch collection,” Pierre says.

“We want to break the stereotyped view that complicated timepieces are to be put in a safe and taken out only once a year to admire. We want to make complications you can wear on your wrist every day.”