Zenith greets 2023 with a smile

MANY governments worry China’s reopening will spark a spike in Covid cases. Swiss watch brand Zenith’s chief executive officer Julien Tornare, however, is grinning. He sees more sales for watches.

“(The reopening) is positive,” he tells The Business Times. “We’re tired of Covid, (so are) our Chinese friends. They still have money. They’ve been locked down for three years. It’s (been) a nightmare. What they need is to go out, enjoy life, smile again, and we’ll put them into the mood to buy.”

Pointing out the Chinese’s love of luxury watches, Tornare says Zenith has continued to invest in China when others have stalled.

“We’re prepared (for the reopening),” he says. “We already have a watch show (in China). In the coming weeks, I’ll travel there. We’ll open boutiques, recruit staff, have a bigger budget (and increase our) presence on social media.” This year, Zenith plans to open “four to five” more outlets worldwide.

Tornare concedes there are some clouds on the horizon but brushes off any talk of market softening. “A little softening and in a few countries (perhaps),” he says. “I am not too concerned. It’s going to be maybe a couple more months and, hopefully, things will move in the right way.”

After the huge success of the Chronomaster Sport line, launched in 2021, Zenith’s boss is putting his money on the new Defy Skyline collection rolled out in 2022.  “It has become a bestseller and the second-strongest engine next to Chronomaster Sport,” he discloses. 

Which is also good news because the latter accounts for 40 per cent of Zenith’s sales; it wouldn’t be good for the brand in the long run to rely on just one collection. 

Indeed, Tornare is putting in place more growth engines. He let on that Zenith’s Pilot line would make a “strong comeback” at the Watches & Wonders fair in the second quarter of the year. “That should be the third engine,” he says.

For now, Tornare is bullish on the latest Defy Skyline model, introduced just last week (Jan 11) – the Defy Skyline Skeleton. “The Defy Classic Skeleton was one of our bestsellers,” he says. “As it’s going to be phased out, we knew logically the Defy Skyline Skeleton had to come.”

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The new openwork watch is by design less pared down than the Defy Classic Skeleton. Its skeletal dial, in blue or black, has a more contemporary look and is framed in the Defy Skyline’s trademark case, which has a 12-sided bezel. The 41 millimetre case is stainless steel.

The Zenith chief says the 1/10th of a second counter on the watch’s dial is deliberately positioned at six o’clock, so it will not block the movement from view. The Skyline Skeleton is powered by Zenith’s famous El Primero high-frequency automatic movement.

The Skyline Skeleton was supposed to be released last year, but was put off till now. “There wasn’t room for its production,” Tornare explains. Zenith already had its hands full with the high demand for existing models in 2022.

Also, there was a shortage of watch movements. Buying them from outside sources was ruled out because Zenith watches use only Zenith-made movements. “So when you have to have your own movement in every watch, it’s a big pressure,” the Zenith CEO says.

Zenith would handle the problem “step by step”, he adds. “We’re hiring more watchmakers right now.” Zenith is also working with suppliers to speed up the supply of parts.

The brand makes roughly 24,000 watches a year. Tonare, who calls himself “a pusher”, says Zenith can push the number up to 30,000 to 35,000. Yet he’s a realist. Other than mumbling a vague “in the coming years”, he hasn’t fixed a target date for higher production.

“It depends on a lot of things, but we still have room to grow,” Tornare says.