Your browser does not support the audio element. Yet the reality is more complex, with endless waiting lists resulting in frustration and boutiques too traditional to seduce the younger generations. As for the rise of e-commerce and the pre-owned market, the result has been a shortage of watches in the very boutiques themselves. One brand, whose radical reboot, already reported in Europa Star , took everyone by surprise, has set out to take the hospitality concept to the extreme: Jaquet Droz. And it is perhaps no coincidence that the man at the helm is a veteran of the Swatch Group , as well as a hospitality expert.
It was time to choose the next. From the 5, to 6, series watches previously produced at Jaquet Droz, production has dropped to below one-off timepieces a year. But the average price has rocketed to nearly half a million francs. A handful of timepieces, reserved for major collectors, are reported, such as this Parrot Repeater Pocket Watch Automaton costing over 1. This strategic choice informs every move, including the decision to quit traditional retail.
And so, instead of being present at points of sale apart from a few exceptions, including the Nicolas G. Commission on a watch costing , francs can be just as worthwhile as the margin on a stock of more affordable watches. Some of them become business introducers and receive a commission, others just put us in contact with people on a purely friendly basis.
But building such a network, when clients are already courted by numerous brands the watchmaking sector has no shortage of brands devoted to those clients takes time. We still have to make our brand and its history better known. In the meantime, the brand, based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, has equipped its workshops with a brand-new studio with six 4K cameras to convey the experience online and on screen. On the production side, despite the dramatic change of direction Alain Delamuraz has not announced any fundamental upheaval in the composition of his teams about 50 people.
The aesthetic centred on the symbolic figure 8 remains key and the brand can continue to count on its strong points — arts and crafts — to produce outstanding models. Solely the motif, made to order, may change —from the traditional, bucolic bird to a helicopter, for example, according to taste! Jaquet Droz also makes presentation boxes in the form of automata. Are we to expect a comeback of the very automata that made the reputation of Pierre Jaquet-Droz at the European courts of the 18 th century?
