Since he entered the watchmaking world in the late 1990s, Manuel Emch’s views on the industry have been anything but conventional. In the past three years, he’s been credited with what many described as the comeback of Louis Erard. Emch is a stickler for speed and a spirited risk-taker in an industry that is, more often than not, neither. It makes sense, then, that Emch stepped in at Louis Erard’s fight-or-flight moment in the brand’s history: “They were in a situation where they had to decide [to either] stop or [give themselves] another chance […] [Louis Erard] had gone from a niche mid-priced [proposition] into something more generic [and] diluted”, he says.
There is nothing that Emch likes more than starting over – force of habit shaped by his entrepreneurial path against corporate odds – except, maybe, challenging the status quo. Emch likes to say he was “parachuted into the CEO role” for Jacquet Droz at Swatch Group back in 2001. But it was anything but chance that kept him there for nearly a decade. “I was lucky enough to [lead a brand] that was a startup in a big group,” he says. And it was precisely because Jacquet Droz had a marginal share of the Swatch Group turnover and “people didn’t really notice what we were doing” that Emch and his team went all out with creative experimentation. Ironically, the more they experimented, the more they grew, and “my freedom got smaller the bigger we got.” Ten years into climbing the corporate ladder at Swatch Group to later head Eastern Europe and the Russian subsidiary, and another seven years at RJ Watches answering investment calls, Emch was done with the realpolitik of balance books and board meetings.
It was when he ventured out on his own that he crossed paths with Louis Erard and came full circle to what he loved most: the product. “My priority from the very beginning was to save the product, [to] build really cool, affordable, collectible, and why not ‘second-market-valued’ timepieces in a price segment where no one [was present].” The challenge with Louis Erard’s early-2000s proposition as the most affordable mechanical Swiss-made watch, coupled with its reliance on outside manufacturing and movement, was that pretty much anyone who put their mind to it could copy it. “Other brands started doing the same, and very quickly Louis Erard had to open up and move to the quartz movement.” Instead of competing on price, Emch placed his bet on brand philosophy, métiers d’art, and collaborations. His product strategy for Louis Erard centered on what he called the Swiss cross: from classical, where the brand is, to sports, where it wants to enter; and from collaborations to partnerships. On this front, Emch might be experimental, but he knows just as well the value of a blue chip name. Since its ‘relaunch’, Louis Erard’s collaborations with architect and watchmaker Alain Silberstein on several references under Excellence have been a hallmark of the brand’s success. “But my idea is broader in the sense that collaborations should be in different fields,” starting with the architectural world; the Regulateur X atelier oï is Emch’s cross-cultural collaborative vision brought to life, with a compelling personal story to boot. The lines branching out of the timepiece’s center point are, in a way, an ode to the journey both Emch and atelier oï designed Eric Giroud made from the small Swiss town of Grenchen to the global stage.
But how many partnerships are too many partnerships in building a watch brand that can hold its own in a competitive market? “If you look at the watch brands, when they have something that works, you’ll find it in every color and in every size, and somehow it dilutes the product. For us, every collaboration is a unique, one-of-a-kind product, and it is limited to 178 pieces, which in this price segment is very little.”
Collaborations, Emch explains, are in Louis Erard’s very DNA (think Supreme or Palace in the fashion world). “It doesn’t take away from the brand. We position ourselves in between this logic that it is a brand and [that it is a] pure collaboration-based project. That is our thin line.”
In treading this line, Louis Erard has also considerably cut down on the number of references, from 300 tailored to market-specific tastes and preferences, to 10 as the baseline – and another 10 to 12 collaborations a year. “The idea is simple. We want to have 10 to 15 references, create something unique every six to eight weeks, and sell it within [a network of] 78 partners in the world. The figures come from the fact that we are not stuck [to our idea]. I don’t think you can do anything in the world that is a five-year plan [anymore]. The world is changing so quickly.” The brand is eyeing a still limited production of 6,000 to 8,000 timepieces a year, just enough to keep supply under control and maintain a health bottom line. The six-to-eight-week innovation cycle is certainly a tightrope, but one that Emch is happy to walk. “When you are in a state of alertness, it makes you more efficient. At least for me it works.”
By design, Louis Erard’s new distribution model is also meant to keep its price-value equilibrium and spare some cash flow for product development. Louis Erard directly sells one-third of its timepieces. Margins from the remaining two-thirds are reinvested into product development and innovation. And while he’s not a fan of the watch market’s recent speculative trend, Emch realizes that the power of a product is also in the value it sustains or gains on the secondary market. “I want that my product at least keeps its value, if not double or triple. That guarantees that any buyer will buy purely out of emotions.” As Emch puts it, “watches have become interesting again”, and this time for a younger generation that buys, sells, and flips watches at the drop of a hat. “I think that on one side, it’s a bit overdone. On the other side, the reality is that we will never be able to reconcile offer and demand.”
