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Chris Grainger (CEO, IWC)

Published on Mon, 4 Mar 2019 11:00:00 +0000

The IWC CEO opens up about his passion for modernist architecture, the company's current direction, and his beloved collection of Hot Wheels cars.

Synopsis

In this episode of Hodinkee Radio, host Stephen Pulvirent travels to Schaffhausen, Switzerland to interview IWC CEO Chris Grainger at the brand's new manufacturing center. Grainger shares his unconventional path to becoming CEO, having started as an architect and designer who was initially contracted to design IWC's museum in 2005. His background in architecture deeply informs his approach to leading the luxury watch brand, from designing the new 13,000 square meter manufacturing facility to curating the brand's holistic experience. The conversation reveals how Grainger's training in spatial design and his belief that environments profoundly affect human behavior have shaped IWC's visitor experience and brand presentation.

The interview focuses heavily on IWC's 2019 SIHH releases, particularly the revitalized Pilot's Watch collection with its focus on Spitfire models. Grainger discusses the brand's strategy of balancing continuity with innovation, introducing smaller case sizes (39mm automatics and 41mm chronographs) and new materials like bronze cases and Ceratanium. He emphasizes IWC's engineering-focused heritage and authentic partnerships with organizations like the Mercedes AMG team and the Boultbee Flight Academy, which will take a refurbished 1943 Spitfire on a round-the-world journey. The conversation also touches on Grainger's progressive approach to social media, including launching limited edition watches directly through Instagram, and concludes with a surprisingly personal discussion of his passion for collecting Hot Wheels toy cars, which he sees as a fascinating reflection of contemporary car culture.

Transcript

Speaker
Unknown So back in December, I had the opportunity to visit IWC and Schaffhausen to get a sneak peek at the novelties they'd be releasing a few weeks later at the SIHH. As you already know by now, the brand's focus this year is on its pilot's watches and, in particular, a new crop of Spitfire models. The smaller sizes, the mix of steel and bronze cases, and the military styling are all great. You can count me as a fan. The highlight of my trip though wasn't seeing the new watches. It was actually a conversation I got to have with IWC CEO Chris Granger. He's one of the more interesting people in this strange little industry of ours. Chris is an architect and designer by training, and get this, he first got involved with IWC when the agency he worked for was contracted to work on a boutique for the brand. They were so impressed by him that he was actually asked to formally join the company in 2006, and after working in a few different departments, he was named CEO in 2017. Not a bad trajectory, right? We sat down to talk in the company's new manufacturer on the outskirts of Schaffhausen, a building that Chris himself actually designed. Of course, we talked about the new Spitfire collection, but we also get into what makes Chris tick, how his background and architecture informs what he does in his current position, and his abiding passion for collecting Hot Wheels cars. Yeah, this isn't your usual CEO interview, I promise. I'm your host Stephen Polverant, and this is Hodinky Radio.
Unknown Thanks so much for joining us. Good to uh good to be back here uh in Schaffhausen. Well thank you Stephen, thank you for being in Schaffhausen again and thank you for coming to the C A New Manufacturing Center. Yeah, absolut
Unknown ely. That's actually a good place for us to start, I think, is the new manufacturer. Can you tell us a little bit about where you and I are sitting right now? Yeah, so we are in the ne
Unknown w 13,000 square meter extension to our manufacturing right here at the outskirts of Schaffhausen. We've been in our historic building ever since Jones built it when he came over to Switzerland back in 1874. It was the first centralized industrial watch manufacturer in the whole of Switzerland. And since then we've expanded only between the old town center of Schaffhausen and the river Rhine. So very restricted, and the only way to expand was basically vertically. And as you can imagine, for a modern manufacturing site, it's not the most efficient way to organize watchmaking. Sure. So we took this opportunity to say look what would we do if we could design manufacturing completely from scratch and almost start with a blank canvas. And this led us to this site where we have the space to build and to expand. And from there we created three things. We created a very flexible and modern, ergonomically modern manufacturing, which um houses our case making, our movement part making and And at the same time we created something that is the beating heart of IWC that expresses us as a brand and where the visitor experience has been designed into from step one. It hasn't come as an afterthought, but we really tried to figure out how can we show the entire process from a raw bar of metal to a finished watch case, finished watch movement, in very, very easy to follow logical steps. And that's what we've got here
Unknown . I think I think that last part is particularly interesting. Because I mean we at Hodinky are are very fortunate we spend a lot of time in in watch factories and often they're not designed to have visitors. You kind of feel like you're trying to like step over someone's bench to get to something else. Exactly. Absolutely. I think we're we'
Unknown ve always been very open door focused and very open and transparent as a watch manufacturer anyway. But to really be able to bring up to ten thousand guests here to Shafazen and show them with how much passion, precision and creativity these watches are being made, I think is the the by far the best sales argument that we can possibly put forward. And so that's something we really focus on, yes. Do you remember the first time you went to a watch manufacturer? Yeah, it would have been IWC back in 2005. Oh really, you know, it it was mostly something that was installed afterwards and that you did have to climb over all sorts of things to try and figure out and you have to walk around machines to see what actually goes on the other side. And here we really split up the the teams into two. So we had one team looking at the most efficient and best way to lay out the manufacturing. And the other team would focus on how to do it so that visitors can really see how it works. And then it was the discussion between those two teams that led us to the layout you experience today. And and when you made that first visit, were you working for the company yet? Um no, I started actually designing the museum for IWC as an external interior designer back in 2005 to 2006. Okay. And then I joined in late 2006. So no, I was a visitor really. Okay. Yeah, and that's that's
Unknown something I also wanted to talk about is, you know, you're the CEO of this company, but you don't come from a traditional watch CEO background
Unknown . Not quite. No, I'm I'm a designer by training. Um and it's exactly how I came to IWC is first designing things like the museum and then later focusing on boutiques, trade exhibitions, factory offices, and all the rest of it. And basically given the the the brand, it's three-dimensional spatial expression beyond products, basically. So you're a designer and architect by training? And when did you get interested in design and architecture? Oh, from a very early age, I think even when I was a child, I I spent most of my free time designing things. I was really into sports equipment then, mountain bikes, snowboards, uh yachts even. And then sort of mid-teenage years I started to to draw movie sets and to do a lot about movie storytelling, designing sets, designing costumes, designing props. And that was really what I, you know, my sort of dream world where I spent my my my spare time back in those days. And I think when you go into um watchmaking then and what we do with with transporting people into this atmosphere at SIHH that as we do every year, it's very closely linked to basically movie and set design. So it it was quite a quite a natural fit
Unknown . And what sorts of things were you designing and building before you you uh met up with IWC and ended up
Unknown at the company? So I worked on on some uh high-end offices for for people like Ernst and Young and Accenture. Um I di helped to design a a golf club and a couple of uh uh hospitality uh projects, restaurants and bars but really it was quite brief and then we got this phone call would you like to pitch for an IWC museum? And I felt right at home because in my gap year at uni I'd done a sort of a hard luxury retail store in in in London and I really felt comfortable with showcasing these little objects in the most dramatic way, in a very luxurious way. I felt right at home there. It was sort of this engineering scenography type of thing between showcase and lighting design and just making the whole space like have a really standout atmosphere. And I knew that this area of design was of great interest to me and then when this museum project started I felt right at home
Unknown . And where did where did your kind of architectural and and design inspirations come from? What were some architects or designers who who you early on kind of were drawn to or particular styles you were drawn to the same thing I think my my
Unknown background is really I would say in in the forward looking modernism that was classically informed. van der Ronne was was somebody I identified with very early on because it was modern and forward looking, but it was based on classical training. It was not deconstructivist disruptive in terms of breaking with the past and having a whole social agenda behind. It was really to say how can I use traditional materials and techniques in a modern, uncluttered, and forward-looking way. And that's that's the type of design that I really enjoyed. And then I think over time this led very much to you know in the times when I started university around 1999-2000 this was the heyday of the great Dutch architects and also the Swiss architects like Herzog Demo and Peter Zunto, etc. And they're people who clearly influenced me while I was studying design. You know, it's that sort of high-end material modernism, I would call it, but still providing uplifting environments. You know, I'm I I can't identify with anything brutalist, a sort of anti-human. I I like welcoming and uplifting buildings because I think your spatial spatial environment you live in, you work in has a huge factor on how you feel. And a lot of you know when when people always say, oh why do people get aggressive in public transport spaces? Well are you surprised? I mean look at them. You know, often if we look at typical metro station and tube stations, not surprised that people start being aggressive in those spaces because they are genuinely causing stress. And I think through the way we design space, we can influence, positively influence people's behavior, and it gives you a wholly different outlook on life. So it's very important
Unknown . And what do you think makes a space create that kind of behavior, uh a positive behavior? What makes a space uplifting and inviting and and sort of war
Unknown m well one of the main main elements is clearly um spatial situation. That has to do with environmental psychology. It's very basic notions of fight and flight and protection in humans, what we're looking for, shelter. It's often very basic things, you know, when you look at how you'd find a space in a restaurant. It's much more inviting to sit in a sheltered booth where you've got, you know, two walls and you know a snug little cozy corner, than you'd like an exposed table in the middle of the restaurant with 200 other tables around you. And that's to do with very basic animalistic instincts of security and safety and fight or flight. People like to be uplifted. They like to rise up. You know, why do we like to climb mountains and look down? Because this whole process of uplifting gives us a positive feeling and we feel superior and we feel emotionally elated I'd say in a sense. And then lighting of course, you know, what sort of um ambience you set with music, sound, smell, that all plays to your subconscious well-being. And when you look also at the principles of Feng Shui, yes, not everybody may agree with that, but when you look at how we respond to that, like on a subconscious level, there's a lot of truth in those principles, and they make us either feel good or they make us feel stressed.
Unknown Are there any of those principles that stand out to you as as ones you particularly remember or ones that kind of sit in the back of your mind as your designing spaces? Yeah, I think I've always worked with elevation. I've always
Unknown in everything. When you look at our SIHH booth, our boutique concepts, we have level changes in most of the designs. First thing when you come into the manufacturing center is you've got a meter ten difference from the forecourt onto the platform that carries the building. And it's that you know initial six, seven steps up, and you're already on a platform. You already have a vantage point. You're already looking down at things. And that immediately changes your perception of where you are compared to just being stuck at ground
Unknown level. And let's talk a little bit about this building for people who haven't seen it. We'll link up in in the show notes here to our coverage of of the opening because I was here uh over the summer to to see the opening. Can you walk us through the kind of basic principle? I mean you know you needed a new manufacturing center. It had to be efficient. It had to be, you know, it had to provide the right industrial circumstances, but from there it really could have been a lot of things. How did you arrive at this
Unknown ? So one of the basic ideas was to go um with a conceptual idea of a pavilion. And this was informed not only by the lightness and airiness of the structure, but also by the fact that pavilion architecture was traditionally used to showcase in these world expos the best of a country's science, mechanical engineering, inventions, cultural production, art and all the rest of it. And Mechanical Watch has been sort of somewhere in between cultural production and art and and mechanical engineering. We felt that the pavilion as a basic idea was very powerful. And then I wanted something that felt a lot more residential, I would say, compared to being just a factory, because it needed to be the house of RWC. So I wanted certain cues, like the way the windows are done, the sunblinds are done, the materials are done, that are more reminiscent of maybe a hotel environment than they are of a factory. And generally what we did is we created a pavilion with cantilever overhangs in the roof and floor structure to give us natural daylight modulation because there's nothing worse than worse than glass cube factories where you have to lower the blinds all day, every day, and you basically you're on a in a closed-off block. Here you create this sort of sun visor effect for these protruding roofs that allows you to really actually see the daylight rather than having to block it off. And then we said, okay, let's have the visitor path and the entrance area and the central core of the building is all in warmer materials and in wood and and more what you know from a boutique environment. And then the actual manufacturing space, which is more towards the window, is all in white and shades of grey and quite high tech lab like and minimalist. And it's really that juxtaposition between the more softer, warmer, welcoming core, and then the more let's say laboratory-like uh manufacturing space around it
Unknown . And do you think that gives the visitors a a partic particular experience as they kind of move through the the welcome areas into the factory space. Do you think it impacts maybe how they experience the actual manufacturing centers? Yeah definitely. We also we
Unknown want to do something s uh subtle to do with focus because as you're coming from the town center you'll see that our factory entrance is orientated towards the town center of Schaffhausen and then you enter this nine meter high lobby whereby your focus suddenly goes up and the scale goes up quite a bit and then step by step you focus down until you enter manufacturing at which point your focus is right on these minute small parts that you see at the beginning of the manufacturing tool making all the ebush parts, all the bridges and base blades, which are the smallest of the smallest parts and watch movement. And it's really that idea from opening up and then closing down and zooming in on a very minute detail of of watch making.
Unknown Yeah, I think I think you definitely get that feeling also coming from Schaffhausen here. And this building feels both at home and sort of of radical in a way in this in this space. I mean you have the the old town of Schaffhausen, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's an old town. Um and then driving out here, you see, you know, on along the way, some very modern, typical, uninspired, I guess, uh industrial parks. But then you get to this this big open field with these kind of lush you know tree covered hills and then this pavilion sitting kind of both in the landscape and on the landscape. It it has a really interesting kind of interaction with the with the site
Unknown . Yeah, it is partly a spaceship landed, definitely. And that's what we wanted it needed to be a standout moment in the environment as well to you know just highlight what we do here. And it's quite different from what goes on in these nondescript industrial buildings you you uh described. And at the same time I think it relates to the site quite a bit. It plays with the levels that we have the the the natural um gradient we have in the hill where we have all the heavy machining downstairs on the lower level which actually sits into the terrain and then we have all the technical backbone actually underground and then the the lighter watchmaking level which sits on top and sits at ground floor level and then the restaurant and penthouse up on the roof. And I think that reacts really well. And the way we orient it is make sure that all of the views, all the orientation towards the views is all in the green spaces. So where that built-up area is almost blocked out and you have two hundred seventy degrees of green spaces around it
Unknown Great. Yeah, I uh one thing I want to do, you know, if we can go go kind of back to earlier in in your story. You know, you said that you started working on this museum project and then some boutique projects and now years later we we have this. What kind of happened in that that intervening time? Yeah. How did you go from being you know working at an architecture firm, designing a museum on contract to being the CEO of the company. I wish I knew
Unknown . over the time is that what you do as an architect, and I described it a little bit, you know, you create this system of things that all play together to create one message and one story. And I think what you do as a curator and a guardian of a luxury brand, which is what a CEO essentially is here, is in many ways quite similar because you have to make sure that everything the client experiences, from the manufacturing to the events, to the website, to the catalogue, to everything else, tells the same story and they all become chapters of that same narrative. And the skills you need for that and that aesthetic feeling of what is essentially on brand and what is not is a major factor in how you run a brand like RWC. And I think what you learn as an architect, how to work and choreograph this entire experience is is is very close to what we do in the watch industry. And then of course there's many other skills uh which you need which you have to learn on the way and where you have very a very great team to support you. But essentially I think taste is one of those things that is very, very essential in our industry and that you can't really learn. You know, there's brands that I don't feel. They I don't I couldn't make a clear call on this is that brand or not that br
Unknown What what was something along the way in that journey where you said, okay wa,it, this is I have to know how to do this. Like what what was something challenging that you you kind of had to learn and and maybe struggled with a bit? Well finance definitely, you know, it
Unknown 's not something I had a natural background in finance and accounting at all. But something I found fascinating. But yeah, I did have a couple of lessons on the way with my colleagues where I said, You've got to explain this whole EBITDA thing to me and all the rest of it early on because you're not familiar with those terms. You know, you don't think in balance sheets and PL accounts and all the rest of it. So this was definitely something I had to get to grips with, the number crunching side of things. Um but it's equally fascinating because it gives you much more holistic picture on how all these different elements come together in a brand like RWC
Unknown . Yeah, I think I think that's interesting that you know you said that the the taste is something you can't learn, but these these other things are are kind of skills you can you can pick up along the way. Yeah. You can learn how to calculate a martin. You cannot learn how to create a perfect ballot watch that. So for for a lot of our listeners they may not realize, but a lot of you know you you have a lot of colleagues in other Richemont brands and an across the watch industry at the the CEO level. And a lot of them receive very similar training and come from very similar backgrounds. There's a handful, maybe three to five business schools. And then there's this kind of uh progression. It's almost like an old school apprenticeship system of you know you operate the brand in a smaller market and then you're moved to maybe be the CMO in a larger market and kind of you know work your way up this this zigzagging ladder across the globe to become the CEO. Do you find that your approach when you're interacting in a group or a larger industry s situation that you tend to approach things differently because you don't necessarily have that same kind of unified background or that uh your interactions with your colleagues are are informed by not having that similar background? Yeah I think you can always uh uh t
Unknown ell uh what's somebody's background and focus is, you know, somebody who's been working uh fifteen years of their career in retail, you can see a retail focus, people who are on the manufacturing side, you can see that. I think over time you develop expertise, but uh at the same time I don't think you get to that level unless you have a good holistic grasp of what running a brand is all about and is absolutely essential. What I do think so, I think the the dynamics of looking at resumes is changing. And for me, definitely when I recruit new talents to IWC, I will not have a checklist of previous brand experience or previous business school ticks where I say, okay, unless you have that, we're not even gonna talk. I think that's it's not productive in our environment because really what we need is first of all I need to understand if somebody gets who we are and what we're about. And as I said, I can't teach that. So there needs to be a basic understanding. And after that, I need to understand if somebody can think entrepreneurially, can think creatively, can be agile, act fast, work in a team and fit our cultural environment. And those things we always found over time are much more decisive than whether you have the master's degree of XYZ business school
Unknown .
Unknown Yes. No, I I think so. And I think the the the dynamic uh are changing because the environment is changing so fast as well. You know, when I I just got out my job description from a few years ago while I was flicking for some documents the other day and you know even six, eight months down the line probably the jobs we did had not much to do with So you're in this constantly dynamic changing environment where yes today we're doing certain things a certain way, but this may be radically different three months down the line. We opened this manufacturing center with a certain setup. We've changed twice already since we opened uh the configuration because we constantly learn new things. And in that you constantly need new skills, new outlook, new ideas, and that is much more important than having a very sound train
Unknown Yeah, this this idea of learning things and engaging with kind of what's around you uh is something that that I definitely associate with with you and with IWC these days. I wanted to talk about uh your Instagram profile uh and how you do it. We'll uh we'll also link this up in the show notes so people can check it out if they don't don't already follow you. But um you're not just actively posting on Instagram and posting from brand events and posting pictures of watches, but you've actually used your Instagram to launch products. Like products have come out of your engagement with customers and collectors on Instagram. Can you can you talk about that a little bit and kind of share some some stories?
Unknown Yeah, so in the beginning it was really um I was completely new to the Instagram space so prior to becoming a CEO I didn't even have an Instagram profile. Um out of the social media escape Instagram immediately appealed to me because it is visual and it is uh a picture uh content heavy, which is the way I think and the way I do things. So and I from the beginning I felt it was vitally important, despite having no experience whatsoever, to do this myself and to do it unplanned and to interact authentically with the audience. Otherwise I think this channel, you know, it's it's not just another corporate PR channel. It's it's either personal and it's from me or to me it didn't make any sense. So yes, I learned obviously the hard way how how to do things, what works, what do you think? I'm sure your PR team love that. Well yeah, I think there's the retail team that love me most for it because obviously sometimes I post things that lead to numerous phone calls to our various boutiques. And I've been asked many times to submit a content plan well in advance. And I explain time and again, my dear But what happened was basically you know we had um some sometimes you know I I post postp besoke things or things that I've had assembled and that we're testing and you know it just becomes part of the story. And there was this one incident what led to the uh tribute to 5002 uh Safari Watch um where I got an immediate cute feedback from the audience saying, Oh my god, it gotta make this and I I thought about it. I thought, Well, we had no plans of making this. So I thought about it for a while and then I committedness and well listen, if you get fifty people uh behind it who who want this watch, I'm more than happy to make it. And I think we had quite a few more than fifty uh very quickly who said, God put me on the list and who put the limitation numbers on all the rest of it and I went back to the team and we we talked about I said okay let's do it and I thought okay I'll give all these people who in the beginning said oh you know I'd like number twenty seven number twenty eight um we we give them a chance and developed a system how through DM we can have an Instagram embedded ordering reservation process that would be fulfilled via our boutiques. And that was happened very manually in a course of about 48 hours, those hundred watches were allocated and um some eight nine months later we managed to to deliver them all um via the boutiques and it's very interesting to see how at events globally it's always these these watches come out and people have started to identify all hundred of them on Instagram, try and find all the profiles and get them together. It's beautiful because that's an authentic, unplanned story that's really based on you know engagement with our clients, with our fans, and you know, it's it's it's just natural, you know.
Unknown Yeah, it's I I think we often in the in the watch industry run into this kind of old school mentality of there are markets, the markets are segmented, there's boutiques, there's retailers, there's kind of these constructs that we set up, and everything has to be done according to plan and according to the quote unquote like way of doing things. And I'm sure when you said, you know, we're gonna sell a hundred limited edition watches via Instagram, I'm sure there were people who who said, wait, what what? That's not that's not how we do things. How do you think, you know, kind of rethinking the the structure, the typical structure of things, um can kinda give you give you a leg up on connecting to consumers?
Unknown Yeah, I think we just we have to realize that the the path to purchase or that entire process is changing. You know, the way that our clients collect information and in the end make a decision to purchase a watch is very dynamic. And we see already even if we look at the figures this year, how much more web traffic is driven from social channels directly onto web and then you can argue how long is that going to be that way until it's fully embedded in social and I will change again after that. But what it does do is it just opens up new avenues for people to find things and a new way of creating uh brand similarities because what happens essentially is on one profile that you trust and value you find references to other brands and then you go and discover those and discover products that you love and that path to purchase is completely different from the traditional way where you depended on maybe a shop, for example, curating certain brands together and recommending this brand next to another one. Today, that journey of discovery is different, the engagement is different. Then you ask your friends. They're also following those accounts. They're commenting, they like the product, etc. And it creates new ways of interaction and new ways of purchasing. And I think that's just the reality of the space we're in today, that we're not in this monodirectional Yeah so we're we're recording this
Unknown in December and SIH is right around the corner. Um people will be hearing this after SIH so that we can have the following conversation, which is uh you know we we got to see uh yeah, exactly. Um yeah. Uh you know, this year at SIHH, you know, we got a little sneak peek uh here at the manufacturer this week, but um it's all about pilots this year, which is uh I think for me the thing I most associate with IWC. I mean it's it's the most quintessentially IWC family of watches. Absolutely. Um before we get into the specifics of of this year's releases, you know, the the pilot is so closely associated with IWC, and every few years you kind of reinvent and and breathe new life into this collection. How do you balance doing something that feels genuinely new and something that consumers and collectors should pay attention to without going so far so as to stray away from the things that make it what it is and make it your history.
Unknown Yeah, I think it's always a balancing game between continuity and your iconic designs, especially, and the reinvention around it, you know, and it's sort of the classic 60-40 split. You want to make sure it's it's essentially like having a Porsche 911 in your collection. You want to make sure you evolve that very gradually and not radically, but then you animate around that with newer designs that are fresher and different that become part of that family and that just take the natural next step of evolution. So I think we're going away from a system that we may have seen in the past at times where there's a radical relaunch every year of full collection, but it's more to add to these collections and animate and evolve them gradually to really give a continuous story
Unknown . Great. So now we will get into the weeds on this year's collection. So there there are essentially three families that have gotten, you know, uh I guess attention. Sure. Um can you walk us thro
Unknown ugh those those three families and kind of what the goals were for each of them? Yeah, so the main pillars really are the Spitfire collection this year. And the Spitfire Collection is all about that pure classic pilot's instrument watch with all in-house manufactured calibers. Then we have the Top Gun Collection. A top gun collection is the modern execution, the technical execution of the pilot's watch. And this tells the story of material innovations. So here we bring in colored ceramics and seritanium, which I'm going to talk about in a little bit. And then finally on the Santax Suiper Petit Prince, we have uh three new watches, one of them launching a completely new material for us, which is that hard red gold, which is actually up to ten times more wear and scratch resistant than conventional g
Unknown old.. Great And and you know Spitfire is for me of the of the three. They they each have things that make them appealing. But Spitfire to me feels I think the m the most interesting. Um and feels like it really does do a good job of balancing things that are new and and things that are old. Um for me the the biggest thing i are the new case sizes. I mean we have thirty-nine millimeter automatics and forty-one millimeter chronographs. Have you seen a lot of people wanting classic pilots just a little bit smaller
Unknown ? Yes, so it's a it's a anecdotal feedback we we definitely noticed. I also think that many wrist sizes, you know, this is a very wearable case size, especially in the 41, the chronograph that sits really well on a large variety of wrists. And I was really impressed so far with the feedback as well. You know, people are really taken to this slightly more moderate case case size, just slimming it down a little bit and making sure that you have that iconic pilots design in in maybe a bit more moderate case size. So so far I'm very, very impressed with the feedback and I think it is a really complimentary offering to what we already have in the pilots col
Unknown lection. And and those watches that exist are not going anywhere. There's still the Mark 18 and the classic pilots chronograph. Yes. And are we going to be seeing these in-house movements eventually maybe make their way over to those or is the goal to keep these things separate for now?
Unknown No, we'll have to see. I think in in pr in in principle we believe that there is is a space for both. You know, I think we cover quite a broad range of price points with IWC. Um, with uh our in-house movements now being available at more price points than before. Um, we we think that there is always space for both, and how this will
Unknown Is there a watch from the collection that's sort of your personal favorite, the one that you think you're probably going to end up wearing uh wearing the most? There is quite a few.
Unknown Actually one that I' Im'm very excited about is the uh Top Gun Double Chronograph Seritanium. Uh but if you wanted to talk about Spitfire, I think I actually really love that Time Zoner automatic. Uh the time zoner to me I I love the the openness and the pureness of that automatic dial uh with that convenience of the time zoner, which is something I can really do with, uh which helps a lot to be able to adjust the time quickly between different time zones and not make the movement stop. So essentially the the second keeps running yeah while you're changing time zone very simply and even across the date line you don't have to readjust the date which is very convenient when you arrive the other. And this is the the watch that uses the bezel to change. It uses the bezel, it's it's almost like a uh a pillbox opening mechanism of pushing the bezel down, then turning and releasing again. So it's it's a very very simple way to change time zones. And that uh combined with that 46mm quite prominent case, which I still love to wear, and the textile strap I think is a really interesting combination. On the top gun serotanium, for me, that is that classic RWC double chronograph, but in a material that combines all the best of titanium with all the best of ceramics. So you have a material that is basically a titanium titanium with a diffused ceramic layer that goes deep into the material that creates a scratch-resistant, break resistant, absolutely black metal. So you you know all the the the issues we have the DLC coatings, etc. that they rub off. You don't get that at all with seritanium. It cannot break, it cannot scrap scratch. And at the same time it allows us to make the small parts like pushes and crowns and pin buckles in that black material which we can't do in ceramic. So you see on our ceramic watches the pushes and crowns are titanium. On the seritanium, we can actually do those in all black as well.
Unknown Yeah, one of the watches that that I also really love and want to make sure we talk about is the the UTC is back. Yes. UTC is back? It's a classic IWC pilot. Absolutely. It's one that a lot of people love. I know quite a few people for whom that was their their first quote unquote nice watch. Yeah. Uh and then it disappeared for a little while, but we're we're getting that back uh this year. And I think it
Unknown you you can't have a credible pilots collection without a Zuliturm U UTC uh function because for pilots it's such an essential part of navigating and uh you know submitting flight plans and talking about weather and all the rest of it. So I wanted that back in the collection because it's one of the most essential and purest pilots watch complications there is. We haven't had it in the collection for quite some time, so I'm very happy it's back
Unknown . cases. We've seen a number of bronze watches over the last the last couple of years. It seems to be a pretty strong trend. Is this a case of you know you guys seeing this in the market and identifying, okay, this is this is a thing customers want. Let's give them a strong, a strong option, or was there some other rationale for for dec
Unknown iding to release it? We actually started um on the Aquatimer chronograph back in two thousand and thirteen, I think. Okay. Um the first bronze chronograph from IBC. And uh we then added the big pilot uh in twenty sixteen or seventeen in bronze. Um with and they were both big successes. And we found that the individual patina that you get on these cases is really something that appeals to customers because it makes the watch even more individual. It's it's it really takes on the wearer's identity in terms of uh your wearing behavior, how much sport, what climate you live in, etc. And uh we really felt that within the Spitfire the idea was to have that slightly warmer, more luxurious execution in the bronze with the olive green that goes extremely well together and it gives you a very warm feel from these watches together with the brown leather. And bronze was the ideal m uh ideal material. And then obviously being being sort of inspired by the memories of piloting this patina, you know, suits that that theme really well. We just want to make sure ours is is actually food hygiene standard. It's and we use titanium case bags. So it's from a wearability and health perspective, it's the best bronze material there is, and we make sure that for the finishing, which is now sandblasted, we actually give the future owners of this watch already a good impression of where the color is going to go. Because when you buy a watch in in polished bronze it's a long way away from the color it's going to have later on when it goes really dark. And with the uh sunblasted finish we have on the cases I, think it's much closer to the reality of the watch when you wear it.
Unknown So to zoom back out a little bit, um, you know, IWC is is a company that has has a a rich history of diverse marketing and partnerships. Um, and this is something I think a lot of people know and and associate with the brand. There's the the Mercedes AMG partnership, there's the motorsports side, there's the partnership with Spitfire, there's a long connection to the film industry and the movies. I think it's tempting for some people to see this and say, oh, it's it's all marketing. It's just something to fill advertisements. But you know I' Id'd like to think there's there's more to it than that. Definitely. Um and I wonder if you can talk about you know from from your perspective other than giving you some you know faces to put in your in your adverts, what do you think this adds to the experience of of owning an IWC
Unknown ? Well I think it i i it adds a lot because we have you know our history is uh as the engineer of fine watch making is slightly different from the artisan approach to watch making so we were always problem solving watchmakers. And also when you look at our geographic location here, we are actually very close to the German car industry, which just you know AMG being an hour and a half up the road. So there is a proximity in mindset and in in an approach that is quite striking between engineering that is in the car and aviation industry and our type of engineering. At the same time, you know, the the whole story of the pilots watch has started with Homberger's son, our owners in the thirties, both being qualified pilots who basically wanted to create that first pilot's watch that set it all off. Essentially many of the stories we tell are about a human machine relationship, be it in racing, be it in in the Portuguese with navigation, be it in pilots. And we are really, really um concerned with creating authentic stories that people can experience. So every part of it, whether you're talking about Tob Gun, which is watches for the new US Naval Elite aviators, whether it's about Spitfire, which now has a Boatby Flight Academy as the only Spitfire flight school behind it that's gonna take a Spitfire around the around the world next year, or whether you talk about our racing watches that have both the Formula One team and AMG and Mercedes Classic Racing and all the rest of it behind it. It's a great story that talks about engineering an incredibly precise product where you need a lot of vision and then hard work, and in the end, you have great adventure. And that's a story that appeals to people generally. But we take it much, much further than just talking about it in ads. So with us, whether you have a flight experience in Spitfire or whether you experience classic racing with us in Goodwood, all of this becomes part of our story that we live together with our clients. You know, and that gives it an authenticity that people immediately understand and that I think is much more engaging than just using a partnership or face to say look this watch was inspired by Spitfire. No, this is what is Spitfire. It is the story nowadays.
Unknown And specifically with with Spitfire while we're talking about that, you have a a pretty cool activation with them coming up this year, don't you? Absolutely. Yeah. So
Unknown there's the uh idea of the longest flight, and really this came from a conversation that we've had all the way back in twenty ten, where we were looking at different partnerships with with the aviation industry, and we came across the Spitfire School and we said, look, we're really interested one day to tell the engineering story of Spitfire and the design story rather than just talking about the military heritage. And then we bumped into each other again last year in the hangout in Goodwood and said, Hey look what we're doing. We're actually refurbishing one of these Spitfires uh from 1943 to an all-polished exterior that completely focuses on the design and engineering of that beautiful aircraft. And we're gonna take it around the world. We said immediately, wow, this is the the perfect way now to to come together and work on that. And that led to this project, The Longest Flight, which from next August is gonna see the Spitfire travel to over 50 countries with huge amount of stopovers, obviously because also the limited range of that aircraft. And many countries Spitfire has never ever been before. And highlighting really the story of engineering and design to audiences all over the planet
Unknown . Great. Well I want I wanna you know circle around to something that's not watch related uh before we start to wrap things up. I know you you still have pre uh pre-Christmas meetings to uh to get to so you can get to your holiday. But uh one thing I wanted to talk about is I I know you collect something that's not watches. Can we talk about that for uh for a minute? If we must
Unknown . So what do you collect? So I collect oh god, here we go. I I I collect um toy cars from Hot Wheels on Mattel matchbox. So that's something I fell into by pure accident and I think I was really into them as a child. And I've rediscovered that when my son was born back in two thousand nine and then it's grown into something that's much bigger than my wife would probably want it to be. But um yeah, I think again um it's very interesting what's happening in that space. And uh you know, there used to be when Hot Wheels came to the market in 1968, they actually took the static model car that was already plentiful in 164 scale and turned it into two things. A, it was really inspired by a lifestyle trend rather than automotive engineering. So it was a hot rod culture in California that led to this idea of creating interpretations of cars that are just much more appealing and much cooler. And that sort of reflect on the fashion and culture of the time. And at the same time, a toy that's fast and that actually works and that's actually the fastest wheels out there. So the play value was upped by millions, and it became the biggest selling toy in the world, and it's also the biggest car manufacturer in the world with the output. And that fascinated me. The way it's not just a replica, but it interprets what car culture stands for at any given moment in time. And you can really track that through their designs. And today when you look at all the partnerships from Magnus Walker to Period Correct and all the lifestyle partnerships, our hot wheels are forging with all different companies from the fashion space, the auto racing space, all that uh Rauweld uh Begriff stuff from Japan, these extreme tuned pores, etc. It's really a contemporary reflection of what car culture is and what it means to people. And that in a toy as an aspirational object, I always found fascin That's
Unknown super cool. No, it's super, super cool. And I I thought about doing some research before coming to talk to you, but I figured instead of me doing the research, I would make you tell me the research. I think it'd be more interesting for our listeners. Um I wonder what what makes a good or desirable Hot Wheels car as a collector? Like what are you looking for when you're collect
Unknown ing between them and many other model cars is they look dynamic, they look like they're speeding even when they're standing still. And then you have something which is quite unique um because I relate to it from our space, the best hot wheels really feel like yours. They're at the end of the day a one dollar toy and that's incredible. They've been one dollar since nineteen sixty eight since they first came in. And they're still one dollar? They're still one dollar even ninety eight cents. Not in any other markets, you know, if you go to Switzerland, UK, etcetera, they're much more. But in the US, essentially they're still 98 cents. And the fascinating thing despite that is also that um it has pre-empted the drop culture that you see from all major fashion brands nowadays, Hotwell's been doing this since 1968. Everything they do is essentially a one-shot that gets manufactured, used to be manufactured in Hong Kong, Thailand, now being manufactured in Malaysia. And it goes into a case set selection, which is curated by hand. So each case comes with seventy-two cars, they're hand picked by almost like the same job profile as a whiskey blender blender. And then in there they have what they call a super treasure hunt. And this is like a one in 30,000 car with special finish that is hidden, like the golden ticket in Willy Wonka's chocolate factories, hidden in these different sets and then shipped out of Malaysia. Nobody knows where they're gonna show up. And after that, some things may only ever appear in Brazil or Canada or Europe, and other things you may never see, and when they're gone, they're gone. So there's no ordering of specific models, there's nothing. Unless you find them, or later on buy them on eBay for inflated prices. If you're not there, when they drop, you don't get it. And we had the the other day there is a collaboration with um period correct in uh out of uh Costa Mesa in in in LA and they did a hundred ninety evolution Mercedes Benz, which is super iconic with period correct delivery. It sold out on the website in under a minute. And it they're crazy, you know, it was a Saturday morning, nine a.m. I actually got shut down during the payment process. I had it in my basket and it did on nine o'clock sharp, and during just entering the PayPal details, sold out bong. And it's the success that a basic toy car, a one-dollar toy, gathers today, is quite amazing. And I think the design team there, they've done an absolutely incredible job at making keeping that relevant. That's super super cool. It's my geeky side. There
Unknown we go. And so talking about the geeky side, are you a mint in box kind of guy or do you open them up? I open them up. Yeah. Because I want to enjoy them. I want to roll them across my des
Unknown k and I want to see what they look like in action. And do you find has your son gotten into it as well? No, he hates it. Really? No, I think I I overexposed him to uh to to the cast so early on that now what he actually does he plays Lego But Lego is a good toy for the the son of an architect. Um because Lego gives you obviously great, great creativity and in and building and all the possibilities and that
Unknown 's another fascinating toy. So we we usually wrap the show up by asking for a cultural recommendation for something that you recommend our readers go check out afterwards. But I I want to kind of riff on that idea this time and ask you: what is your Grail Hot Wheels car? What is the car that you just
Unknown No, there's obviously there is a host of special releases that never see the public eye. Starting with what Mattel does in El Seganda once a year is a toy fair for their dealers. They release models there that are incredibly hard to find. And then they have models that only go to their key employees and manufacturing to say thank you once here. And in 2016 there was a Porsche 911 GT3RS that actually had white dish wheels on a pure white exterior that comes in a little display case. I have not found this once anywhere available for sale. If somebody of you Dinky listeners got one let me know. Yeah if anybody knows seriously uh tweet out as that would be one um I I would absolutely go for straight away. Any chance we see an IWC uh hot wheels? I'm working on it. You're working on it? Yes. Because obviously the partnership with Mercedes-Benz AMG helps a little bit here. So Perfect. Yes. I would love to do that
Unknown . Amazing. Great. Well, thank you for taking the time. I know it's it's busy pre-SIHH and uh by now everyone's seen the collections and uh we'll link up to some of our our coverage of the new collections too. So thanks so much. It's always a pleasure to uh to sit down and chat. Thank you, Stephen. Great to have you. Thanks a lot. This week's episode was recorded at the new IWC Manufacturers Entram in S Schophausen,witzerland, and was produced and edited by Grayson Corhona. Please remember to subscribe and rate the show. It really does make a difference. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.