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 The new moon at Omega

In line with my general opinion on the “new” BaselWorld, the Swatch Group Plaza, nestled at the heart of the global brands in Hall 1, looked new, yet strangely familiar. Omega’s new stand, visible in the distance as soon as you enter the hall, was significantly bigger but maintained the brand’s familiar red and cream colour codes. A remodelled entrance, with two small openings guarded by in-house security guards chosen from the more muscular members of staff, ensured an orderly admission of guests. Beyond the security check, Jean-Claude Monachon, Omega’s Vice-President and Head of Product Development, presented the brand’s latest releases to Europa Star.
He started by revealing a few more details about the brand’s new anti-magnetic movement presented earlier this year. We already knew that the balance spring, like in all the brand’s co-axial calibres, was made out of silicon. But now we know that the true innovation is the new Nivagauss^TM antimagnetic material developed by Nivarox, which is used for the pallets staff, the staff of the co-axial wheel and all other staffs and pivot points. The co-axial escape wheel and its pinion are made of LIGA, while the pallets itself is made of another, still secret, non-magnetic material. Omega is a little cagey about the materials used because the final choices still need to be made for the production series, which should be in stores by October this year. The brand aims to have all co-axial calibres non-magnetic by 2017.

Omega’s emphasis at the show was on the Speedmaster collection, with the launch of the first Speedmaster model in ceramic. When Pink Floyd recorded their album “Dark Side of the Moon” in 1973, little could they have known that a watch with lunar credentials would bear the same name 40 years later. But this is indeed the inscription on the polished ceramic case back above the see-through sapphire crystal aperture. The brand also presented a new collection called Speedmaster ’57, inspired by the original Speedmaster with its symmetrical case (the crown and pushers stand proud from the case middle, whereas they were later semi-enclosed in an asymmetric case) but brought up to date with Omega’s high-end 9300/9301 co-axial column-wheel chronograph calibre.

 Stephen Urquhart - “Cautiously optimistic”

Just before BaselWorld, Omega presented a new advertising campaign that showed the brand’s various marketing activities using computer-animated images made up of the individual components of the brand’s unique co-axial escapement movement. Europa Star talked to Omega’s president Stephen Urquhart about the importance of the co-axial calibre, the company’s major sports sponsorships and his outlook for the future.

Stephen Urquhart

Europa Star: To coincide with the start of BaselWorld, Omega presented a new advertising campaign dedicated to your co-axial escapement movement, which is now fitted to all your mechanical watches except for the Speedmaster Moon Watch. Does this signal a certain maturity of the technology?
Stephen Urquhart: The mechanical watch movement as we know it today has been around in the same form for over 200 years and we cannot really change it. What we can do is try to improve it where we can. George Daniels did improve it considerably with his co-axial escapement but there is a big difference between what he did and what we are producing now. It has really been industrialised now and we are producing around 450,000 pieces a year. When we first launched the co-axial we needed a few years to get it right and then we launched our first in-house version in 2007. So now we have a track record of six years and we can see its advantages from a quality control perspective and in the low number of returns.

And this is reflected in the four-year warranty on the co-axial movement, which is twice the industry norm…
SU: Yes, we could even give a longer guarantee. We are very confident in this movement. It’s difficult to convey the advantages to the customer on a technical level, but at the end of the day this movement will need less servicing than a conventional mechanical watch. Even compared with other Omega movements, where we have the same levels of quality and dedication put into the manufacture, we can see that the co-axial is a definite improvement.

Presumably the sales staff now have experience of the co-axial, which helps them to sell it?
SU: Definitely. We could not have sold the co-axial movement with the distribution we had ten years ago. Now we have our own flagship stores with highly trained staff who can explain the movement.

“We sell 20 per cent of our watches through our own stores now, which means that we have direct contact with 20 per cent of our customers.”

Are you satisfied with your current distribution network?
SU: I think the best two decisions Omega took were to develop the co-axial movement and to open its own flagship stores. I think the customer wants mono-brand stores and we have a good network. u u But retail is a different business and it’s not easy to sell watches. Here in Basel we don’t really sell the watches, we just transfer them to a retailer who puts them into a safe. It’s in retail where the watches are actually sold and we have learned a lot from this. We sell 20 per cent of our watches through our own stores now, which means that we have direct contact with 20 per cent of our customers.

China and Chinese buyers abroad are a very important customer group for Omega. How sensitive are you to changes in China?
SU: Remember that China used to be a third world economy and look at how it is growing now. Of course it cannot keep growing at ridiculous rates, since that would lead to inflation like we saw in Latin America a few years ago. But I would be more than happy with five per cent growth. How many other countries in the world at the moment are enjoying five per cent growth?

Are you already gearing up for the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016?
SU: Of course! We opened three stores in Brazil earlier this year, two in Rio and one in Sao Paolo. They are Omega corporate stores so we sell directly to the stores and there is no middleman. We are not bypassing anybody because we don’t have a subsidiary in Brazil and the prices are benchmarked against Miami, so they are competitive. And we are selling maybe a watch a day, which is not bad. It’s a beginning.

How discernible an effect does your official timekeeping role at the Olympic Games have on the brand?
SU: It’s difficult to judge. Beijing was good for China and it came just before the subprime crisis, so we cannot say what it would have been like without the subprime. The Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver were difficult; London was great. But we don’t see surges in sales like we do when a new James Bond film comes out. It’s more about brand building.

What is your forecast for business in 2013?
SU: I’m cautiously optimistic. There are a lot of problems in Europe but the US market is improving and I think people underestimate the US consumers’ knowledge of and interest in watches. I’ve been travelling to the US a lot over the past couple of years and I’ve seen this interest first hand. We really were lagging behind there and it is now a priority market for us.

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