iW interview: Dare & Defy With Zenith CEO Julien Tornare

When it debuted in September, the Zenith Defy Lab’s bleeding-edge mechanical component design quickly advanced the conversation around the future of mechanical watchmaking.

As we described in our initial coverage of that groundbreaking watch the Defy Lab’s oscillator, made of silicon, replaces the jewels, lever, escape wheel, balance, pallet fork and other tiny components that traditionally set the pace for the energy transferring from the mainspring barrel to the hands. It’s a breathtaking example of how watchmakers today are utilizing entirely new components to attack the age-old technical limitations of traditional Swiss lever escapements.

The Zenith Defy Lab limited edition, which also took home the innovation prize at the 2017 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève in November, exemplifies Zenith’s longstanding pursuit of precision and innovation, according to Zenith CEO Julien Tornare. Expect to see more of the Defy’s silicon skeleton in the very near future, he adds.

We caught up with the globetrotting CEO during a recent visit to New York. Below are excerpts from our interview in which Tornare discussed the Defy Lab, ladies’ watches and what to expect in 2018 from Zenith.

How does Zenith plan to utilize the Defy Lab?

We debuted the watch with its new oscillator with ten unique pieces, but in the future we will use this same mechanism within our industrial production– probably next year. We should have a limited edition first, possibly of 200 or 250 units.

We want to continue to show that this mechanism is the most precise available in comparison to all mechanical watches. Our latest tests show accuracy to within one second per day. And this is constant, all the way through the fifty-five hour power reserve. I had a watchmaker at the lab who said he had never thought he would see these results. We are challenging (the precision of) quartz.

We will be able to use this system in many ways. But I want to go step-by-step and make it right. This is called Defy Lab because it is just out of the laboratory.

You are buying parts of the research, in a way. From the very beginning I told Mr. Biver that that I did not want to have just a concept watch. I want it to be in the regular collection. I want to go step-by-step.

What major difficulties became evident as the Defy was being developed?

The challenge was how to cut this plate of silicon to obtain that exact level of precision. We feel there is no way someone else can copy it either. You need to be so exact that without the formula you cannot do this. If you make a tiny mistake in the way you cut the plate, it will not work.

Now the challenge is to get that exact shape in an industrial production. To make 1,000 watches, for instance, we need to work in a different way then we did to make ten. This is what we are working on at the moment.

Has this raised Zenith’s profile in the U.S.?

We feel we haven’t had such a buzz for Zenith in many years. Even earlier this year at Basel, with the Defy 21 El Primero we also had an amazing reaction.

In the United States the Zenith name can be confusing because of the television reference. We need to be creative. We need to do a few things in the United States. We will work on the distribution, and we will gather and sit with the key retailers and dealers. We will very openly share our strategy with them.

Many brands in recent years have forgotten their key dealers. I think that is a big mistake. I want to give them margins and let them know that we are behind them. And, buyers want more than just mono-brand boutiques.

I have been traveling for many months, and dealers have told me they don’t see many people coming to visit them from watch company headquarters. I want to build those relationships. When they have twenty-five or thirty brands to sell, the emotional link with any single brand is very important. And this is totally underestimated by watch companies today.

I believe Zenith has great potential. I also believe that in recent years pricing for many brands has become ridiculous. Brands lost many clients, and are now trying to adjust. This is difficult in the luxury business; it’s tough to go down in price. At Zenith we don’t really have this problem because we didn’t take advantage of the boom in sales in China to raise our prices.

We could have sold this Defy Lab at a much higher price (its list price was approximately $31,000), but as I told Mr. Biver, we have to keep in mind our long-term goals of offering the right price for the right piece. For these debut Defy Labs, each of the ten buyers not only get the piece but it also a first class ticket to see us and have dinner with Mr. Biver.

I don’t believe customers will pay for anything at any price. I saw this while I was based in China. Second-generation Chinese customers no longer want to pay those very high prices like many of their parents did. This is a big shift and I am convinced that many brands will have to adjust.

Can you summarize why customers should consider a Zenith watch?

Many manufacturers in our price range don’t make everything in-house as we do. If you want one hundred percent in-house manufacturing with top level finishing you generally need to pay twice as much. This is clearly the strength of our brand, and we have to let people know that when they buy a Zenith they buy top-end quality, 100 percent in-house manufacturing, and at an affordable price.

The same goes for watches in smaller sizes. Should a brand like Zenith create a very feminine ladies line, or should we continue to work more on the men’s watches, but offer a feminine touch? Are women buying feminine watches or are they buying men’s watches that they also want to wear?

Thirty or forty years ago you had cars for men and cars for women, but today that doesn’t mean anything. Women are buying large SUVs, and the men are buying Mini Coopers. If you take a nice Zenith Chronomaster, and imagine it with a pastel color, we can offer this to women. Another example is our pilot watch. We simply change the strap and increase our sales to women dramatically. In my opinion this is a better idea then creating a new dedicated line for women.

I understand Zenith is expanding at its Le Locle headquarters. Is this true?

We want to create a hotel at our headquarters. Zenith has eighteen different buildings. One of them, the founders building, has been empty for many years and we want to refurbish it and turn it into a small top class hotel with five or six rooms. This is to welcome VIPs and press and dealers in the company’s founder’s house. And for a little bit of fun, we discovered a natural water source underneath the building, which we will bottle for our own Zenith water.