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| Watches |
Watchmaker’s Renaissance
James D. Malcolmson
01/01/2004
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Breguet’s troubled history leaves the collector to confront a remarkable chasm in the value of the historical pieces. Original Abraham-Louis Breguet timepieces—of which only a few hundred survive—represent a theoretically perfect collectible commodity. Extremely rare, many have appealing historical qualities or impeccable provenances that make them the indisputable highlights of auctions. "One thing we shouldn’t forget," explains Aurel Bacs, international cohead of the watch department at Christie’s, "is that the Breguets that are currently flying at auction are almost all unique pieces—literally unique—more unique than [the watches] any other brand made in the 18th and 19th centuries. A watch selling for $250,000 is rarely unique."
 One would be hard-pressed to apply this adjective to many of the com-pany’s later models. The brand Nicholas Hayek’s Swatch Group purchased had a few fine pieces, a great name and obvious potential, but was fundamentally sick. Although the complicated pieces were admired, many of the less expensive ones were viewed as mediocre in design, or worse yet, beset with technical problems that made them a service nightmare. The perception that the company used outsourced movements at a time when collectors were putting a premium on the idea
of an in-house manufacture also hampered it.
As with many rebranded vintage timepieces, the lack of distinction in either their design or mechanics prevents them from appreciating in the same fashion as pieces from the most highly regarded houses. And so for those who purchase a modern Breguet still in production, the emotional return on investment (the satisfaction of owning the watch), as much as the financial return, depends on the future reputation and health of the house. The owners of these watches are, in a sense, stakeholders in the prestige of the brand, and as such, the success or failure of Hayek’s revival efforts are as crucial to their emotional investment as to the company’s future sales.
Fickle distribution strategy restricted these sales in the past. At retail in the United States, the brand was whipsawed between pricing that exceeded other markets worldwide on one hand and rampant discounting on the other. "In the United States, we had a distributor who was not as passionate about the brand as we are ourselves," explains Hayek. "He did not have the service that we would have provided for our clients and certainly his public prices for Breguet were higher than the rest of the world. What they were trying to do was to make money quickly. Many of the people under the previous management were motivated to produce quick profits, not build a long-term brand."
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