Essay: Breitling product catalogue changes

Amongst the most significant changes wrought within the watch world’s boardrooms, Georges Kern’s move from group head of watchmaking at Richemont to CEO of Breitling has undeniably been the most riveting. With the backing of the private equity group CVC Capital Partners, which acquired an 80 percent stake in Breitling last year, Kern has great plans for the 134-year-old brand, beginning with a complete overhaul of its collections and a new advertising campaign, slated to debut in June.
The astute CEO has clipped Breitling’s famous ‘wings’ with a new logo and consigned the brand’s notoriously macho, sexist image to history. He has also shelved most of Breitling’s quartz offerings to focus on competing in the $3,500-$8,000 segment. Breitling, according to Kern, had been focusing too narrowly on aviation to the exclusion of other fields it has played in historically. And the variety of minor variations on offer has simply been confusing and untenable.
Rectifying this meant reducing the catalogue from an unwieldy 600 references to nearer 100. Designed to extend Breitling’s reach beyond aviation, the brand now consists of four distinct collections that are delineated in terms of style and function – the Navitimer (air), the Superocean (sea), the Premier (land, more elegant), and the Chronomat (all-purpose) – making it easier for consumers to digest and buy.
The complication that will continue to define the brand is the chronograph. Breitling played a key role in the development of the modern chronograph wristwatch, being behind breakthroughs such as the creation of a separate push-button for the chronograph’s start/stop/reset functions in 1915, and subsequently in 1923, the separation of the start/stop function from the reset function. And, that a Breitling Navitimer was actually the first Swiss wrist chronograph to go to space – accompanying American astronaut Scott Carpenter on his 1962 orbital flight – remains a fact to crow about.
One of Kern’s key hires has been Guy Bove as creative director, who was most recently at Chopard and Ferdinand Berthoud but had worked at IWC for six years with Kern. His meticulous approach to detail, knack for fusing vintage elements and obsession with typefaces is evident in both the new branding and the watches.
The first collection created under their leadership was the Navitimer 8. The “8” comes from the “Huit Aviation” atelier established in 1938 to focus on cockpit instruments and watches, the name deriving from the eight-day power reserve that was standard for cockpit clocks.
The Navitimer 8 collection consists of five models: the B01, the Unitime, the Chronograph, the Day & Date, and the Automatic. Designed to honor Breitling’s well-known aviation heritage, the new Navitimer also reflects some of the brand’s new objectives. To that end, the Navitimer’s slide-rule bezel, a defining characteristic of its predecessors, has been deep-sixed in favour of a basic pilot’s watch.
The other point of reference for the new collection was the historical ref. 768. which served as inspiration for a lot of dial details such as the typeface of the luminous Arabic numerals. All watches feature a notched rotating bezel with its inset arrow and the railway track, which are retro without being studiedly so. The watches retain the generous 41mm and 43mm sizes but are considerably more muted in terms of colour and design.
Underneath the hood, the chronograph watches will be powered by either its in-house B01 movement or the Valjoux variant. For clarity, watches with the in-house movement will have a contrasting subdials while those with the Valjoux movements will have the tone-on-tone design.
At Baselworld, Breitling added another two models to the Navitimer collection – the Navitimer 1 Automatic 38 and the Navitimer Super 8, as well as the Superocean Héritage II and Chronomat B01. With the Navitimer 1, the brand’s smallest Navitimer to date, Breitling undoubtedly has its sights on the female as well as Asian market, which heretofore had been massively neglected by the brand. The watch is the first in the revamped collection to feature the “beads of rice” bezel and slide rule, two key elements found on the original Navitimer. But in keeping with the overarching exercise in simplicity, the watch in turn forgoes the chronograph.
The Navitimer Super 8 is a destro that reaches deep into the brand’s heritage vaults, which Kern is bent on cashing in on. It takes inspiration from an obscure military watch, the ref. 637, a thigh-borne stopwatch used by bomber pilots during the Second World War. At 46mm, it is the biggest watch to be launched under the new leadership.
Previously powered by the Valjoux 7750, the brand’s chronograph diver’s watch, the Superocean Héritage II has now been equipped with the in-house B01 movement while the Chronomat B01 now boasts more tool-esque appearances, with a satin-brushed steel case and more subdued dial colours.
Apart from the product, the retail sector of the brand has also experienced a revamp, with a series of ‘Breitling Lofts’ to be rolled out globally. The brand will also be making its debut on Richemont-owned Mr Porter next month. While it remains to be seen if its “Legendary Future” is an achievable reality, the strength of the new direction almost makes it a shoo-in.