Montblanc's Future: Jerome Lambert's Vision

In an interview of the French newspaper Le Figaro published today, Jerome Lambert brought some important news about the future projects of Montblanc and gave some hints about the 2014 collection. The full interview can be found here (sadly, in French):

www.lefigaro.fr



Some important data:

His first mission is to encourage a more daring design
Montblanc has a staff of 3500 employees with 450 boutiques in the world. It is the second largest company of Richemont.
1000 persons work on the design and making of the writing instruments
The leather activity is based in Firenze with a staff of 50 people
Watchmaking has a staff of 200 persons based in Swatzerland, the activity was launched in 1997.
2 sites as you know: Le Locle and Villeret
The after-sales service has the best (ie the lowest) rate within Richemont (I thought it was Cartier)

His second mission is to reinforce the presence of the company in geographic areas like Middle-East and South America

In november 2014, a new leather collection will be launched, l'Atelier, which will propose semi-finished products to be personalized

The turnover breakdown is:

writing instruments: 45%
leather: 25%
watchmaking 25%
others (jewelry etc...): 5%

Within 3 years, the three main activities will have the same share

Montblanc produces 80,000 watches per year and 350,000 belts

The 50 watchmakers at Villeret produce 50 watches per year


SIHH 2014:

A new line will be launched: Heritage which will be made of 5 models.

A chronograph monopoussoir with a caliber signed by Villeret in a LE with a price of 27.000 euros
A simple automatic watch with a price below 2.000 euros
A moonphase watch with a price of 3.400 euros
A PC watch with a price of 10.000 euros

The prices were set to be highly competitive in order to attract clients who have the passion for fine watchmaking. Within 3 years, the Heritage line would represent the third part of the watchmaking sales figures of Montblanc.

In Fall 2014, a highly complicated watch will be launched and also a new ladies' watch.

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I thought that these news were very important so I decided to quickly translate the main sentences of the interview which gives a lot of interesting data about the present and the future of the company. Of course, we will follow very closely the development of the ambition of Montblanc under the leadership of Jerome Lambert.

Fx