Saturn
1177
Breguet are opening more boutiques...
which I guess for most of you is probably old news.
"However, respect for tradition is certainly not synonymous with stagnation! The new Breguet owner intends to make the illustrious watchmaker's known and admired all over the world: by boosting sales of the brand which are forecast to rise from around 8000 pieces this year with turnover of just under 100 million francs to around 25,000 timepieces worth 500 million in ten years time; by creating a network of around thirty Breguet boutiques in the most prominent cities (the first was recently opened in Paris, pending further inaugurations in Cannes, Tokyo, New York and London, to say nothing of Zurich and Geneva); by launching a new promotional campaign focussing on the brand's famous customers (beginning with Napoleon and Winston Churchill) or writers who made reference to it (Alexander Pushkin and Stendhal for instance)."
(Test from http://www.fhs.ch/english/Ebreguet.htm)
I think it's quite an interesting strategy opening all these boutiques and that it could well pay off. I'd love to see what kind of costs are being incurred in this process, though (one thing's for sure - it ain't gonna be cheap). I expect that limiting the number of Breguet agents was the first step in clearing up the grey-market problem that Breguet had, and they seem to have dealt with this now, but extending this process to opening their own boutiques and controlling effectively every stage of production (well, a not insubstantial part of the retail segment anyway) is another story altogether. Brave move for Swatch Group - hope it pays off for them.
Any thoughts on this?
Regards,
Andrew.