Antoine Pin
Aside from being the 40th anniversary of the Formula 1 this year, it's also the 10th anniversary of the TAG Heuer Enthusiast Blogspot. Can you believe I've been doing this for ten years already? And in that time how many CEOs do you think TAG Heuer has had? Well if you guessed five, well done. First we had Jean Claude Biver (2014-2018), then Stephan Bianchi (2019-2020), Frederic Arnault (2020-2023), Julien Tornare (2024) and finally Antoine Pin (2024-25/26). Which means TAG Heuer heads into 'LVMH Watch Week 2026' without a CEO.
Prior to this Jean Christophe Babin ran the company from 2000 until 2013 and then Stéphane Linder briefly took over until Jean Claude Biver was persuaded to sprinkle some of that famous 'Biver' magic on the brand. I guess I am biased since I really fell in love with TAG Heuer when Mr Biver was in control (I even named one of my cats 'Mr Biver' believe it or not) but I've never really felt any of the gentleman that followed him really spoke to me the way he did.
But then Mr Biver is one of a kind. A giant of the Swiss watch industry, who has the success (and personal wealth) behind him to forge his own path. I somehow doubt Mr Biver was looking over his shoulder the whole time he was in control of LVMH...
Jean Claude Biver TAG Heuer CEO 2014-2018
(Actually it has since emerged that Antoine left the company after an investigation into his professional conduct, which I am sure you can read more about elsewhere.)
Who knows what that means, but it does suggest some difference in opinion about where TAG Heuer is heading and how to get there. Being that LVMH has traditionally been very much a 'luxury' brand I wonder if Antoine was perhaps suggesting the way to get TAG Heuer back on track was to focus more on the lower end (or 'affordable luxury' as Mr Biver loved to call it) rather than pushing Monacos into the £10k bracket?
If you speak to any sales person at any AD or TAG Heuer boutique you generally get the same message time after time; they sell a few Monacos and Carreras, but for the most part the F1s and the Aquaracers are what actually goes out of the door. Which is understandable, £6-7000 is a lot to spend on a watch, hell £1500 is a lot to spend on a watch (that nobody actually needs), especially in this economy.
Watch enthusiasts (of course) are always full of opinions on 'where TAG Heuer goes wrong', this usually involves the words 'skeleton dials', 'diamonds', 'quartz', 'oversize' and their solutions usually include the words 'Heuer', 'elegant', 'chronographs', 'long lugs' and '36mm'. I swear if any of these people ever took over TAG Heuer they would discontinue almost everything and the company would be closed within a quarter.
But, without being privy to sales figures for individual models it's hard for us on the outside to know exactly what direction would be best to take, but while we here in the West might shake our heads when we see yet another £30k+ tourbillon or another garish Carrera Extreme Sport model being launched, we have to remember that TH is a global brand and that tastes differ from country to country and not every new release is aimed at 'us'.
I think it's worth pointing that out because time and again I hear that this is where TH is going wrong, and I don't think it's necessarily correct. I've been told by salespeople that, for instance, the skeleton Carreras are very popular in Asia, so just because they don't sell well in your town/country doesn't mean they aren't a good product.
I also think TAG Heuer's troubles (a reported $50m loss in the last financial year, on a turnover of something close to $1bn) are indicative of wider problems in the watch world, stemming from the Covid pandemic; the short lived watch 'bubble' (that has now predictably burst), a surfeit of 'up front' business (a result of non-enthusiast people finally buying that 'one' special watch with money they couldn't spend on holidays in 2020-2022), the simple fact that having sold so many watches over the last few years the market is somewhat saturated and, of course, the rising prices putting watches out of people's reach, even if they want to buy them.
Aside from the pressures of rising material costs, the other thing that happened during Covid was that Rolex realised that people were willing to pay way more for their products than they ever believed... and so began the above inflationary price rises. Unfortunately the other brands took this as a green light that their products also needed to go up (if nothing else than to maintain their position in the pricing hierarchy). And so we now see Monacos at almost £10k and TH tourbillons in the mid £30k bracket...
I can't help thinking that whoever takes over the role of CEO at TAG Heuer has a big job on their hands, trying to please a multitude of different tastes and preferences while also riding the tightrope between 'luxury' pricing and the 'entry level' offerings that seems to be where the majority of the brand's sales ACTUALLY come from.
Sometimes it almost feels like TAG Heuer are ashamed of some of their customer base. I noticed on my last visit to the Oxford Street boutique that the entry level Formula 1s are right at the back of the store. Like, right at the back, nearly out of the back door, like they don't even want you to see them. What's all that about? If you're so embarrassed stop selling them, or just sell them in ADs
But okay, maybe Oxford Street is a special case, and those coming in to pick up their solid gold Carrera or maybe even their Monaco Rattrapante might not really want to be reminded that TAG Heuer also sell watches that normal people can afford.
But if they want to be 'high end' then what are they doing reissuing the resin case Formula 1? This is the very watch that started all the problems, a watch that (despite it's phenomenal success) it feels like TAG Heuer spent thirty years trying to put behind them. Sure the new version is much better quality than the original, but it's also vastly more expensive. And there's a surprising number of (very) limited edition models still readily available.
Where do we go from here then? A return to affordable luxury? Or even more luxury? Does TAG become a value proposition again or something we simply can't comprehend buying until someone else has taken the (inevitable) depreciation. Ah yes, that's something I didn't even touch on, but it's important to be aware of because how long can TAG Heuer expect people to spend £10k on a watch knowing that it loses at least 30% of it's value the second it leaves the showroom? Or perhaps more pertinently, how long can TAG Heuer expect people to buy new when they know barely worn current models can be picked up at a huge saving pre owned?
And how many 'upmarket luxury' watch brands can the market realistically sustain? Everyone is always 'pushing upmarket' but are the customers there? I'm not so sure. And isn't this what TAG Heuer tried before in the 00s under JC Babin? Grand Carreras (as much as I love mine, can you imagine what these would cost new now?), Monaco V4s, lots of haute horlogerie? Mr Babin went on to success at Bvlgari, which was perhaps a better fit for him in the long run.
In the past TAG Heuer was 'the luxury watch brand you could actually afford' and I think perhaps that is where it's going wrong now.
And it seems to me that there's little point opening shops on the high street of all the major cities if people can't afford to buy what you have on sale. In fact I'm not sure the idea of opening boutiques left right and centre was a good one at all, maybe three or four across the UK would suffice? I imagine some of these will close when the leases run out. But why did it ever make sense for there to be four or five single brand watch boutiques in one mall? Madness.
It seems incredible to me that all those smart people believed pandemic sales levels were going to be the new normal and that they needed shops everywhere to service all these people desperate to buy endless watches... when in truth most of those people were perfectly happy to go to a Goldmsiths or an Ernest Jones. But the watch companies wanted to control the narrative and the 'story' they were telling, plus they thought the 'boutique' experience would add £££s to what people would be willing to pay.
Story telling is a big thing in the luxury world, but it seems like the younger generations simply don't care about the moon landing, Steve McQueen or Paul Newman. They also don't really care if you made this watch before in 1970. If you want to get their attention you need to sell a product they actually want to buy, and you have to accept that kids are tuned in to 'what's fresh and new', not what your Dad liked. Yes there is a place for 'nostalgia' but surely this has to move on at some point? I'm now 56, I remember watching Ayrton Senna race, but I have zero 'nostalgia' for Steve McQueen. The moon landing is a momentous event, but it happened before even I was born (just) and Omega have milked that particular story until it bleeds.
So it feels like TAG Heuer (and the watch industry as a whole) need to transition from looking backwards to looking forwards and going back to creating actual new models, new cases and new designs. This will of course be difficult, but they are never going to create something 'earthshattering' by fiddling around with the Carrera.
My fear though, is that no new CEO is going to want to put his neck on the line by greenlighting some crazy new watch that will probably get flamed on social media the second it's launched. New watches can take years to bed in and find their audience, and given the expected lifespan of a TH CEO is about 2-3 years the temptation will surely be to 'play it safe', so I expect it will be more of the same. New models, yes, but dressed up in old clothes, hedging their bets and telling stories from the ancient past that are quickly becoming irrelevant.
It seems to me that there's another problem facing the watch industry and that is simply that everything these days is thought of in the 'short term'. Younger people with shorter attention spans are easily lost and companies in general aren't interested in making long term commitments, all they really want is as much money as soon as possible. This doesn't really sit will with the 'connected to eternity' message the watch industry wants to project and it certainly won't make the new CEOs job any easier. Thankfully it's not my problem!
That, was supposed to be the end of this article... but in the meantime Director of Heritage at TAG Heuer Nicholas Biebuyck gave an interview to 'Worn and Wound' in which he alluded to a new watch release that would 'elevate one of the brand's icons and reposition TAG Heuer in the watch world, making people consider them more on a par with Rolex and Omega.
Quite a big claim that. And a HELL OF A LOT OF WORK for one watch I should have thought! But we'll see. Needless to say speculation about this watch is rife, with most betting on an in house Calibre 11 Monaco. Lord knows how much they are going to want for that, but it would be a bold move to price it higher than an equivalent Rolex or Omega.
I can't help thinking that you really can't 'move' people's perceptions with just one watch, it's more a case of being consistent over a long period of time so that your resale value improves and people aren't scared of buying watches and losing a ton of money on them. After all, Rolex is number one not because they make the best watches, they're number one because everyone trusts them not fuck things up.
One way to be consistent over a long period would, of course be to have a 'permanent' CEO that doesn't want to change direction every five minutes. And of course, if this does prove to be a new 'in house' Calibre 11, it won't be the work of Antoine Pin, or even Julien Tornare, but actually Frederic Arnault who started talking about the project back in 2021.
Well actually TAG Heuer have been talking about this project for about twenty years so maybe the credit actually belongs with Jean Christophe Babin? Regardless, I'm sure we'll get to hear all about how difficult this project was and how many thousand man hours were spent on it. All part of the storytelling the watch industry loves of course, and a justification for the no doubt 'elevated' price tag.
Will they get it right though? Will they make the perfect Calibre 11 Monaco that every vintage enthusiast has been screaming for, or will they make it avant garde? Or... will they make it perfect for the obvious market, but slap the TAG Heuer badge on it? Because if this one watch is supposed to change people's perceptions of the whole brand then I don't see that working if it says 'Heuer' on the dial. It will just give more ammunition to the 'Heuer = Good', 'TAG Heuer = Bad' brigade.
Let's wait and see what happens at 'Watches & Wonders'.... I guess.
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