WHY LONGINES WANTS TO FOCUS ON HISTORY AND HERITAGE

One of the world’s most storied Swiss watch brands wants to make Indians more aware of its rich past

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Matthias Breschan took over as Longines CEO in July 2020, in the middle of the raging pandemic. While others would have thought of it as a bad start, the watch industry veteran calls the timing 'perfect'. The month after he came on board, the company achieved record sales despite most of its stores being shut around the world. "It shows the strength of the brand," says Breschan, who worked with marques such as Rado and Hamilton previously, besides sitting on the Extended Group Management Board at the Swatch group. He spoke to MW in an exclusive interview at the company headquarters in Saint-Imier, Switzerland. Excerpts:

Can you take us through the two key Longines launches for 2023, the Majetek and the Flyback?

What makes us so different from all the other brands in our price segment is our very rich heritage and history. After Breguet, Longines has the finest, nicest and best history and heritage of all the Swiss watch brands. It is important to highlight this to the public because many people don't know about it. We launched Spirit Zulu Time last year to tell the world that it was Longines that invented the GMT movement. We launched Ultra-Chron to talk about Longines' work in developing high frequency technology in timekeeping. We were the brand that, in 1914, enabled the accurate measurement of sports timing to 1/10th of a second and 1/100th of a second in 2016. This was why Longines was solicited for sport events around the world for a long time.