INTERVIEW TIME LORD
INTERVIEW TIME LORD Jean-Claude Biver is known for his exceptional drive and headturning creative strategies. The Jaguar caught up with the colourful CEO and enfant terrible of the watch industry for a talk about his inspirations – and why watches need a soul WORDS: Michelle Mussler PHOTOGRAPHY: Dirk Bruniecki Jean-Claude Biver is the grand provocateur of watchmaking, the man who has brought luxury goods manufacturer LVMH’s watches – big brands with decades of heritage behind them like Hublot, TAG Heuer and Zenith – back onto the wrists of major celebrities including Cristiano Ronaldo and Cara Delevingne. At a time when people are looking to the smartphones in their pockets rather than the watches on their wrists to tell the time, Biver has managed to not only maintain the company’s watch business, but grow it: while competitors saw their sales drop by 15% in 2016, TAG Heuer saw turnover rise by an impressive 12%. Now the colourful CEO is taking on a new challenge – taking over the Zenith brand from Aldo Magada, who left the company in early 2017. Like a finely-calibrated watch Biver, who wakes up at 3am and regularly puts in 80-hour weeks in pursuit of timepiece perfection, has no plans to slow down. But how does he do it? We sat down with the creative genius in the watchmaking capital of the world in Basel to find out. As part of his strategy for the new TAG Heuer Modular 45 smartwatch, Jean-Claude Biver decided to bring the entire production back in-house. To do so, he built a completely new manufacturing facility at the TAG Heuer headquarters in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland Mr. Biver, you’ve been doing this for 40 years, and at the age of 68 you’re sending out emails at a time most people are fast asleep. What motivates you to keep going? Passion, pure and simple. Without it I would have retired years ago. If the job wasn’t fun, I would have long since packed up and marched off to the North Pole or Bhutan. Alternatively, I’d be back at university, doing a degree in art, stuck my head in a book, rediscovered sport, looking after my cows, hiking – the list is endless. And yet you’re going to run a marathon. Not before I hit 70 in two years’ time! I am just getting into my training, but I have many other projects on the go too. 42 THE JAGUAR
An eye on the future: with a knack for seeing where the industry is heading before anyone else, Mr. Biver has achieved remarkable results all the way through his career THE JAGUAR 43