Some watch-brand chief executives streamline operations, freshen up the e-commerce strategy, and make the right noises about sustainability. Since joining Breitling in 2017, Georges Kern has overhauled the brand’s entire personality, beefed up its sustainability credentials, and doubled its turnover, in the process creating a company — “a generalistic manufacturer”, as he puts it — that now struggles to keep up with demand.
Having studied political science in Strasbourg, and later business administration at Switzerland’s University of St. Gallen, Kern, the son of a French mother and German father who now holds German, French and Swiss passports, cut his commercial teeth in a prosaic realm — a multinational food conglomerate — before moving into haute horology and rocketing through the ranks at TAG Heuer.
“Like making movies, running a watch brand is storytelling. It’s very close… it’s about creating emotion.”
Having joined Richemont and played a key role in the integration of A. Lange & Söhne, Jaeger-LeCoultre and IWC Schaffhausen into the stable, he became the luxury behemoth’s youngest C.E.O., aged 36, when he
