Niels Eggerding, CEO at Frederique Constant / Swiss-made Luxury Watches
Jul 14, 2022Episode 183
Menswear Style
Frederique Constant was established in its current form in 1988. Aletta Bax and Peter Stas launched their first collection in 1992, comprising six models fitted with Swiss movements and assembled by a watchmaker in Geneva. Frederique Constant is involved in all the stages of watch production, from initial design to final assembly. Watches manufactured under its trademark are either designed by Frederique Constant or by independent designers contracted for a specific series of models. Strong emphasis is placed on watch design to keep abreast of trends and customer preferences.
In this episode of the MenswearStyle Podcast we interview Niels Eggerding, CEO at Frederique Constant about his background working within the watch industry and the history of the brand which aims to make high quality classical watches accessible. Our host Peter Brooker and Niels talk about brand DNA, product pricing strategies, the production process, the smart watch market, brand ambassadors, and social media.
Whilst we have your attention, be sure to sign up to our daily MenswearStyle newsletter here. We promise to only send you the good stuff.
Frederique Constant was established in its current form in 1988. Aletta Bax and Peter Stas launched their first collection in 1992, comprising six models fitted with Swiss movements and assembled by a watchmaker in Geneva. Frederique Constant is involved in all the stages of watch production, from initial design to final assembly. Watches manufactured under its trademark are either designed by Frederique Constant or by independent designers contracted for a specific series of models. Strong emphasis is placed on watch design to keep abreast of trends and customer preferences.
In this episode of the MenswearStyle Podcast we interview Niels Eggerding, CEO at Frederique Constant about his background working within the watch industry and the history of the brand which aims to make high quality classical watches accessible. Our host Peter Brooker and Niels talk about brand DNA, product pricing strategies, the production process, the smart watch market, brand ambassadors, and social media.
Whilst we have your attention, be sure to sign up to our daily MenswearStyle newsletter here. We promise to only send you the good stuff.
Hello, welcome to another episode of the menswear style podcast. I'm your host Pete Brooker. Today I'm talking to the CEO of Frederick constant Neil's exiting for the week constant specialises in luxury watches at sensible prices. They operate in a segment that is best described as accessible luxury, passion for what they do is one of the key drivers of their success. And in the past years, the company has grown 25 to 35% annually. And this was one of those rare interviews that I got to do in person and Niels was a delight. He walked me through some of the watches that were on display there at the exhibition, and to hear us go into the weeds of some of the watches from the range. And the website Frederick constant.com is the place to go where you can shop we do talk about where you can physically see these watches in person and whilst we do name some outlets, watches of Switzerland is definitely a decent place if you want to go and investigate those watches, which I really recommend you do. They're beautiful and also online of course. so enough rambling from me here is Nils editing the CEO of Frederick constant. It's a great pleasure to introduce Niels Edgar ding from Frederick constant. How're you doing today? Neil's Very good. Yeah, it's great to see you. We are here in a kitchen. We've taken the podcast on the road. We're in the centre of London. And we're while we're looking at some beautiful watches in front of us. But Neil's before we have a look at the watches. Perhaps you can tell us a little bit about yourself and some of the history please behind Frederick constant. Yeah.
Unknown:
So yeah, my name is Niels. I'm born in Ireland, in Amsterdam, and was dragged into the watch industry already 25 years ago. So an 11 years ago, I met Peter and the letter starts the founders of Frankenstein. And I was intrigued about their passion and vision for the brands. And they asked me to move over to Switzerland and work together with them. And since then, time flies, it's 10 years later and making a jump, managing out a company. And the brand itself if I bring you back to the history, it's it's born from passion also by Peter and letter stars. They really went from expatriate based in Hong Kong, working for ing to bank but also for Philips beater, and they moved once in a while back to Switzerland for a ski holiday. And looking at windows, they've seen beautiful timepieces for high end brands, beautiful finished but not accessible. And they're the idea was born to set up a brand build a brand with the name of both grandfather's grand grandparents working even in the dial for clocks in that time in Switzerland. And the idea was born for classical watch brands that were very accessible and high finished. And from day one, when they started to introduce the watches this was directly a hit. Now almost 35 years later, we are a brand having our own money for to complications and diversity of luxury timepieces but still accessible.
PB:
Fascinating. And perhaps you just talk a little bit about the design process for us, please I know that there's a lot of love craftsmanship that goes into decorating these beautiful timepieces, perhaps you can touch upon that for us.
Unknown:
Yeah, so I think it's very important for watch brands to keep your DNA. And our DNA is classic, very classical timepieces. But above all, we have a very iconic design, what you can see here with the Open Heart, the idea of the Open Art, and that's typically our DNA, our signature, also the glue, Shea finishing the beautiful dial details, and that for a watch year, you talk about the watch just below 1000 Euro. So you can see it's finished Hi, this open heart was meant in back in the 80s really to bring it up to differentiate an automatic watch having an automatic watch that is wind it by movement. You don't see it from the front side of the watch. But when you open it up, you see the movement details. And it really brings to Luxuria. This is coming back as a DNA part of the whole brand already for 35 years. It has been developed, of course, but it's typically the DNA.
PB:
And you spoke briefly about the history of working with clock faces and dial faces in the history and I think that really does transpose into the watches. There's like the DNA that you mentioned is is really replete with those kinds of classic dial faces that you might have seen even on like your grandfather's clock or I've got something like that in my mom's house where she's got the Roman numerals and that that's that's not by accident. Is it? That's it.
Unknown:
Well, the biggest thing you see on a watch is the face of the watch and the dial. So there, you have a lot of liberty to come up with the high finishing. So there, it's very important to also differentiate your luxury timepiece versus the lower price products or even looking up to the higher price product.
PB:
And what is the price range? So what are people coming in it for the door into the high end?
Unknown:
Yeah, we aim. The first, let's say the first professional that has his first job into a real, real, real serious job after study, you can enter the brands starting price from 600 to 50, to 750 Euro, then we bring them up to their first automatic watch that goes to 950 Euro, then you go one step higher, to money for two, that's our own complication, we have more than 30 in house calibres now. And money factory means the conception needs to be done in house, the production of the components and the assembling, then you really have an in house complication. And we are capable of doing that large scale to keep the price low. And then then you can evolve your customer to a more higher end product starting at 2000. Euro. Okay,
PB:
so still very accessible, even when you get to the high end, right? Yes. And so you said you're based in Geneva, you're the headquarters there and the manufacturing there as well. It's
Unknown:
all the same building, it's all in the same building 1000 square metres.
PB:
So what's that like to work in the manufacturing place
Unknown:
every day? A huge benefit of being able to go to the factory meet people see people see process, touch the details. It's, it's amazing. And it's good for us because we have everything in house. So that's, that's a huge benefit.
PB:
And what's it like day to day for you. So let me paint the picture of how I imagined it, you rock up to work, you go upstairs to the office, answer a couple of emails, maybe get on the exercise bike, and then it's time to hit the floor and make sure everyone's got a cup of coffee in the hand feeling good about the day, am I on the money. And it's pretty
Unknown:
spot on. Forget the bike. So you are you come in to the factory, by the main entrance, and then you go up, you go to your office, indeed you check an email, take a cup of coffee, then we start pretty early in the morning with a daily meeting, daily meeting with management team. So we have 1010 members in a management team, where the daily meeting, we go over the daily struggle, numbers, production numbers, and really everybody is directly on the table with a problematic, the idea of that is that you never be blocked. And because we go fast, so watch company, we have to go fast, we are relatively young, it's very important that nobody gets blocked, and everybody knows what's happening. Then, overall, in every area, you have 20 minutes meetings, you check in with each other, we have a very open culture. So typically in Switzerland, it's very hierarchy driven. You have your boss management team, the rest of the organisation. And because we have a bit of a Dutch culture in the new organisation, it's more personally driven and very open. So we walk in through the organisation go to the production, and we really talk to people and see that we can smoothen things up to make sure the production comes out.
PB:
And so how many releases would you do maybe on a year or what? How long does it take from conception to the marketplace, would you say
Unknown:
it depends and complete new conception of a movement, take averagely three to four years. If you take a regular line extension of a watch, it takes like one year. So it's very it's but we bring every year like approximately 14 novelties into the collection. And it's a global novelty collection that not every region takes all they really take a decision what products they launch. And we always have two to three strong key launches that we as headquarter impose to the globe. And that means if there's a key launch to do, everybody needs to follow but around that you have smaller launches that not not necessarily every market have to take. Okay. And so it makes it that makes it flexible, for
PB:
sure. more fluid. And do you those those releases, are they collaborations with other designers? Do you bring other people in to import new ideas and then work along those?
Unknown:
We tried, but so you take out some ideas by doing external designers coming in. But overall, we see that if you bring in outside external designers, they go away from your DNA, they like to do their own touch to your watch. And because we are relatively young for me to protecting the DNA is very important. So we have a lot of designers in house. So from the conception movement to the dial to the final watch. We have everything hanging out.
PB:
Interesting. I saw on the website that you have the smartwatch the vitality, smartwatch. Yes. When was that introduced into the brand?
Unknown:
Back in 2015. We came with the first Swiss made smartwatch. So that's already seven years ago.
PB:
And what is so break that down for me what is the Swiss made smartwatch.
Unknown:
It's a Swiss movement and modular modular system that connects via Bluetooth with your phone. And from the first appearance, it's really a beautiful classical timepiece that you don't expect it's a smartwatch. Until you start to connect it by pushing the crown, I
PB:
saw that I mean, you'd never see just from looking at it on the surface that it's a smile.
Unknown:
That was the idea also, because if you look at the massive smartwatch market today where Apple is leading, you can ever compete with those big giants. So we also didn't want to compete, but we wanted to lift on the success they have, but then typically within our DNA. So since then we have been selling one or 250,000 pieces. And we have been developing three different calibres. And the latest calibre has been a fatality, where you touch and you have a small screen that pops up through the dial. So if you don't touch the crown, basically, it's still a nice classical watch. Okay,
PB:
and so that gives basically a bit of both worlds. So the people that do like to look at their classical watch, you know, they perhaps don't want to see a blank screen, when they look at their wrist, they can still have that aesthetic, but then use the functionality of yet being connected.
Unknown:
And with the heart rate sensor in there from Philips, it's very high and heart rate sensor also.
PB:
Beautiful. Great. So when I was gonna ask you about your demographics, so outside of Switzerland, where where do you? Do you market the brand in a particular country or a demographic? Or is there one that's more popular than another?
Unknown:
No, we are by far global. So we are in every every country available. The biggest regions for us remains Europe, very strongly driven and historically like that, then you go to Asia and the last areas in the US. Okay, so strong. Europe driven, and I think the strength of our brand is that we have a strong core collection. But in Europe, we apply also certain products that are very European driven. And also in Asia, we have different products to fill up your total collection. And in America also different so we really help local markets to build a brand more to the to the local consumer, with keeping the DNA and keeping a strong core.
PB:
And do you have or do you look to have brand ambassadors that might be marquee names? Or is that really not something you gravitate towards?
Unknown:
So we used to do, we used to have Gwyneth Paltrow in the past, as a triple A Brand Ambassador known across the world. Today, I think that changed a bit. Not sure how you think but I think the luxury especially having an ambassador, people today are much more aware about pricing, and not necessarily willing to price to pay more because there are some bad brand ambassador behind it. So our philosophy is very clear. We put a lot of energy and money into the development of the brand on the innovation of the luxury to offer a fair price for the consumer to have a beautiful, finished watch and not paying for a tonne of ambassadors.
PB:
The overheads of Hollywood A listers turn up for a day on the photoshoot while the beautiful watches thanks for showing them off from me today and in the stores we can find those internationally say So Where would people go in London if they wanted to have a look at some of the threads
Unknown:
while they go to Selfridges Harrods merits no watches of Switzerland, which of Switzerland is a very key partner here in London Goldsmith. So I would, I would tell them, please invite yourself to have a look at the collection of watches of Switzerland and now you can find the finest collection of the brand.
PB:
Wonderful, excellent. Well, that's where people can go. And obviously we'll leave a link to the websites and the social handles. Do you do the social media yourself online?
Unknown:
Yeah, we do it ourselves. Not me. But my team is doing it. We are very active. Also.
PB:
How does that how do you leverage social media? I know we're going off the grass a little bit. But how do you look at social media with regards to your industry? Do you find that it's a good way to draw attention or is there a certain way that you approach it that's going to be different
Unknown:
to other brands? Yeah, sure. It's it's unavoidable to tap into the young, new luxury target group to not go digital, but it needs to be an extension of the DNA if you rent and all sort of factory. For us it's very strongly detail driven and money factory driven to our own calibres. and that should be the extension how we speak to the consumer and also socially. So there's a through line to people. Yes. Yeah, I think consistency is very important.
PB:
Would you like to see? You're watching a particular film? I mean, do you like movies? Is there
Unknown:
a lot of music and movies? So a particular film I would like to see it for? That's a very good question. I never thought about that.
PB:
Oh, by you a minute here. So perhaps as a an actor, or someone that you grew up watching a movie, I mean, there's,
Unknown:
I've seen I like I like a variety of movies, but the last movie June? Oh, sure. If you've seen it, it's probably a trilogy that comes out because it ended very abrupt. So I don't know even. But that cost. I was really amazed. You know, what is the actress name?
PB:
So there's Timothy Charlemagne. And I forget the the evidence will I'll edit it in post.
Unknown:
Yeah, sorry. Sorry. I'm already a little bit older also. So it's very inspired to about the level of movie I have to say, the science fiction of course, but yeah, and that that group that was acting, I would love to have my watch on that
PB:
as well. Maybe for the sequel, right? Because I heard that it's not just going to be one instalment. It's too big a story to even one. So if they're out there, maybe they can get in touch. Great. Nils. Thanks so much for coming in through the day. You're you're in London for one day, you say you're gonna do
Unknown:
36 hours. So tomorrow morning at four o'clock, we have to wake up to take the plane at seven o'clock from
PB:
Yikes. So who did that to you? That's just mean. Yeah.
Unknown:
That's part of the deal. Correct. Okay. Well, let's do business in Geneva. Again. Make sure the watches are produced.
PB:
Yeah, get on that. I bet they will like your work stuff. Like, oh, he'll be gone for a couple of days. We can turn up at 10 Yeah,
Unknown:
sure. It's always like that. You will be there. The mouse dance on the table, correct. That's,
PB:
that's right. That's right. Yeah,
Unknown:
sure if it's valid in England, actually.
PB:
Neil, thanks again, and all the best for the future.
Unknown:
Thank you very much.
PB:
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