Laurent Lecamp, Managing Director – Writing Instruments and Watch Division of luxury maison Montblanc, sits with us to discuss their new offerings as well as how both innovation and heritage play a role in developing new watches and materials
Can you tell us the current status of Montblanc watches?
All the new timepieces that we have launched in the past few years are based on three key elements that are in accordance with the roots of Montblanc. They have great storytelling, strong innovation, and extremely high perceived value. That’s the recipe for both Montblanc and Minerva timepieces. And that’s something we’ve managed to achieve with our team. I’m lucky because I have a very strong team – watchmaking, marketing, logistics, production teams, and so on – in Switzerland. Working together, we have all repositioned Montblanc and Minerva and you see the results in the market.
For 2024, Montblanc had reaffirmed its commitment to the Iced Sea, the Minerva line, the 0 Oxygen, and the Geosphere; why is that and will it be the same for 2025?
If you want to be successful, you need a face. All these collections are the four different faces of the brand. If you have a Minerva product on your wrist, it is easily recognisable at first sight. Minerva is at the super high-end of watchmaking – totally handmade, with one watchmaker creating the calibre and assembling the piece. It means that the customer can meet their watchmaker. Each calibre developed at Minerva since 1902 can be repaired – 100% of them. That’s the strength of Minerva. In addition, our products are complex in terms of design and technique.
Montblanc is very interesting because we have repositioned the brand around the world of mountaineering, of which the Geosphere 0 Oxygen is an important product. Iced Sea is a key product that we have launched, which has a beautiful story. The dial of the Iced Sea has been inspired by the glacier of the Mont Blanc massif, the main one.
The 0 Oxygen is a concept dedicated to the world of mountaineering. We are lucky to have Reinhold Messner as a Mark Maker. He is the first mountaineer in the world, who had climbed the highest summits of all the 14 eight-thousanders without the use of additional oxygen in 1986. We used this concept for the watches we have developed, without any oxygen inside. We became the first brand in the world that has developed timepieces with no oxygen inside, which has a huge influence on the products. No oxidation means low acceleration process, no humidity inside, and so on.
The other crucial collection is the Geosphere. The Geosphere is a complication by Montblanc but developed by Minerva engineers. It’s a unique complication that is recognisable at first sight. All these four lines are so strong that they have become four key pillars for the brand. We have decided to focus much more on these collections in the years to come.
This year, Montblanc has introduced a new material, the CARBO₂; can you tell us more about the material itself?
It’s a world premiere, and not only for watches. If you look at all the industries existing in the world today, the CARBO₂ is a world premiere in all of them. CO2 is a gas; but when you observe the glaciers – which are part of Montblanc’s inspiration – we realise that the glaciers are melting because of the CO2. We wondered if it was possible to create a watch with a glacier dial and have the CO2 around it. It would be deemed impossible because CO2 is a gas. But we managed to transform a gas into something solid. It is a world premiere because the case we have developed is made of CO2 and carbon fibre as well, and that’s completely unique in terms of watchmaking.
It has been tested and we have had no allergic reactions or anything negative but discovered that something magical will happen over time. We don’t know why, but this new material changes over time. It seems to be something solid and immobile, but it’s evolving because when we speed up time – we have laboratories to accelerate the time – we noticed that the black colour is becoming grey over time, and nobody can explain why. It is interesting that we have developed a new material, and this material will have an evolution.
How was the CARBO₂ material created?
I cannot share everything, as that would make it easier for our competitors. Technically, it’s made in Switzerland, and we are using Swiss CO2, so it is 100% Swiss Made. We are working with some companies that are recycling specific objects, and, during the process of recycling, CO2 is released. We capture that CO2, which is then mixed with something we have developed to transform it into a powder-like substance. This powder is then mixed with carbon fibre, and at the end, we obtain this beautiful case. It was a huge investment for us to create this strong differentiator, which is one of the key pillars I spoke about earlier.
Will that huge investment mean that there will be more watches in the future featuring CARBO₂?
Yes, the CO2 will be used in our next developments but not as it has been developed for this model. We want each model to be unique in terms of complexity and we do not want our collectors seeing the same products again the next year. We are always trying to evolve, so it will be different. If you start collecting the CO2 watches and have the CARBO2, then the year after, you will definitely collect the new one because it will have CO2 but combined with something completely new.
Montblanc has also released the Iced Sea 0 Oxygen Deep 4810, which is water resistant to 4810 metres; how are the watches tested?
Firstly, the watch is not water-resistant to only 4810m but is actually ISO-certified for more than 6000m in the depths of the oceans because we have to add 25% more on top of the 4810m for the tests. We first checked with our suppliers asking if it’s possible to test the watch and they said that they didn’t have the equipment. Then we tried companies that test extreme or very technical pieces, and they said the same. We realised that we had to develop our own equipment. In order to have a valid certification, we had to ask an external company to develop equipment specifically for us, and this has been tested and certified. We are working with an external laboratory to certify the ISO 6425 certification that certifies water resistance to not only 4810m, but also for the additional 25%, i.e., 6000m. If you visit our manufacture, we can show you this new equipment and the tests we have developed. Since all this testing has to take place, we can produce only a few hundred pieces per year.
The laser caseback was introduced by Montblanc a couple of years ago and has become iconic to the brand; are you surprised by the reaction of people when they see it?
I would like each sales associate to start explaining a Montblanc timepiece by turning the watch around, instead of starting with the dial. Luxury should be easily perceived on both sides of the watch. What we have developed is very interesting because it looks like the case has been coloured. We work with lasers to create the depth, contour, and the colours on the casebacks. Colours on the casebacks are a big risk because after a few weeks of usage, there is a chance that everything will disappear. Human perspiration, humidity, and the weather will have an influence on these colours.
Montblanc, by using this laser process, enables the colours to be permanent because it’s oxidised. The colouring is due to the oxidation of titanium; we have tried the same process with steel, gold, and platinum, but it does not work the same way. We are not able to get these beautiful colours that we obtain with titanium. It is very technical, so every time we bring a new caseback, we need a few hundred hours of tests to create it. But at the end, we get something really innovative.
Can you tell us if there are any aesthetic or technical advantages when you reversed the movement in the Montblanc 1858 Unveiled Minerva Chronograph Limited Edition?
Three years ago, I went home, where my three-year-old daughter was waiting up for her goodnight kiss, late and I had to explain that I was delayed at the Manufacture. She demanded to see my watch and when I gave it to her, she flipped it around and looking at the caseback, said, “Oh, Papa, magnifique!” At that moment, I realised that the beautiful parts of Minerva chronograph had been hidden since 1858. The most amazing part had always been on the other side of the case – the one never seen. The next day I asked my team to develop a reverse movement.
When you turn a calibre around, everything is working anti-clockwise. The classical movement that was more than 100 years old had 252 components. When we reversed it, we had to develop and get trained on an additional 21 components, bringing it to a total of 273 components. While doing this, we realised that, in history of watchmaking, we had made the first chronograph monopusher with the bridges on the dial side and we patented it. The timepiece is the bestseller of all time for Minerva and so you can see how we use our heritage to build the future.
