De Bethune prizes exclusivity and innovation
Pierre Jacques, CEO of De Bethune, in a chat with “Day & Night” magazine explains how one of the main challenges in his new role is to be grounded in reality in face of the brand’s high popularity, so that the marque remains small and highly innovative
What are the changes you have made in the company since you took over at the end of 2017?
We have a unique design in De Bethune that makes us really special, and we cannot change our vision or the way we are producing timepieces. The only long-term perspective that we want to change is that now we are absolutely sure that we want to remain very exclusive – we aim to reach a production level of 200 watches a year and not go beyond that. Of course, we have to grow as all organic systems have to grow, but our growth will be in terms of innovation rather than quantity. We want the brand to remain at the boutique level – small and exclusive is what we want to focus on.
How has the feedback been for the Steel Wheels that you launched recently, as it is essentially the same DB28?
Yes, it is the same watch, but it is also completely different. This watch is more open, you can go deeper into the mechanics of the watch, and the transparency of the beautiful sapphire hands add to its appeal. The balance wheel is a new one that we have developed in our manufacture and this gives more animation to the dial as we can now see the heart of the watch beating. The earlier version had a silicon and platinum balance wheel, which was also good but it did not have this animation to it. The case is very proportionate – all of these make the watch a totally new one.
How is that though De Bethune is a young brand, you have so many patents?
Yes, we are a young brand, but we have more than 10 patents and 26 different calibres to our credit already. There are watchmakers, who either see the industry as one of fashion or a business, and then there are watchmakers such as Denis Flageollet, our co-founder, who are very passionate about their work – he has a passion for innovation and mechanics, which is very important to go forward. The DNA of De Bethune is innovation, and when you innovate you can patent and that is why we have more than 10 patents. We do not patent all of our innovations; we leave some of them as ‘open source’, as we did for Résonique, which works on high frequency. We did not patent anything in that, but published everything on the Web as open source for the watchmaking community.
What are the challenges that you think De Bethune needs to overcome?
The challenge right now for De Bethune is to ensure that we do not let all the attention that we are getting from aficionados overwhelm us, say ‘yes’ to everyone, and increase our production. Our vision now is to go slowly – grow from making 100 watches to 150 watches, and then stablise at 200 pieces. The challenge would be to keep our objectivity, and remain small and exclusive. This way, our customers are able to own watches that are very exclusive and beautifully finished, as it is not humanly possible to have this level of exquisite finishings for more than 200 watches with our existing facilities. So our main challenge at this point is to keep our feet on the ground and stay steady.
When do you expect to unveil your next major release?
It is not possible for me to predict that. Denis is constantly in a mode of creation and innovation but we do not want to give him a timeframe or deadline, and put pressure on him as this means that we are acting from a commercial motive. We might end up with a product that is compromised in terms of quality or concept. This would not work for us. We have a blank page on which we can work whatever we want; with our strong motivation and, as you have already mentioned, our history of having developed 26 calibres and more than 10 patents in the past 17 years, I am sure that within a year we will be back with something surprising, but I can tell you no more than that.
