Edouard Meylan, CEO and Owner at H. Moser & Cie., sat down with us during Dubai Watch Week to discuss coping during the lockdown, moving online to e-commerce, Vantablack and the Streamliner…
Can you tell us about H. Moser and coping during COVID, because unlike many other brands and businesses, you were trying very hard to cope with increased demand?
Yes, it was difficult because we had to change the business model – people working from home, digitalisation was a learning process – but we were prepared. We are used to dealing with adverse conditions and we took the right decisions, which is why we could emerge from 2020 into a better position in 2021.
You have also gone fully online with your e-commerce site?
We are very particular about our e-commerce site too. There are no discounts, it is available only in certain markets where we do not have exclusivity, and only a limited number of pieces are available. That is the reason why even on our e-commerce site, there is a wait list of around a year on certain models. We are full-on, in the sense that there is a high level of service, there is conscious service; it is like taking the customer by the hand and, if he is interested, in bringing him to the retailers. I think that is why it is successful because retailers find it beneficial; it is not competition to them.
Are you now facing a problem in delivery of watches; when asked, retailers say they have a couple of Moser watches or none?
The situation is a bit tense because demand has increased so quickly and so much that it is difficult to cope. We don’t want to jeopardise the quality, so it takes a little bit of time. We have talked to all of our retailers and explained our strategy and how we are going to cope with it. We have told them not to take any more orders, and we have been very strict about that because we need time to adapt, and not grow too quickly. Otherwise, we may suffer from the elastic effect – where you grow too fast and then demand drops at the wrong time, which means you can disappear from the market.
Are you planning to continue your Vantablack watches, which have been such a great hit?
Yes, the next collaboration we are doing early next year with a famous fashion brand is based on a Vantablack dial; it is going to be very interesting, very elegant, classy, small size. It is going to be completely different from our last collaboration with MB&F; something totally different from what a H. Moser watch is perceived to be. It will be a unisex watch, and we are planning to launch it on January 20, 2022. It will only be available in their boutiques and our e-commerce site.
When you debuted the Streamliner, it evoked very polarising reactions, and yet it is completely sold out now; how has the feedback been?
Yes, the people who liked it in the beginning and acquired it were not the usual H. Moser clients. Our clients took some time to understand and appreciate it. They are so familiar with the brand that they sometimes appropriate to themselves the image of our brand. When people tell me “It is not Moser”, I ask them “Tell me what Moser is?” Because for me, Moser is a life – like a human being, something that is evolved, that changes over time, ages. I think the Streamliner is part of that. For a lot of them, it was so different, yet for me, it was so close because it is using the same principles and the same codes but in a different interpretation to what we had done in the past.
I thought it was very Moser, but I had been in the process of creating this watch for over seven years, and that gave a different perspective. But then, even for me, when I got the final product, I was not sure what to think of it. It was a big gamble, but it was the right choice.
Many of the same people have come back and told me that they loved it; that they needed to see it live. It is a watch that you need to experience. A picture doesn’t do justice to it because it is so 3-dimensional; people actually discovered the watch when they finally saw it in the stores. The problem is that there is no stock, so they never get to see them. We have three prototypes of the watch here and people go crazy and ask us when can we get a watch; we have to say “2023” or “you are on a wait list”. Mostly people tell me that it grows on them.
