This year, at Watches & Wonders, all of Panerai’s new offerings are the outcome of the marque’s partnership with the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli team for the America’s Cup. Jean-Marc Pontroué, CEO of Panerai, explains why the partnership plays such an important role for the watchmaking brand
This year, the Panerai stand has a very distinct style; how did you come up with the idea for this?
Our creative team based in Milan is the one that came up with this proposal, and the idea here was to mirror the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli hanger in Cagliari. If you go to Cagliari, you will find that this is smaller, but it is the same concept. It is bigger there because the Luna Rossa team has 130 people. You will always see only eight guys who are on the boat, but behind the scenes, we have 122 other people; many of them engineers. They keep travelling with the whole team. When they are participating in a competition, they all move. The 130 people, with their families, will move to Barcelona around early April or so. Since the whole team goes, they take an entire building close to the harbour because they have the whole team plus their families, so it is around 500 people. Once every four years, they go for six months, starting early May and stay till the end of September in Barcelona.
The Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli is a huge organisation. I’m very new to this and I had no idea about the scale of operation or what is involved. The majority of the team are engineers, and they are the ones who source materials like these ones. They are the people who do a lot of tests after the races. When they do a test of five hours racing or sailing, they collect millions of data which are then analysed to improve each part. That’s why Luna Rossa partners with the NASA. What they learn can be also used in other industries.
How has the tenor of the America’s Cup changed since the entry of the Formula One companies?
I’ve heard that it has, in the last couple of years, become extremely competitive and more driven on technology. The Luna Rossa team has a lot of departments. It’s like the military now; when you go see the Navy SEALS, there are many areas that you can’t visit. It’s the same here. There are many areas that I cannot visit, despite them being our partner. I will go soon to see the reveal of the new boat because till now it was a training boat that they have had for the past 3.5 years. In a few days, they will reveal their race boat and I am waiting for that especially because the colours they show will inspire our next year’s assortment.
How often are the boats changed for the races?
Every four years the boat is completely changed. It’s like the Formula One; there is the Federal Federation, which defines the rules for the competition – all the guidelines are in a book, not exactly code of conduct, but all the guidelines have to be respected for a boat to qualify as one that can take part in the America’s Cup. There are also a lot of factors that affect the race. When you play in Europe, it’s easier for the European teams because they face similar challenges. Did you know that the waves are not the same everywhere? I didn’t know that the waves in Barcelona are not the same as they are in Cagliari. Apparently, there is a huge difference. Factors such as weight, wind speed, wind direction and so on all affect the performance of the boat and they may not get the same performance from the boat that they did in Cagliari, for instance.
Other than the marketing, what benefit does Panerai get out of the sponsorship and funding?
The marketing of the brand is a big draw but that is not why we do it. We do it to get access to materials we would not have if we worked only within the watch industry. The watch industry is a beautiful one, but we are the only industry located completely in one country. There are watches made in other countries, but they are not luxury watches. The luxury segment is based fully in Switzerland. We are all in the same region and the same city. But the problem with that is that we have no access to new materials. It is very good to work with other industries and this is what we did. I remember having access to Lamborghini was great because it also gave us access to the premium car business where they work on materials we would have never thought of. It is the same here. We work on materials such as the Ti-Ceramitech, which was inspired by the Luna Rossa team because they use ceramide finishing on some of their components for a good reason.
In a sponsorship there is so much more that is involved than the money and the brand name on the boat. While one aspect is that many of our products are now made out of new materials that come through this partnership, another aspect is the distribution of watches. We are now distributing our watches through 20 Prada stores in many locations across the world. It’s a very good symbiotic relationship.
They also help us test our watches; brands like us test our watches at different times and locations for around six months and we make changes as needed. I am not good at testing for the brand because I am always in office. I just take my car, go to work, and come back. I don’t move much; I run a lot, but I don’t wear my watch then. But these guys wear the watch all day and they couldn’t care less about it. The feedback – in terms of functionality, practical usage and so on – we get from them is great and helps us create better products.
Can you elaborate further on this relationship?
We have their engineers who come to our manufacture and vice versa. Our watchmakers sneak into their facility to see what can be used. For example, we have this carbon fibre; it’s not exactly the same one they have, but of a similar composition and the original material is the same. The companies they work with in Italy are new suppliers for us, including for ceramised titanium. When we saw this material, we decided to use it also in our business and that’s why it has a rubberised finish.
What are the benefits of the material, and do you think this will replace future ceramic watches?
It has a ceramic look, but it is 10 times more resistant than ceramic and much lighter. I am not sure that it will replace ceramic because ceramic has a beauty of its own, but if it is dropped, we cannot be sure it will not break. We have a crash test room in our manufacture where we drop the watches from one metre height and of course we do that with ceramic also. A case in ceramic costs a fortune; it’s close to €2000 for just the case without the movement, without anything else.
