If you are a Zenith fan or a watch industy observer, you must know that Zenith, a well-known watch maker from Swiss, was considerably hit by the world economic crisis and had a very hard time.
In the first half of 2008, a gold time for luxury watches before the crisis, Zenith highest-end luxury watches that at least asked $500,000 each still sold pretty well. Shortly after, the whole industry faced a huge nightmare. Data told everything. In 2009, the sales amount of LVMH’s watches and jewelry shrinked by 19 percent. And that of Zenith plummeted by 25 percent. It topped the list when it came to sales decline.
At that time, Zenith owned 16 leading lines with about 800 models. Totally 250 employees, among which there were 25 métiers, 15 engineers, and 12 watchmakers,worked from this Swiss watch company. In good old days when their products were well-received, to feed these employees was not a big issue. But when the crisis came, things became very different. LVMH had to do something for the brand’s survive. Right in the mid of 2009, LVMH fired Thierry Nataf, the president of Zenith, and appointed Jean-Frederic Dufour who was the head production head of Chopard watches as the new CEO.
To bring life to Zenith, Jean-Frederic Dufour decidedly took layoffs- about 70 employees lost job ,and cut 12 leading products lines immediatley –just 4 main collections contained 150 models were remained, including high end watch line Academy, which contains highly complex complications; Chronomaster and Class line that are driven by the brand’s El Primero movement; Defy and the entry-level Elite series. Meanwhile, he took the practice that not a few watch brands adopted – to launch watches that are of less expensive prices. The new Elite Captain watch that sells at $4000 is a fine example of this practice.
Tags: watches