Dear friends of IWS, today we have the pleasure to share with you our recent interview with Guido Terreni, the current CEO of Parmigiani Fleurier.
The history of this fantastic maison, has its roots in 1976, when Michel Parmigiani, a young watchmaker and restorer, opened “Mesure et Art du Temps,” a traditional workshop dedicated to the restoration of antique watches.
After restoring some of the world’s most valuable watches, including several timepieces from the Patek Philippe Museum, he founded the Parmigiani Fleurier brand in 1996 with the debut of the company’s first watch, the Toric QP Retrograde.
From there on, the company’s remarkable growth and expansion was accompanied by the enrichment of different models marked by unique charm and innovation.
The interview with Guido Terreni
Fabrizio Bonvicino: The first question I would ask you is precisely about Toric, because it is a very important collection for Parmigiani, it has had a historical evolution over time and I would be interested to understand what has changed and what it means to recreate or redesign this collection.
Guido Terreni: I always say that the industry is full of watches and you don’t need another watch on the market, so when you do a launch you have to know what you want to say and you have to have something to say. After doing a Sport Chic line, which is the PF round, which resurrected this brand in a very very important way, we did not want Parmigiani Fleurier to be perceived as a single-product brand, because we are much more than a Sport Chic brand.
And because when Michel Parmigiani launched the brand we were at the end of the quartz crisis, the education of what was a traditional mechanical watch was not as widespread as it is today, because we are talking about 30 years ago and in a period let’s say, not of zeroing, but still, of a loss of this mechanical art culture and so he felt the need to state what is a traditional mechanical watch in Switzerland. He did it with the Toric, in 1996.
And this was even before the revival of Breguet. Michel had the good fortune to talk through the creations of watchmaking history with the creators who conceived it, thanks to his restoration work. So he used codes.He used traditional codes, he used very formal codes, but society has evolved.
So when we decided to work on a dress watch, we first had to ask ourselves, ‘What is a dress watch in our times?’. It was very interesting because we looked at how the man, if he has a watch, is accompanied in the way of being dressy and looking not at fashion as a seasonal exercise, but really going to see the structural changes that have led the man to dress like that.
It turns out that we have been dressing in a suit, a trapeze, two-piece and a shirt since the Industrial Revolution. When the British middle class had a business, began to become an emerging, working, entrepreneurial class, opposed to the aristocracy, which had another way of dressing, which was wealthy by birth. But that did not produce its own wealth.
We also considered that there was a socio-cultural element, because the English were Protestants and Protestants have a more sober way not to show-off.
Along with the trapeze, along with the dress, comes the color black. The color black was considered extremely prestigious, because in those days the techniques of fixing the color were not advanced, so after two or three washes it became gray, so only the rich could wear black. And black and white is the basis of the tuxedo, the tuxedo, which remained the uniform of the civilian man, for 150 years, until the two wars. Now it’s only used for gala events and let’s say, rare occasions.
So, in the first part of the nineteenth century the watch was in the pocket, and it’s interesting to look at how ornate the pocket watch was, in the full Baroque style, how much it kept the pre-industrial revolution codes. After that, when it comes out of the pocket and goes on the wrist, in the early twentieth century, it has to be put in the context in which the tuxedo was.
It’s a watch that was made at a time when there was a strong influence on design. In the Art Deco years beautiful executions of formal watches are born where you get a glimpse of the time in the 1930s, which are works of art, even in watchmaking, and they are still there today expressing that period. Later on, in the 1950s and 1960s, you move toward the vintage mood, which we call vintage now, but it was much more minimal. It was much more sober, very elegant, however beyond black and white, and when there was no cab, where there were three-piece suits with ties to go to the office, this way of dressing remained structurally from a social point of view a civilian uniform until the end of the century.
What happens? What happens is that the New Economy throws out the suit. The American West Coast, the Silicon Valley, this whole way of doing business comes out of the suit-and-tie institution and jumps to casual, jumps to a comfortable, relaxed way of dressing, without rules, however also without dress culture. A bit like the quartz crisis for the watch, here is the crisis of elegance for a twenty-year period. Now people are rediscovering the pleasure of dressing well, and guys from your generation are doing it. The movie Kingsman maybe was a huge accelerator, thanks to this allure for elegance, where we find the detail, the culture of how a jacket is cut, the tailored pants.
So now a whole tailoring business is reviving in an extremely flourishing way, where Italian tailoring can finally have a say again, because this kind of customer is really looking for a personal choice, so maybe they tailor it. Some are opting for lesser-known brands, because notoriety is not important, but personal choice is important, and a product culture is developed.
Fabrizio Bonvicino: So how does this approach apply to watchmaking in your opinion?
Guido Terreni: This customer has this approach in whatever they buy, whether it’s a dress, whether it’s a watch, whether it’s a car, whether it’s a wine they drink, they try to understand why and they get an education. Some have it easier because they are part of families, environments and have had a better, let’s say, cultural impact.
Others have experiences, they find out, they learn and they build their own style and they do it by reading, trying to acculturate themselves in a product category like clothing or watches. But you abandon black, there is no more black dress, there is no more formality of colors, you use easier colors, more neutral, more pastel, it is less ostentatious.
Fabrizio Bonvicino: What was the approach to evolving the Toric collection?
Guido Terreni: When we asked ourselves, my dress watch, my Toric, in this context, how should it be? Certainly it doesn’t have to be like the original, because this is not a fashion victim trend, this is a way of being that will last over time, and I’m convinced that for decades we will see again and return to those who have the means to dress better, maybe less branded.
So when one has this aspiration and appreciation for savoir-faire, for how things are made, for tradition, because tradition assures you that the product is well made, the watch has to be at the highest expression, so the movement has to be only manual, because the manual movement is the most beautiful form of mechanics, because it doesn’t have the rotor interfering in the vision of the finely decorated bridges.
Only gold movement. Here we are talking about a rarity, who use gold as a series movement, extremely original finishes and a bridge cut that is modern. Moreover, this Côtes de Fleurier that Michel invented, it already existed twenty years ago, but it was at a double scale, we have reduced it to make it a rarity.
The crown, like a drawing (let’s say a pattern to look at), describes the movement; here you can have the pleasure of turning the crown and feel the movement, unlike a crown on an automatic watch that you just use it to set the watch. Here every day you get a nice little turn in the morning and you can feel the pure mechanics behind it, then you get to maybe the most attractive part which is the dial. The dial is very consistent with Parmigiani Fleurier. You see its simplicity, you see the institutional position of the Parmigiani Fleurier logo without any writing like on the Tonda PF.
There is a strong reference to the dials that were there in the 50s-60s, but in a modern way. The dial is just gold and the technique is handmade, so it’s a grenet main, 9 out of 10 grenets dials today are made by laser, whereas here it’s a technique that Michel taught back to our dial manufacture collaborator, where through an amalgam and a hand brush, the bristles distribute this patina on the dial and create this grainy surface and, the finer the grain, the thicker the bristle and much more dense, because we don’t want something to disturb the reading, we don’t want a flat dial either, so it’s the roughness that gives you appeal.
Yes, you have to balance, let’s say, between when you touch a dress, you look at it, then you touch it and you say, ah, how beautiful it is, because you touched it. We matched colors that are very fresh, very contemporary colors, but also very durable, because it’s not fashionable, you don’t get tired of it, it’s not something that after three times you’ve worn it you can’t see, we’re talking about something that you can then match with an elegant dress, and then comes the strap which is a strap that makes a difference, it’s extremely delicate, so it needs care.
We used the Neapolitan stitching, because Neapolitan tailoring has hand stitching and it is a sign of distinction, of a garment truly made in the highest craftmanship, which is also a bit of a quirk, a quirk without being showy. It gives pleasure, and then to admire the movement, a barb is de rigueur, because a deployant clasp interferes with the pleasure of looking at the movement, and that’s Michel talking.
Fabrizio Bonvicino: Exactly, it’s something that we often notice in watchmaking, that at the end of the day there are watches that have really nice movements, but still having a Deployant that doesn’t allow you to actually look at the watch the way you can look at this.
Guido Terreni: It depends on the culture of the product, because when someone is talking with a customer who has the means, he tends to give him the full option, like with cars. In this case, the full option of the car, could be the Deployant. But when you get to these levels of purity and attention to detail, the deployant is not functional, for the cultured use of watchmaking. When you have these spectacular movements, but you see this also from Vacheron, from Lange, you never put a deployant clasp because that would be a big mistake. That would be selling luxury by the kilo, some people haven’t understood why things are there. So there you need education and clearly Michel is one of the most educated people in watchmaking because of the restoration work he has done… he is a living legend.
Fabrizio Bonvicino: Talking to you or even hearing your presentation, you make me more and more passionate about the roles and what amazes me is your telling about the watches but without focusing on the watches. The watch at the end of this conversation is a part, but there’s so much more and it creates a very interesting context.
Guido Terreni: Dipende da chi è, perché spesso e volentieri i collezionisti e gli amanti di orologi sono di due tipi, c’è gente che vede l’oggetto come totalizzante, io voglio quell’orologio perché lo guardo come un oggetto a sé, è un’opera d’arte, lo voglio qualsiasi cosa abbia.
Non è importante perché è totalizzante la tua passione, altri invece contestualizzano la loro vita, il loro gusto, il loro modo di essere e lo vedono insieme. È coerente anche come decori casa tua, con che macchina guidi, c’è chi non può essere in giro con una macchina arancione con i cerchioni d’oro quando è con un orologio del genere.
Fabrizio Bonvicino: No, absolutely not. In the last few years since you have been there, Parmigiani has changed significantly, and last year was a very important one. Of course, being independent has its benefits. However, it is also difficult in other ways. In your opinion, what are the pros and cons of it?
Guido Terreni: When you are independent, you have great advantages. First of all, you can choose the customer you want to serve, and you can do it with total freedom.
I am fortunate to have freedom of expression. And what we have done in these three years, no one asked me for anything. I did it because I wanted to interpret the brand this way and I did it to create future value and to create structural value. 2021, 2022 and 2023 were three years of growth, where we went from the worst year in 2020 to the best year in 2023 through quality work. The Tonda PF transformed the brand, returning to the prestige and allure of the beginnings with a more contemporary product, yet respecting the brand values.
When you are independent, you have to be able to create relevance within the store where you sell. We are big defenders of multi-brand because a watch enthusiast wants to be served by someone who knows the whole industry, not by someone who does one thing and doesn’t know how to contextualize their offering. So it is clear that when you are present with Rolex, Patek, Cartier, you become a brand that is not changing your partner’s numbers. It is important to be in as small a distribution as possible. We have a very important target, and an important average price. For this reason, even if we sell less pieces we manage to be among the first brands in the store. So that has been a form of bypassing the fragmentation of the industry and not being forgotten. That was very important to do.
And then, from a general point of view, we had a strong communication effort. It’s not easy because the choice to talk to a customer that’s not ostentatious, certain marketing techniques that work very well for others, like having ambassadors under contract. Growth has to happen with quality and what we do is very nice, the fact that this brand expresses values of discretion and not ostentation. I find it an expression of someone who has finally understood that it’s cool what you like and not what other people think it’s cool. The sooner people understand this, the sooner they will be free from the judgment of others.
Fabrizio Bonvicino: Yes, a lot of trying to stand out anyway from other collectors. People are trying a little bit to find what is their own taste, that’s what is happening at the end right now.
Guido Terreni: All the hype that has created the pandemic toward certain models is a homologation of a desire. But those who wanted those models and no longer want them today are therefore interesting customers because they are those who understand what luxury is and who are looking for a form of exclusivity, an exclusivity dictated by the values of the brand, by the style it expresses, to share those values and that is what we are trying to develop especially in a younger audience as well. Because today the younger generation is important. The 30-year-olds and even Generation Z that is coming in are extremely interested in watchmaking and it’s interesting to see how 20-year-olds are already educated.
Maybe they don’t have the means, or they haven’t received the gift from someone yet. Because there are those who have the luck to receive a Parmigiani Fleurier as a graduation gift, but it depends on what choices one has the opportunity to make. In any case, I am pleased that this style appeals to a very young audience.
Fabrizio Bonvicino: Yes, well, the fact is that we are seeing lots of young people. There is a phrase that Michael Friedman said to me a few years ago that stuck with me. The fact that we live in a time when everything becomes obsolete, and so the pleasure of having an object like a watch that stays with you gives you a sense of security about what your life is.
Guido Terreni: I always say, no one needs another watch so especially at a time when the network is full of watches because last year the industry has filled the retailer sales channel because they did more sell in than sell out. To buy, people really have to fall in love and that’s the beautiful thing.
Fabrizio Bonvicino: Absolutely yes, I agree. What do you expect from this year in general? Since it’s an adjustment year anyway, it’s a year of change. I would also ask you about Milan Watch Week and what you expect.
Guido Terreni: We decided to participate because it can be an opportunity to meet customers and collectors, but I am very curious about this year because we will find out by living it. We will find out how much the speculation bubble is worth, because in my opinion the result of the settlement is the fact that there is a lot of new product that is also outside the distribution network, though. Because there are two things: people who wanted to make a profit on a watch by looking at it as an investment and selling it higher than the list price, because there was more demand than supply.
These people are now putting the watches on the market because the secondary prices are going down. So before they lose money, they have to place them. So there is a kind of flooding of the industry’s product in general that creates a need for settling. It’s good, it’s temporary; will it last a few months? I don’t know how long it will last, it depends on how much this business will be worth, and it’s kind of a parallel I draw with you being too young as well, but in 2012 when Xi Jinping took over the leadership of the Communist Party of China he became the prime minister of China. He fought against corruption by using the clock as a symbol of corruption, and it turned out that gifting to people in the Chinese administration was worth 30-35 percent of China’s business. Here’s the point back then: taken that bubble out, now the Chinese market is worth much more and it’s healthy growth.
The same thing against with re-sellers, against those who place watches to make money, and then we will see how long it takes to readjust the supply and demand of the industry. What we can do is to control the sell in. So we are very careful not to give too much product, and then we try to create some desire through our creativity, through the Toric that comes in and sits as consistently as possible with the PF. Regarding the second question, I am extremely pleased that Milan has a watchmaking appointment in my hometown. So it gives me an opportunity to come home, even though I no longer have a home in Milan. I will come very gladly and it will be nice and fun to meet Milanese or Italian collectors who will come, because in any case the Italians still has an edge in elegance.
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