Editor’s Note
This article highlights the strategic positioning of a leading luxury group, showcasing the comprehensive range and unity of its watchmaking brands. The reference to a political event serves as a chronological marker for a significant corporate announcement.
The global luxury leader showcases the strength and unity of its watch brands, which now cover the entire spectrum of watchmaking.
The day after President Trump’s inauguration, attended by Bernard Arnault, and a week before the release of its Q4 2024 quarterly results, LVMH’s nine watch brands held their salon in a new configuration.
Geographically first, as the LVMH Watch Week was initially scheduled to take place in a devastated Los Angeles. The organization therefore made a strategic retreat to New York before moving to Paris. The recurring choice of the United States, after Miami in 2024, reminds us where the new center of gravity of global luxury is located.
In spirit as well, since, for the first time, the LVMH Watch Week is a true demonstration of strength. The original edition brought together four brands, the 2024 edition six, and a wind of unification and acquisitions now brings the number to nine.
Joining the historical pillars of TAG Heuer, Bulgari, Zenith, and Hublot are now Gérald Genta and Daniel Roth, managed by the youngest member of the group’s owning family, Jean Arnault, who is also responsible for Louis Vuitton’s watchmaking. These brands are complemented by L’Épée, a benchmark clock manufacturer acquired in 2024, and Tiffany & Co., whose highly anticipated watches are finally seeing the light of day.
The division’s leaders and CEOs and their teams posed in a relaxed and collegiate atmosphere for a family photo where only the mastermind was missing. Frédéric Arnault, head of LVMH’s Watches and Jewelry division, did not pose, a way of putting the brands and products forward rather than the oversight.
Yet it is his hand that is behind the strategy of this gathering, which weighs, in the watchmaking dimension of its brands alone, nearly 2 billion Swiss francs. He is behind the expansion of his division’s perimeter, behind the recent appointments that changed the leadership of Zenith, TAG Heuer, and Hublot, and behind the group’s new ambitions in watchmaking.
Frédéric Arnault, head of LVMH’s Watches and Jewelry division
New, because LVMH is accelerating, expanding its networks, overhauling its brands and their strategies to face the slowdown affecting luxury in general and watchmaking in particular. It can now claim a position of strength within the group, as Frédéric Arnault stated.
This performance is largely explained by the strong weighting of jewelry (Bulgari and Tiffany & Co.) in the whole, which is more resistant to economic fluctuations, but also by the decline in the Wines and Spirits business, historically the group’s number two in terms of margin.
The portfolio of new releases presented on the occasion of this LVMH Watch Week covers the full range of style registers that the group masters, which itself covers almost the entire market. In the vintage, niche, and haute horlogerie style, there is the Daniel Roth Extraplat Souscription, thin, small, chic, and inspired by a model from the 90s.
Close to this spirit of fine craftsmanship and discreet elegance, Louis Vuitton presents its Tambour Convergence, with a discreet porthole display that highlights a bare, perfectly polished gold hood.
At Gérald Genta, the Gentissima Oursin Fire Opal plays with feminine, offbeat, and precious design with its opal spines and carnelian dial.
Bulgari celebrates the Year of the Snake in the Chinese calendar with a new wave of Serpenti, its most distinctive women’s line. The Serpenti Automatic adopts for the occasion an in-house automatic movement, very small in size, which opens up prospects for the entire group in the field of women’s mechanical watchmaking.
TAG Heuer completes its offering with a renewal of its mechanical Formula 1 line, completely redesigned, modern, and positioned at the base of its chronograph pyramid. This line clearly accompanies the partnership signed between LVMH and F1, whose role as timekeeper has been very logically assigned to TAG Heuer.
One level above, the vintage Carrera chronographs welcome the new Chronosprint, dedicated to the partnership with Porsche and its historical rally component.