INTERVIEW

THE CEO INTERVIEW

BENJAMIN COMAR

PIAGET’S RECENTLY-APPOINTED CHIEF EXECUTIVE ON PRODUCING ULTRA-THIN TIMEPIECES, THE PITFALLS OF PROFILING, AND WHY A BRAND SHOULD NEVER TRY TO PICK ITS CUSTOMERS

Words: Richard Brown

Benjamin Comar has some big shoes to fill. Appointed CEO of Piaget in the summer of 2021, the luxury industry veteran follows in the footsteps of Chabi Nouri, who, on her own appointment in 2017, became the first female chief executive among Richemont’s various watch and jewellery brands – a portfolio that includes Cartier, Chloé, JaegerLeCoultre, Net-a-Porter and Montblanc, among others.

Under Nouri’s stewardship, Piaget went from periphery player to leading luxury name. One of Nouri’s first acts in charge was to launch Piaget’s own e-commerce platform in the United States, before overseeing the company’s entry onto both the Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter websites, the first hard-luxury maison to be carried by the YOOX group. The move online paid dividends, helping Piaget navigate its way through the pandemic while other brands scrambled for a digital solution.

In something of a mic drop, shortly after Nouri took up her new role as strategic advisor to Richemont Group CEO, Jérôme Lambert, Piaget won two of the top gongs at the 2021 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie, the most important awards ceremony in the watch industry. The brand’s Limelight Gala Precious Rainbow was announced ‘Best Ladies’ Watch’, while the Altiplano Ultimate Automatic was named ‘Best Mechanical Exception Watch’.

By the time the awards were announced in November, Comar already had his feet planted firmly under the table. Yet he deflects any praise in the direction of his predecessor. “Personally, I can take no credit for these incredible accolades. The team at Piaget and Chabi should take all of the credit. What I can say is that it is incredibly rewarding to be recognised not only for our expertise in ultra-thin watches but also women’s watches.”

Comar started his career at Cartier in 1992, before becoming fine jewellery director at Chanel in 2004. Prior to Piaget, he was based in Paris, serving as chief executive of disruptive Italian jeweller, Repossi. Piaget had always been a company that Comar had respected from afar, so when Richemont came knocking he didn’t have to mull over his decision for long.

“It’s a dream for any CEO to work for a brand they admire – and I have admired Piaget since starting my career at Richemont more than over 25 years ago. I have discovered an ultracreative and fighting spirit within the teams here, which are all dedicated to creativity and innovation.”

One of the first jobs of any incoming chief executive is to evaluate the core

THIS IMAGE PIAGET’S POLO SKELETON IN BLUE, £24,400 BELOW THIS YEAR, PIAGET PAVED THE POLO SKELETON WITH 1,746 GEMSTONES

customer base of their new employer. However, in a highly-global post-pandemic word, Comar is quick to point out the pitfalls of profiling.

“I don’t really believe there is one type of customer anymore. There is no more gender, age, nationality. Above all they [the Piaget customer] have a love of craftsmanship, creativity and attention to detail – they choose the products that match their preferences.”

It’s a point I’ve read Comar make before – that it’s the customer that chooses the product, not the brand that chooses the customer. What, I ask, is the danger of a brand attempting to do the latter?

“I think the ‘marketing’ approach of producing collections for a specific customer underestimates the sophistication and fluidity of today’s luxury consumer. Customers buy pieces not because they need them but because they love them, and their feelings and moods can change rapidly. We are not an FMCG company. We are creating and selling dreams to an unpredictable, highly sophisticated customer.”

Today, Piaget’s men’s watch offering is anchored to a brace of collections: the brawny, go-anywhere Polo sports watch – relaunched in 2016 after a hiatus of almost 40 years – and the Altiplano, with which Piaget (usually) chooses to display its panache for manufacturing mindbogglingly slim in-house movements.

Last year, Piaget debuted the Polo Skeleton, a timepiece that’s 30 per cent thinner than the next leanest Polo. Refiguring a propriety movement to accommodate an off-centred micro-rotor, Piaget was able to trim down its automatic 1200S calibre to a thickness of just 2.4mm. The watch’s 42mm case now measures only 6.5mm deep. This year, the brand dropped

a new Polo Skeleton encrusted with 1,746 brilliant-cut gemstones (bottom left).

If the idea of a movement measuring 2.4mm thick strikes you as impressive – and it should – hear this: in 2018, Piaget unveiled a timepiece whose entire girth – movement, case, bezel, the lot – amounted to a bewildering 2mm in total. The Altiplano Ultimate Concept, officially the world’s thinnest mechanical watch, has since entered production. Its latest iteration, the La Côte-aux-Fées edition, uses pioneering technology to layer the watch’s bridges in a verdant forest-green atomic coating – a nod to the trees that surround the brand’s workshop in La Côte aux Fées, Neuchâtel.

If you’re into your watches, you’ll know that the other big player in ultra-thins is Bulgari, which, through its Octo Finissimo collection, currently holds a number of records for ridiculously lean watches; records that Piaget could once claim for itself. When “Of course celebrity you’ve made cointhin timepieces your ambassadors can shtick, I ask Comar how important it is to come out on top play a role – but the relationship in the battle of the ultra-thins? needs to be real”

“It is not a battle,” he says. “Piaget is simply showcasing its long-established expertise in ultra-thin watchmaking, for which we are recognised the world over. We are following our own motto – ‘always do better than necessary’ – it is not a question of world records or breaking records, but pushing the limits.”

These days, watches tend to be launched with the help of an army of A-list celebrities. At the 2018 Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, a Geneva-based watch fair that’s since been rebranded Watches & Wonders, I attended a press conference in which Nouri introduced Ryan Reynolds and supermodel Doutzen Kroes. The following year, I sat across a table from Michael B. Jordan at a gala dinner attended by fellow Piaget ambassador Chinese actor Hu Ge and ‘Friend of the Maison’ Olivia Palermo. More recently, owing to the pandemic, the brand has had to rely on pushing press shots of Jordan, Palermo and Dutch DJ/producer Shiva Safai Houweling on social media. Now that the world has reopened, will the ‘Piaget Society’, as the brand chooses to call its celebrity harem, remain such an integral part of the watchmaker’s communication strategy? “It goes well beyond a communication strategy,” says Comar. “Bringing clients and friends together is at the heart of the Piaget maison and the Piaget Society will be very active in the coming years. Of course celebrity ambassadors can play a role – but the relationship needs to be real.” Comar and I are talking a few weeks before Geneva will host Watches & Wonders, as of this year, the industry’s biggest get-together. In 2020, citing reasons of spiralling costs and myopic mismanagement, Rolex, Patek Philippe, Hublot, TAG Heuer and Tudor announced they were quitting Baselworld, the industry’s other major trade show, in favour of Watches & Wonders. The move proved to be the death knell for what had been the world’s oldest watch meet. Comar won’t be drawn on the downfall of Baselworld, and whether he had any sympathy of the newly-installed management team that was given little time to save a ship that might not necessarily have sunk. He does, however, throw his weight behind the concept of physical trade shows in general. “Clearly the world had to adapt in these past two challenging years,” says Comar, “but I am very much looking forward to meeting the press, our trade partners, our friends and our colleagues in the industry face-to-face – nothing can replace shared moments.” So, what can we expect Piaget to present at the first major watch pow-wow in two years? “This year will centre around the Limelight Gala collection,” says Comar, “but we will also be paying tribute to our expertise in ultra-thins.” Not that it’s a battle, or anything. piaget.com

ENTER THE COVETT VAULT

IF YOU’VE EVER DREAMT OF AN EVENING OUT WEARING THE SORT OF JEWELLERY YOU SEE ON THE RED CARPET, OR HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR A WAY OF MONETISING YOUR OWN FINE-JEWELLERY COLLECTION, CYNTHIA MORROW , FOUNDER AND CEO OF JEWELLERY CO-OWNERSHIP SERVICE COVETT, IS HERE TO HELP T he seed for Covett was planted when Cynthia Morrow was having dinner with girlfriends. “We realised that our fine jewellery spent most of the time sitting in a safe,” says the London-based native Californian.

Years later, Morrow was considering a career change and knew she wanted to do something with luxury goods and the sharing economy. “That’s where the idea of sharing fine jewellery came from,” she says. “It just makes so much sense; the more a piece of jewellery

costs the less you tend to wear it – why invest the full amount, when you can take the other 80 per cent, for example, and invest that elsewhere?”

In 2018, Morrow founded Covett, a co-ownership and subscription-based model that allows people to access fine jewellery without the prohibitive costs typically associated with doing so. Members can either borrow jewellery from Covett’s vault by subscribing to one of three membership options, or choose to co-own specific items of jewellery by purchasing shares. Covett limits the number of shareowners to five per piece, one of which is Covett for reasons relating to insurance and storage.

And if you want to monetise your own fine-jewellery collection, Covett can help with that too. To find out how you can earn money by adding your jewellery to Covett’s subscription vault, email conceirge@cove.tt.

From where does Covett source its jewellery?

Our main source is from award-winning independent jewellery designers, the majority of whom are British. We have partnerships with the British diamond watch brand Backes & Strauss, as well as Alice van Cal, Baunat, David Jerome, Eva Gems & Jewels, Karen Phillips Jewellery, Le Ster, Myriam Soseilos, Nadine Aysoy, The Rock Hound, Ouroboros and Zeemou Zeng.

How many pieces of jewellery does Covett’s vault currently contain?

The vault has about 70 pieces of finediamond and gemstone jewellery, and a Cartier watch for loan through our subscription service. Our co-owners’ vault is separate and only available to those who are co-owners.

How often can a member borrow jewellery from Covett?

Co-owners have access to their pieces monthly. If they’d like to borrow pieces from the subscriber’s vault, they can do that at any time for a fee. All loans are a consecutive five-day period but can be extended for a nominal fee.

Can I sell a piece of my own jewellery to Covett?

Yes, we have three ways that people can monetise their own fine jewellery or watches on Covett. They can sell their piece to Covett, or they can sell 80 per cent of their piece and keep 20 per cent. The third way is that they can put the piece in our subscription vault for loan, and we share the revenue from each loan with them.

Does Covett sell the jewellery in its vault? If so, how do shareholders benefit?

We are happy to sell the jewellery in our subscription vault as we know people fall in love with pieces and want to wear them all the time. Usually this will be done at a discount unless the person would like the piece to be new, and then we would arrange to sell them a new piece from the brand. Shares in our co-owned pieces can be sold on our platform and if the appraisal of the piece has increased in value, then the shareholders all benefit. If one co-owner wants to buy out the other owners, we would try to broker that, too.

What are some of the most popular pieces within Covett’s vault?

Each week we do a ‘Most Covetted’ email which lists our most popular pieces for the week. Most recently we have had a lot of demand for Alice van Cal’s bracelets and necklaces. The Rock Hound earrings are very popular, as they are real statement pieces, also Eva Gems & Jewels earrings and bracelets get a lot of attention.

What are your personal favourite pieces within the Vault?

Wow, that is a tough question! We recently added a new piece to our co-ownership vault, which is an emerald-cut tanzanite and diamond cocktail ring. Originally this piece was offered by one of our designer/manufacturers and we placed it on our site. At our January event I was able to see the piece in person, and the photo just didn’t do it justice. It’s an exceptionally clean stone of beautiful colour. Fortunately, we have several others who also fell in love with it and it’s now in the co-owner’s vault.

To monetise your own fine jewellery, contact conceirge@cove.tt. To subscribe to Covett, please visit cove.tt