Q&AThe Panerai Perspective On Brand Boutiques And Watchmaking

What are your thoughts on the new Panerai boutique at The Chanakya?

With DLF investing in real estate for such premium retail spaces, we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to have this boutique. The brand has been received well in India, as we have a strong following from different sectors, including Bollywood celebrities, bankers, and industrialists. So there is a need for us to have mono-brand boutiques in at least Bombay and Delhi. Also when you have a Panerai boutique, we guarantee our partners – in this case, Ethos – that they will get the full range of our watches. Multi-brand retail establishments have to always wait for the new watches, but brand boutiques receive new releases on priority.

Does the boutique meet the brand’s international standards?

The designing of our boutiques is always overseen by our headquarters in Italy. We have Patricia Urquiola, the famous Spanish-Italian interior designer. She designs all our boutiques. She has lived and breathed the brand. She has spent a lot of time with our company to understand the brand DNA, heritage, the design of our watches, and our link to the sea. She has interpreted all of this into what you see in the boutiques. You’ll always see elements of bronze – used a lot in the sailing world. You’ll see the corrugated glass, which reflects that Panerai was born out of the sea, with beginnings in supplying watches to the Royal Italian Navy. Inside the boutique, you’ll see a lot of wood, which also gives you the nautical feel. You’ll also see elements of Florence, the brand’s birthplace. There’s a sketch of the Duomo [the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, an iconic monument in Florence]. We also have a small VIP room, for customers to feel welcome to sit down and take their time to interact with the staff, take in the watches and experience the brand.

Why would you recommend a brand boutique over a multi-brand store?

Today the customers want someone from Panerai to always be available. And you’ll never get it 100 percent right in multi-brand stores. It’s not that the staff in such stores aren’t trained; it’s that it won’t be possible to do justice in having knowledge of all the brands available. It’s far better to represent one brand and tell its stories. We train our staff in Italy and Switzerland. And there is regional training also, to ensure that the people in our boutiques can represent the brand with confidence, and can comfortably share information, prices and technical details of the watches. They should also be able to maintain relationships with customers for after-sales services and so on.

What makes Panerai’s boutique edition watches special?
Our boutique editions are always created to celebrate our boutiques. When we opened our boutique in Mumbai, we created a special edition that was dedicated to that boutique with a hand-engraved Gateway of India on the caseback. That was a dedication to the brand having a home in India. We’re also considering something like that for this boutique in Delhi.

Aside from these dedicated editions, how are watches generally chosen as boutique editions?

We always go back to the watches that we’ve created in the past, and there are watches that were never launched. So we go back to our past models from the early days even, and we choose something that’s relevant to the brand’s history.

How does Panerai manage to be new and innovative, while staying true to the strong identity of the Radiomir and Luminor collections?

Honestly, it’s a challenge. You want to be relevant and you don’t want to deviate far from who you are as a brand. Also, you don’t want to be opportunistic, to only create something that will sell. We want to be profitable as a company, but to be a long-lasting brand, we have to be unique. We must innovate, not just in movements and technical aspects, but also materials, and with how we communicate what our brand is all about. With Panerai, all watches are numbered, each edition has an identity, an origin year and a story. Everyone who owns a Panerai has that. It requires a lot of effort by our product development team to always come to the market with something unique and different, but something that is still very much a Panerai. We don’t follow trends, we make trends. For instance, Panerai is always perceived to be an oversized watch, and many other brands have followed that.

It’s interesting you mention size, since this year, the new Luminor Due is down to 38mm – the smallest size ever. Is it to cater to women?

We have done some research to find there is a need for smaller sizes; not to cater to men or women in particular, but maybe for people who have smaller wrists, but still want to wear a Panerai. As for ladies, they tend to wear any of the sizes we make – even 42 or 47mm. But we feel obliged to give people with smaller wrists what they want.

This year, Panerai has also become self-reliant for movements or at least sourcing from only within the Richemont group. What does this mean for Panerai as a mechanical watchmaker?

Today I can tell you that Panerai is a 100-percent manufacture brand, where all our watches are equipped with our in-house calibres. There’s a pyramid of movements. There are base calibres, and also the high-end complications, such as minute repeaters, tourbillons, equation of time, and so on. We realised that if we were going to be a long-lasting brand, we had to have in-house movements, with complete manufacturing capabilities and facilities, and that’s what we have in Neuchatel. We have the entire production line – case, movement and assembly – all under one roof.

Which is your favourite Panerai watch? 

My favourite Panerai is from the Luminor Due collection. It has a slimmer case in a certain red gold, which is something that is very distinctively Panerai. The dial is a typical Panerai sandwich dial. I like this also because the Luminor is the most recognisable Panerai, with its crown protector, which is patented. It was required earlier to make the case more water resistant, but today, with recent technological developments that extra protection is not required. But we choose to keep it because it’s become a part of the Panerai signature. It can be worn as a dress watch as well as with everyday jeans.

Which other brands do you admire?

I have a Vacheron Constantin. As you know Vacheron is one of the higher-end brands of the Richemont group. And I have a Jaeger-LeCoultre.

With the rising popularity of the smartwatch, is there a chance Panerai might also make one soon?

I think our technical innovation is mainly focused on mechanical watchmaking. This is our current direction. I don’t know if it will change in the future. We are always impacted by technology. It’s changing our lives and how we live. So you never know. But for now, it’s all about mechanical Swiss-made watches, and to give our customers something new and with added benefits.

What advice would you give to a novice who wishes to invest in a high-end watch or start a collection?

Assuming you’re talking about someone with the means, I would advise them to visit us at our booth at SIHH (Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie) in Geneva in January. It’s the trade show that takes place every year, where we show our new novelties. It’s mainly for trade, but we do also have certain VIP clients and collectors who come to experience the new products. Some of the watches they see there will only either be boutique editions or high-complication watches that are in extremely limited production – often customised for every order that we get for them. What also happened this year in India was an exhibition called the Luxury Lifestyle Weekend in Bombay, where several brands come to showcase themselves, including watch brands like us, presenting our timepieces. Trade shows are a good way to interact with brands and to know their stories and what their products are all about.