Style Edit: How Longines’ CEO levelled up the watch brand – from eyeing Gen Z’s love of genderless style, to increasing revenue past US$2.25 billion thanks in part to focusing on heritage timepieces

Mar 19 , 2024

Longines CEO Matthias Breschan joined the company right in the midst of Covid lockdowns. Photos: Handout

CEO Matthias Breschan observes a near 50:50 ratio in terms male and female customers – its Mini DolceVita, with Oscar-winning Jennifer Lawrence fronting the campaign, is popular with both sexes

Longines launched the entirely new Spirit heritage line of aviation watches to great acclaim, and is hitting its revenue goals without raising prices or doing collaborations

When Matthias Breschan was appointed CEO of Swiss luxury watchmaker Longines in the summer of 2020, the company, the industry and the world at large was in the midst of a lockdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Austrian-born executive remembers his first day on the job all too well: “My very first working day at Longines was July 1, 2020 – maybe one of the worst days, because almost all our stores in the whole world and points of sales were closed. It was really horrible.”

The upbeat Breschan, suddenly with a lot of free time on his hands, tried to see the positives of the forced closures, and took the opportunity to learn more about the company he was now leading. “The first thing I did was visit the Longines Museum,” he says. “I discovered a lot of things. Even though I had been in the watch industry for more than 20 years, I didn’t know that Longines invented the flyback movement, the GMT movement, the turning bezel and high frequency technology.”

A vintage ad of a Longines Conquest Heritage watch

Breschan says that Longines was fortunate that the countries where the brand was strongest, particularly China, also happened to be the countries that emerged from the pandemic the quickest. Hong Kong, among Longines’ top three markets before the pandemic, has recovered sufficiently to remain in the brand’s top five today, despite the longer lockdowns and tourism restrictions the city went through in comparison to other Asian markets.

Despite the fast recovery from the pandemic, the Covid period revealed some structural problems within Longines’ business, Breschan reveals: “Longines is, probably, over the last 20 years, one of the biggest success stories in the whole watch industry, but we made one mistake in this time.” He says that while Longines was strong in many Asian countries, that was made easy because mainland Chinese tourists were travelling the world and buying the watches from its retailers – who ended up forgetting about domestic customers.

Since the pandemic, Longines has focused on models tailored to European and North American tastes

He adds that Longines had previously allowed local retailers to tailor its products to appeal to Chinese tourists specifically. “That was a big mistake, because we saw with Covid that tourists can disappear,” says Breschan, adding that he pushed Longines to shift its focus and make domestic clients the priority.

The serendipitous time Breschan spent at the Longines Museum also proved instructive. It allowed him to plot a path forward for the company in terms of its products, and watches that would more likely appeal to consumers in Europe and North America – markets that were increasingly keen on vintage pieces, smaller-case sizes and heritage-focused design. Boasting one of the deepest and most comprehensive product archives in the Swiss watch industry, Longines has leaned more heavily into its heritage in recent years to both critical and commercial success.

Longines’ Spirit Flyback Chronograph models affirms the brand’s heritage

In 2020, the brand launched the entirely new Spirit collection, a heritage line of aviation watches. It was a notable move, as many of the larger Swiss brands were focused on extensions of existing popular collections. From a standing start, the Spirit collection has garnered positive critical reaction and strong sales for its pilot watches: last year, Longines introduced the Spirit Flyback Chronograph to emphasise once more its historical pedigree with that particular complication.