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A Dynamic Duo: Georges Kern and Jérôme Lambert
News
A Dynamic Duo: Georges Kern and Jérôme Lambert
Not only will Lepeu, Chief Financial Officer Gary Saage and seven other directors retire from the Board, but young blood will be injected in the form of the two men once feted for the soon-to-be defunct CEO position: Georges Kern and Jérôme Lambert. Kern will take up the position of Head of Watchmaking, Marketing and Digital and Lambert will become Head of Operations responsible for all maisons other than jewellery and watchmaking. Intuitive and ground-breaking, the appointments recognise and play to the strengths of these two titans of the luxury industry. Charismatic, fiercely intelligent, brave and daring, both Kern and Lambert have paid their dues in the watch world and, while their decisions might not have always been universally popular, neither man has ever been willing simply to settle for the path of least resistance.
Talking earlier this week to Revolution, Kern said of his approach: “The reality is that today people buy a brand before they buy a product. I believe in the strength of the brand as much as I believe in the beauty and the quality of the product. It’s a combination of the two – it is never the product alone. We have to ask: ‘What do people want?’ We all look to heritage but we have to be careful not to be stuck in the past. We must constantly reinvent ourselves. Even if we keep the DNA of a product, we must surprise and innovate and do something which might interest people that are younger than 60 years old.”
A graduate of Political Sciences, Kern cut his teeth in the watch industry at TAG Heuer before joining Richemont Group in 2000. Involved along with Franco Cologni in the takeover of Les Manufactures Horlogères, Kern then worked with the late Günter Blümlein on the integration of A. Lange & Söhne, Jaeger-LeCoultre and International Watch Company. Already seeing the huge potential in the brand, Kern became the Group’s youngest CEO, when he took the helm at IWC Schaffhausen in 2002 and also assumed responsibility for Baume & Mercier in 2009 and Roger Dubuis in 2010. Over the past 16 years, Kern has taken what was one of Switzerland’s best kept secrets and turned it into one of the most successful and recognised watch brands in the world, solidly defining the six separate families of watches and giving each its own flavour of “cool”.
Recognising the wealth of experience among the outgoing Board members, and to ensure continuity during what is a difficult time for the watch industry, five of those retiring will join a new International Advisory Council which will “act as a sounding board for the Board of Directors, drawing on the significant expertise of its members”. Johann Rupert will remain as Executive Chairman of the Richemont Group.
There is little doubt that there are turbulent times to come, but with the decision to let these two men help steer the Richemont ship, there is every reason to see bright times ahead. As the Manic Street Preachers and the Welsh football team declared this summer (in a slogan more recently borrowed and reversed by Hillary Clinton): “Together Stronger.”