ROX Talks...In Conversation with Antoine Pin, MD of Bulgari watches.

LVMH Watch Week provided us with loads of opportunities to reconnect and chat to some of our friends within the industry, and next up in our ROX Talks series is Bulgari. 

Our managing director, Kyron Keogh chats to the Antoine Pin, MD or Bulgari’s watch division. 

Antoine shares what life is like for the luxury Italian house two years post pandemic and why innovation and staying true to its luxury values are key to the brand’s success, despite global challenges.

Bulgari continues to dazzle as one of the oldest Italian jewellery brands and it’s thus heritage that inspires its watch collections.  Kyron and Antonine delve into why collaboration is key between Bulgari’s high jewellery and watch divisions and it is these unique partnerships and projects that ensure that design and beauty will always super-seed function for the house of Bulgari.

Listen now

Transcript

Antoine Pin: [00:00:00] Hello! 

Kyron Keogh: Greetings from Scotland. How are you? Lovely to see you. 

Antoine Pin: Very nice to see you as well. Where are you right now?

Kyron Keogh: In Glasgow.

Antoine Pin: In Glasgow? 

Kyron Keogh: Yes. Life is slowly but surely getting back to normal here. I don't know how it is in Geneva right now?

Antoine Pin: It's the same thing. I mean we go through this new COVID wave. It's always a bit, complex, but we just make, do with it. We just let it pass through.  There's basically nothing lethal and most of the people are vaccinated. The virus is less dangerous so it feels like big wave of flu.  But it's complicated. We've got basically 15% of our manufacturing staff that are at home right now. So it's not the best, but it's okay. We live with it. [00:01:00] And, that's life, I mean, what else can we do?

Kyron Keogh: Indeed and who would believe two years on, we're still talking about this pandemic.  We should have been in Dubai this week, enjoying some sunshine, but maybe next year.

Antoine Pin: Exactly, true, true. It's going to happen. We'll get there. 

Kyron Keogh: Well, actually, what is exciting is to see is that so much innovation and so much still happening in the industry, despite all these challenges that we have.  Out of these tough times has come some great things. Listen, all I can say is what a sparkling new collection for this year?

Antoine Pin: Thank you!

Kyron Keogh: What inspired such an emphasis on high jewellery for this year? 

Antoine Pin: Well, I think, this is something that [00:02:00] you will see is not just happening now but you will see more things coming in the future.  The global thinking is that we are here for a reason. We are in the watch industry for a reason and basically to give the perspective and the point of view of an Italian jeweler. So there's a lot of ongoing thinking about our “raison d'être” in a way.   What is our purpose as a jeweller?  What makes us one of the few Italian actors and the only Italian jeweller with a true perspective on watches and how do we expose this? And clearly, naturally what the answer is… well jewellery watches  by essence. And this is how we started. Our first watches from the 1910s in 1917 / 1918 were jewellery watches.   Our first secret watches were jewellery watches and this is eighty years ago. [00:03:00] So all our history until the seventies, roughly 50 years brings us back to the world of jewellery watches by essence. And this is why you see not only now, but you did see during the Geneva Watch Days last year as well, more and more expressions, jewellery expressions in watchmaking.   Not only those, but clearly a true willingness to expose this craft.  The expertise be it from the selection of stones to the identification and purchase of the appropriate stones for the setting, to the goldsmiths work.  We have to expose this and we don't only have to expose this in a very high end with the Serpenti Misteriso but we also have to expose it in the core of our collection. We have to [00:04:00] open the door of the jeweller to anybody entering the stores, wherever they are. And this is why you see an expression of the jeweller, the Roman jeweller, into the new Lucea collections and the new Serpenti. There's always something precious in what we propose.

Kyron Keogh: Exactly. And that's the “thing”, isn't it, it's what Bulgari is known for.  How do you describe that working relationship with, your flamboyant jewellers in Rome and your more technical watch makers in Switzerland.  How did the two work together?

Antoine Pin: Its works, frankly, you wouldn't see so many products if it didn't work.  At the base, it starts with Mauro di Roberto, the head of the jewellery business unit and myself.  We get along and he is such a gentleman.  I very much like [00:05:00] Mauro and we do believe that there's a lot that we can do together.  We inspire ourselves and each other. We are inspiring each other quite a lot.  I’m just thinking about a couple of models from the recent jewellery collections that are clearly inspired by our watches. And we clearly picked some ideas from some of the jewellery collections.  But this is with a mindset that is a very positive one. We are not stealing. We are sharing - it's a totally different attitude with the same goals. And we kickstart the collaboration this way.  If we expose both worlds to each other, there is so much to learn and there is also so much to gain from it. And then because of the success of the previous initiatives, there is a natural organisation that installs itself. I mean, you don't [00:06:00] have to push things if they come out naturally and that's what's happening, we are implementing some gatherings, some meetings and then the teams are picking them up and moving on with the project.

There are some elements that allow us to meet regularly through either physically or digitally and to anticipate as well. We are working more and more ahead with the perspective of looking forward over the coming years. This gives us time to exchange, to prepare and to collaborate. So it's just a matter of goodwill and open platforms. 

Kyron Keogh: And I guess one of the most obvious benefits of this partnership is this development of the new Piccolissimo movement, which features [00:07:00] so strongly in the new Serpenti collection.  It allows you as jewellers to do even more. Tell me about how this project came about and tell of the challenges that you had when you have to create and shrink a movement to such a size. 

Antoine Pin: Well, it's a journey and it's a journey that started 10 years ago.  Its shaped up progressively and has let's say, became more precise over recent years.  At the moment we see ourselves so comfortable with this idea of miniaturising our calibres.  We find out why it was so comfortable with it, just because as jewellers and designers we expect that the functionality disappears under the fluidity, the beauty of the product.  Clearly, we are [00:08:00] slightly different from the traditional watch industry that would tell you function creates design - we would say, well, design supersedes function, because of the aesthetics. 

You know, there's a saying in Italy “Bello e Ben Fatto” which means that when it's well done, it's always beautiful. Or when it's beautiful, it's necessarily well done.  So beauty goes above and beyond the aesthetics and the superficial aspects of things.  It is really a philosophical concept and what is beautiful is right. So we're talking about about virtue. You know, virtue is the leader of beauty. 

And this leads us to really driving our collections from a design perspective. And this is where the studio is absolutely key.  And because of [00:09:00] this, the question of minimising the volume taken by the movement has become an obsession for us. 

Sometimes watch manufacturers will say, I want to touch on everything; I want to touch on chronometry, I want to touch on astronomy, I want to touch on micro micro-mechanics, on power reserve… there are plenty of elements that you can touch upon when you're dealing with watchmaking.  We can't do everything and we don't want to do everything.

Conversely, we want to be good at miniaturization, not only from a development perspective, but from an industrialisation perspective too, because it's easy to make very, very tiny calibres. What is important is to make calibres that work and to be able to repeat them.   So that's one major point of focus.

The second one being chiming watches.  Not because we're jewellers, [00:10:00] because we are born like this as a watchmaker. We are born from horology workshops that we are developing constantly. And this is today, still the ultimate, the epitome of watchmaking.  So we had this in our hands as well, but the way we see those elements is with a perspective to make this world of chiming watches evolve and be modern.

So, how do you make chiming watches a modern attribute to watches? There are two sides of our developments.  One is a natural development of thin and small movements. And this is why I just find finishing on your question.  It's a very natural move. We've scrutinized and explored the territory of very slim movements and we are reaching the end.  We've almost done everything. But naturally the second chapter [00:11:00] of micro mechanisms is very small. So this is why we're really sort of entering into a phase two.   I like the idea of a chapter in our story of making micro mechanisms while last year we've opened a chapter with the Tourbillon Chiming Three Hammer Octo Roma and we're coming with another page of this chapter, which is one of the calibres,  one of the elements of chiming watches.  And we will come with new chapters in the coming years. 

Kyron Keogh:  Picking up on that you've launched two new Octo Roma masterpieces this week. Tell us a bit about them?

Antoine Pin: Well, the first one that probably you can see on the video is our limited, edition Octo Roma Tourbillon Carillon and this piece is the second version of the new calibre [00:12:00] that we launched last year.  The idea with this collection is to explore is to really explore the performance of the sound propagation.  How can we make the sound as loud and crisp as possible? So we really looked at this watch from a sound projection perspective which is why you get a dial that is open and you've got a structure which is empty inside. It's titanium and platinum.  The bezel and the back of the watch is in platinum, but inserts that are in titanium and open in order to minimise the quantity of materials and therefore limit any barriers to the propagation of the sound. And the same goes with the with the back of the watch where we have this structure, [00:13:00] where you see, we have an open back with this structure, allowing for the sound to come out in the highest power. 

The first of our calibres launched last year, was delivering a level of sound of 80 decibels, which is very high in the world of watches. This one is slightly lower, it’s in the seventies, 75 because of the bi-structured materials - we've got titanium but we also have platinum. Titanium is an excellent material for the conduction of the waves. Platinum is not as good, but still a very high sound for very precious metal, but also a very modern design. And this design is really important. It's a statement. We do not want to repeat the minute repeater of the past.  We really project ourselves into the future with this one. 

Kyron Keogh: Amazing.

Antoine Pin: And the other [00:14:00] one is a crazy piece. I mean it's, it's, it's, it's just crazy. It's this full pave diamond and emerald Octo Roma.  Big, chunky and featuring the Grande Sonnerie inside so the best of both worlds.  We're putting on show everything we can do so just a statement. You know, some of our pieces here are real statements, but I must say one client ordered one of those pieces. So this one is one of a kind, we have already done another one of a kind not in emerald so some people always want the best. And we said, okay, we're going to show the best. 

Kyron Keogh: Well, certainly your collections this year have made a statement and really proven the relationship between watch making and high jewellery. [00:15:00] You talked about, a chapter there in terms of the ultra-thin Octo Finissimo.  There are no record breakers this year.  Does that mean you've conquered all of the ultra-thin formats that you want to do, or is there still something up your sleeve? 

Antoine Pin:  Well, I love this question because it really tells us we've really made our point. Everybody's asking me, is there a new world record? Is there, is there not?  Well, you know, eventually we will reach the end.

I mean, there's a moment when you look to go beyond certain limits, just a matter of wearability and this is why we're opening the chapter of Piccolisimo because again, there is a limit and the point is not just to make a statement for the sake of a statement. There are other ways to break records with Finissimo and we showed some.  [00:16:00] We will be coming with new products this year, a few, because we believe the collection has reached its maturity.  But we don't want to just lead by world record although I love your question because it shows there is excitement. We don't want to just be living with this.

We need some kind of rest around Finissimo just to let it breathe to somewhat, re-energize the process, the brains around Finissimo.   But bare with us, we've got a few things to share in the coming months and there are so many areas where we have plenty of projects be it on miniaturization or on the side of chiming watches that will not necessarily be world record per se, but that will be also, surprising you. I promise.

Kyron Keogh: I have no doubt there will [00:17:00] be a surprise in there somewhere.  So we're hoping by March in time for Watches and Wonders, life will be nearly normal and we can all meet face to face again. And after two years of an absence, what can we expect to see from a Bulgari, for the rest of 2020?  If you can tell me?

Antoine Pin: I'm crossing fingers, that we have something fun to tell it, to share with you, but I'm not going to tell you now for sure. 

Kyron Keogh: Of course. 

Antoine Pin: I want the shock. I want you to be shocked.

Kyron Keogh: Well, Antoine I'm sure I will be!   It's been an absolute pleasure catching up with you today.  

Antoine Pin: I hope that I'll be able to come and visit you. 

Kyron Keogh: Of course, you'd be very welcome.

Antoine Pin:  I plan to visit Scotland this summer. 

Kyron Keogh: Well, [00:18:00] we'll extend a warm Scottish welcome to you with some Highland hospitality. 

Antoine Pin: Excellent. 

Kyron Keogh: We can take you on a tour if you enjoy whisky, we'll take you to some distilleries. We can have some fun, but I wish you well, congratulations on an absolute stunning collection for 2022. 

Antoine Pin: We hope to see you in Geneva in April? 

Kyron Keogh: I am looking forward to it, I can't wait. All the best have a good day.  Cheers. 

Antoine Pin: Really nice seeing you, bye-bye.