Hublot became the largest buyer of complicated movements

For companies with brand names as substantial as Hublot's, acquiring 30 new employees might not seem particularly newsworthy. But for a niche industry in which art, craft, and precision engineering intersect on a single square inch of real estate, an apparently small move this kind of as this can have profound implications.

"Thirty watchmakers is a small amount," says Hublot CEO Jean-Claude Biver of his company's new complicated-watch department. "But contemplating their level of skill, it really is actually a huge amount."

These extremely accomplished professionals position Hublot as a major new force on the industry's leading end. But Biver says the company's complication department, which Hublot purchased at a stroke from an insolvent supplier, grew far beyond his anticipations.

In 2004 - the year Biver took the company's reins - Hublot became the largest buyer of complicated movements from specialist BNB Concept, whose modern motion designs attracted considerably notice during the past decade, when the global view market surged. But many of BNB's modernist clients were among the first casualties with the economic downturn, and by the end of 2009, BNB's dwindling cash flow forced the firm to seek bankruptcy protection. A veteran of successful stints at each Blancpain and Omega and 1 of the most astute executives inside the watch business, Biver identified in BNB's predicament an opportunity to pick up some distressed assets around the cheap. "We created 30 offers to watchmakers, expecting to hire maybe eighteen or 20 of them," he recalls. "But within the middle in the crisis, all 30 said yes."

The acquisition - which contains all of BNB's equipment as well as the services of founder and former principal Mathias Buttet - will have an virtually immediate effect on Hublot's offerings. Not only is the company's pipeline of new models full, but many of its much more complicated watches, this kind of because the King Power Tourbillon, can now be made in-house and in greater numbers. Subsequent year will see the introduction of three minute-repeater designs with tourbillon and chronograph variations whose production the new group helped to facilitate.

Owing to Biver's perspicacity, Hublot now finds itself inside a position even Biver could scarcely have imagined a year ago. Though it has sold an impressive number of tourbillons - nearly 250 in 2008 - Hublot has not devoted the identical energy to complicated watches as it has to advanced-design chronographs, which Biver calls "fusion" watches simply because of the mix of materials used in their building. However, Biver insists this will change as soon as the watches generated from a development program he is now initiating come to market in two to 3 years. "It would be a mistake for us to put traditional movements like those of Breguet or Patek in our cases," he says. "We need to develop the fusion concept in our movements at the same time, with new constructions and materials."

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