Blancpain and Breguet are rather quiet luxury watch brands, that we hear about, but not that often.
The Vallee de Joux-based Swiss companies — headquartered just down the road from one another — are effectively the co-flagship watch brands of the Swatch Group.
Following the quartz crisis, the Swatch Group acquired many watch brands at opportune times. While the deals may have been good, not all brands mesh well, as a proper watch movement’s gears must.
Swatch has done a good job of differentiating Blancpain and Breguet. The conundrum is that the two brands’ timepieces and price points often overlap, such as with the new Blancpain Air Command Flyback Camouflage Green Limited Edition and the latest Breguet Type XX Chronograph 2067. Both are 42 mm in diameter, feature in-house chronographs, and cost roughly $20K on a strap.
As much as I like the Type XX, at virtually the same price, it would be hard for me to pick that over the new Blancpain Air Command Flyback Camouflage Green Limited Edition, or other modern Air Command models. And it makes me wonder what the Hayeks would say if you asked them what the top brand at Swatch is Breguet or Blancpain.
Breguet has an awesome history yet receives far too little promotion and communication, likely because resources are spread so thin between the two brands. Let’s say hypothetically at the top you have a $10 million annual promotional budget between the two brands ($5 million apiece). Yet, if they were one brand, that could be $10 million towards one unified marketing program, which theoretically, should be twice as effective.
Interestingly, Blancpain previously took over Frederique Piguet and Breguet took over Lemania, so they already have extensive experience merging these exact watch brands.
As a company that’s publicly traded, would it be a good idea to sell one of the two brands, or to merge them and cut costs? I don’t know the answer but I think mainstream consumers, who probably know about brands like Omega, Patek Philippe, and Rolex — don’t know much about these two enigmatic Swatch-owned brands.
Inside both the Breguet Type XX and the Blancpain Air Command are in-house 5Hz (high frequency) flyback chronograph movements, which may share R&D costs, which would negate some of the costs to operate the two watch brands.
The Air Command Flyback Limited Edition on a strap is now available with a limited 200-piece run for a retail price of $21,800 and the Breguet Type XX 2067 on a strap is $19,100.
I’d take the Blancpain over the Bregeut because it’s sportier, has a titanium case, and perhaps most importantly as a consumer, it retains value better than Breguet. This brings up the question again: what’s the flagship watch brand of the Swatch Group?
Photos by Blancpain and Breguet.
