It’s been a busy seven days for Breitling.
Last week, the brand announced it had acquired dormant brand Gallet with plans to use it to fire up luxury watchmaking’s embattled mid-market segment.
Then Tuesday, the Swiss watchmaker unveiled Hollywood heartthrob Austin Butler as its latest ambassador, alongside a new line of timepieces called Top Time B31 — which the brand plans to price aggressively compared to rival watches with in-house movements.
The company’s chief executive Georges Kern said he hoped the moves would power up business in a challenging market. “I don’t remember in the past 30 years the environment being so tough,” the 60-year-old executive told BoF. “Consumer sentiment is the lowest it has been for years, there are political difficulties in many places. It’s not an environment where you want to buy luxury watches.”
Breitling has managed to maintain a relatively stable business, however, despite waning demand for many luxury brands over the past year. Breitling brought in revenues of 850 million Swiss francs ($962 million) in 2024, down 2 percent year-on-year, according to Morgan Stanely estimates. While the brand’s owner, Swiss private equity fund Partners Group, doesn’t disclose sales, Kern confirmed the estimates were “very accurate.”
“We are happy to be stable,” said Kern, noting many watchmakers recorded significant losses last year. “We are gaining market share. At the end of the day, the market will concentrate on 10, maybe 12 brands, just as in cars.”
“You have globalisation of taste and the winner takes it all, so if you don’t have a strong backbone, you have a problem,” he added.
Kern, who was appointed chief executive of the historic Swiss watchmaker in 2017, has sought to reinforce Breitling’s prestige by transitioning to a “manufacture” model—meaning it produces proprietary mechanical movements in-house, a practice long favoured by top-end manufacturers such as Patek Philippe and A. Lange & Söhne.
Breitling introduced its first modern in-house calibre in 2009 and has steadily been replacing third-party movements with its own, upping prices along the way.
Top Time B31 sees the brand extending its “manufacture” approach to the bottom end of its range: The new line fronted by Butler is powered by Breitling’s Caliber B31, a time-and-date-only movement with a 78-hour power reserve and a five-year warranty. The collection is still priced squarely in what’s considered the middle market for in-house mechanical watches, starting at $5,600. That’s in line with its previous collection of Top Time watches (which are powered by outsourced chronograph movements), and less than in-house movement timepieces with similar functionality from IWC and Hublot.
“You cannot take the same product and just increase prices, which many brands have done in luxury, because after a while the consumers say ‘no’,” Kern said.
He added that he hoped Breitling’s mechanical watches would be 100 percent in-house in around three to four years.
The Top Time is another design based on Breitling’s archive. It first appeared in the 1960s, sported by Sean Connery’s James Bond in “Thunderball.” Breitling’s Navitimer, Chronomat, Superocean and Premier lines also have archival roots, with designs inspired by 1940s and 1950s watches.
“If you take the top 20 [watches] sold in the world, they’re all from that period, with the exception of Richard Mille,” said Kern. “People want classics. The Top Time B31 isn’t an old, dusty design, it’s modern with all the features of a modern movement.”
Butler, who won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic “Elvis” two years ago, resonates with the brand’s classic aesthetic, said Kern. “He’s into guitars, motorbikes and retro style,” he said. “He fits the identity we’re trying to convey.”
Despite the 33-year-old star belonging to a new generation of movie stars, signing Butler isn’t a play to recruit Gen-Z customers, said Kern. “People always ask me what age we’re targeting, but we target a style,” he said. “As a consumer, you’re buying into a style, not an income bracket.”
Kern said Butler had been signed for three years, with the option to extend by a further two, but declined to disclose the cost, noting only that his company’s total marketing spend was a “double-digit” percentage of revenues. Breitling also works with Charlize Theron, Erling Haaland, Victoria Beckham and Six Nations Rugby.
Breitling’s recent acquisition Gallet is a Swiss company founded in 1826 that stopped series producing watches in the mid-1990s when it was sold to a private owner. The relaunched brand will target the gap left by Breitling’s price increases as it’s transitioned to an in-house manufacturing model.
Gallet watches will be priced between around 3,000 and 5,000 Swiss francs, according to Kern, and will be powered by third-party movements. From Autumn 2026, they’ll be retailed in 200 of Breitling’s 300 boutiques, as well as a further 100 points of sale around the world. Volumes will build up “slowly”, according to Kern.
In recent years, the watch industry has become polarised. Many establishment brands have moved their assortment up the price ladder and away from the threat of smartwatches, often using new movements and case materials with higher everyday performance to help push average prices up and volumes down. At the same time, battery-powered quartz pieces such as Omega and Swatch’s “MoonSwatch” mash-up and Tissot’s PRX, both of which cost from a few hundred dollars, have energised the lower end of the Swiss market. In between, a gap has opened up.
But Kern said luxury watchmakers had abandoned more accessibly priced mechanical watches prematurely, leading to a collapse in industry volumes, which have more than halved since 2011. “I want to support the industry [with volume], but I [also] want to prove you can be extremely successful with products at this price point,” he said. “It’s nonsense that you can only sell at higher prices.”
Kern is also due to relaunch the higher-end Universal Genève brand, another lost name from Swiss watchmaking acquired in 2023, reportedly for 60 million Swiss francs. Breitling will sit between Gallet and Universal Genève by price point, creating a group of sorts.
“We had all these price points [at Breitling] before. But you cannot stretch a brand endlessly to the top or the bottom,” Kern said. “We have an offer for the retailers from 3,000 Swiss francs to 200,000 francs, with three segments. The retailers like this.”