Everything started in 1980, with the daring idea of the founder of Hublot, Carlo Crocco who, for the first time in watch history, dared to present a model which matched the sumptuous glow of gold to the extreme simplicity of black rubber. The shape of the case, similar to a port-hole, which actually gives its name to the House, as well as the black dial of the watch, accentuate the unique and impressive aesthetics of the brand.
Of course, today in shops everywhere in the world one can find numerous watches which combine gold and rubber, but at the time it took three years of research to realise this revolutionary idea.
The exceptional properties of natural rubber (water resistance, lightness, shock absorption, pleasant to wear, etc), added a new dimension to sports elegance, as well as the possibility to customize the size of the strap around one’s wrist to the precision of a millimetre in the shop where one bought the watch.
This watch, offering a new dimension to daily elegance, was welcomed with enthusiasm by many personalities, initially, by members of the royal families of Europe and afterwards by leaders in the world of art and business.
As in most of cases, a great number of brands borrowed the brilliant and innovative idea of Hublot at once, and applied it initially to their sport models. Thereafter, all the traditional houses of the watchmaking industry started to give in to the temptation and often used rubber, considered from that time on as a noble material, to match even with very complicated watches.
Hublot, the inventor of the idea, presented numerous gold and rubber models, sometimes in limited series, thus creating this image for the family brand, presenting an original watch with several versions.
The attachment of the founder of Hublot, Carlo Crocco to the humanitarian work carried out by the MDM Foundation forced him to look for the man likely to develop his company even further by presenting collections of innovative and revolutionary watches.
It is therefore the second time that he got things right!
Jean-Claude Biver, after a career as glorious as it was turbulent in the field of beautiful Swiss watches, decided in 2003 to take a short break in his surprising career in order to contemplate his next step precisely.
From the very first moment of his meeting with Carlo Crocco, their collaboration became more than obvious.
In May 2004, Jean-Claude Biver became the Chairman of Hublot, as well as a shareholder.
Jean-Claude Biver was born in Luxembourg on September 20, 1949 and his family moved to Switzerland ten years later. After he finished his studies, the Valley of Joux and more precisely the small village of Brassus, α symbolic place for the Haute Horlogerie, attracted his attention. His attachment to this area would play an essential role for the future of J-C Biver and, conversely, he would play a crucial role in the years to come in the evolution of the area, as well as in the production of beautiful watches.
In 1975, he got his first position in watchmaking at Audemars Piguet and worked then for Omega. In 1982, he acquired the rights to Blancpain and, with his friend Jacques Piguet, he began again from scratch the complete collection of the current watches bearing the name Blancpain. This collection turned out to be immediately successful, while opening new perspectives to the mechanical watch.
Ten years later, in 1992, he sold Blancpain to the Swatch Group, and at the same time Nicolas G. Hayek offered him a very important position within the group’s board of directors (he remains the CEO of Blancpain), a position he would keep until the end of 2003. During the following eleven years, Biver would guide one by one, thanks to the “magic” of his movements, most of the group’s brands towards immense success.
From his very first day at Hublot, Jean-Claude Biver, as a great virtuoso, emphasized the true DNA of the brand and left all the watchmaking Industry open-mouthed by continuing the original idea of gold and rubber fusion towards a generalized fusion, which includes a complete pallet, resulting from the rarest and most fascinating materials of our time.
He then introduced the main concept under the title “Art of Fusion”, and he gathered under this heading different materials such as gold, ceramics, carbon, rubber, steel, titanium, tantalum, magnesium etc, while combining them with style, as he better than anyone knows how to do, and introduced the most innovative materials of the 21st century to the watchmaking tradition.
Like a contemporary Hans Wilsdorf, he invented something cleverer than a word easy to pronounce in all languages; he used a name that has the same meaning in all the languages around the world, Big Bang. Yet another link to the name Big Bang is the fact that in the company’s large collection of watches, all materials are brought together again, as they were before the giant explosion which formed the universe dispersed them.
In 2005, the year it came out, the Big Bang Chronograph was awarded all prizes and distinctions of honour, even the prestigious Grand Prix d’Horlogerie of Geneva. Throughout the following years, the awards received by the different Big Bang models equal only those received by Jean-Claude Biver in person, who, inter alia, received the world title of best businessman of the year 2010!
Time passed and the increase in sales of Hublot watches involved a considerable rise in turnover for the brand, while its marketing and communication strategy became a case study for universities around the world!
New ideas, as new as they were powerful, multiplied.
In 2006, Hublot began its own television channel, the first channel belonging to a luxury company to be broadcast on the web.
At the same time, Hublot is the only brand in the world to sponsor such a great number of sports: sailing, football, ski, polo, athletics, golf, basketball, race cars, motorbikes, tennis, Formula 1 etc. The Hublot House is always there for every single important sports event.
Hublot was the first luxury brand to dare and sponsor the Euro 2008 as an official sponsor. It was a great surprise, as a luxury brand had never participated in a football event before. In the wake of the daring Jean-Claude Biver, other brands (Audi, etc) would in their turn, become involved the years to come in this sport which, for a long time, had been the private playground of mass production brands.
The aggressive communication strategy of Hublot never stopped, not even in 2009 and 2010, difficult years, for Swiss watchmaking. Hublot remained the only company in the watchmaking industry to increase its communication, marketing and even the R&D department budget. Moreover, during this same period, it was the only company to multiply its travelling expenses to come closer to customers throughout the world and still the only one which, instead of laying off staff, never stopped creating new positions every year! This totally new thinking made the difference and multiplied the number of the Swiss brand’s faithful friends that are now in the millions!...
The ambassadors and friends of Hublot are as many as they are famous, starting with Usain Bolt and Diego Maradona, all the way up to Manchester United and the F1 organization!…
Moreover, the humanitarian work of Hublot deserves to be mentioned, since the company does not forget after each commercial success to associate its success with a gesture towards the problems of the most vulnerable.
The current collection of the brand offers a very rich range of models, as well as tens of limited series which each year satisfy the latest desires of the thousands customers of Hublot.
Jean-Claude Biver maintains generous and cordial relations with the owners of his watches. The President of Hublot, always clever and elegant, does not hesitate to take part himself in the world watchmaking forums to congratulate the purchaser on a Hublot or to offer an extension of a guarantee or even to arrive incognito at a chic Monaco restaurant and pay for the meal of all the guests wearing a Big Bang (source: businessmontres.com)! And furthermore, he answers the 200 emails he receives on an average day himself!… Who can do better?
The company also greatly contributes to the fight against watch counterfeits, by means of an innovative and fully reliable system whereby every new Hublot watch buyer registers his or her new watch.
2010 – a particularly difficult year for Swiss Watchmaking – was however a rich year for Hublot, since it welcomed a new team of watchmakers (coming from the BNB company) who, under the supervision of Mathias Buttet, one of the most talented Master-Watchmakers of our time, now creates in-house movements from A to Z that are used in all the Hublot Collection.
Automatic watches, chronographs, split-seconds chronographs, large date or power reserve indication watches, world timers, tourbillons, minute repeaters, but also a totally new original mechanism making it possible to slow down or speed up… time (Key of Time), are manufactured by Hublot. These watches are housed in superb cases made from the most innovative materials in the world, adorning a beautiful and complete collection.
Among the ladies models, at the foreground we find the elegant One Million Dollar and the Two Million Euro Big Bang, which were awarded the most prestigious distinctions and an uncontested position in the Pantheon of high jewellery watches in the history of watchmaking. Moreover, Jean-Claude Biver’s drive constantly to raise the bar led to the presentation at the BaselWorld 2012 of a new even more precious model, the 5 Million Dollar Big Bang!
In April 2008, Carlo Crocco sold the company to LVMH, the leading group in the field of luxury items. Jean-Claude Biver remains President and CEO, and Ricardo Guadalupe became Managing Director of Hublot.
Since then, Hublot successes have increased continuously, and the company constitutes an LVMH Group asset in the world of Haute Horlogerie.
We just mention that in October 2011 – inter alia – the Antikythera movement was presented in the size of a wrist watch, and Hublot began an exclusive collaboration with the prestigious Ferrari car manufacturer!
At the beginning of 2012, Hublot is in an envious position, due to a very wide range of activities, from the design of new models, original and elegant, that seduce the amateurs of beautiful watches in the world, and irresistibly attract new friends to Haute Horlogerie, to research and discovering new alloys, combining nobility of metal, surprising colour, and exceptional resistance to damage. At the same time, the participation of the company in a great number of events will keep Hublot at the centre of attention throughout the coming years.
From October 2011 to April 2012 the Antikythera movement became the Antikythera watch (!) and today it is the very first historical time keeper to be presented in an archaeological museum and, indeed, in the Archaeological Museum of Athens, regarded as one of richest in the world in terms of the quantity and quality of the exhibited objects. The value of this unique piece, highly symbolic for the Haute Horlogerie, scientists, but also for the cultural history of peoples is, to date, almost priceless.
What is undeniable, is that Hublot, whose journey is quite short – compared to large traditional watchmaking houses – succeeded in making History!
I have been trying for a long time already to add a full stop to this article, but after every glance at the news, I realize there is always something else to add…
To be continued on the site, every day new pages come to supplement the history of Hublot!
