Patience, Passion, Perfection

Laurent DorDet, the new Ceo of La Montre herMès, raps about the present anD the future of the parisian watChMaker

as a huge success at all. But, at least it showed some resilience because 2016 was a difficult period. The retail business here mainly concerns with the trade at our own stores, all over the globe, which represents around 80 percent of the business. The rest is the trade made through selective networks of independent retailers, department stores in various countries. The latter, I must say, was much more challenging, because of the inventory issues. There was, basically, a discrepancy between offer and demand in most of our partners, but not of our stock, but the stock of big watch brands— we’re still a small player in the watch industry. So our partners had to deal with that. DA: You’ve been in the watchmaking department a couple of years now. What do you think of it? LD: Hermès is a maison of know-how; it’s a family passionate about know-how. So, we started with leather in the beginning, and only a hundred years and more later did we foray into silk production. We wanted to become a very legitimate house in silk, and that’s why we employ about 1,000 people in Lyon, France, focusing on textile production. The family is very passionate about watches, too, and from the history of the brand, you can see that we had a lot of partnerships with JaegerLeCoultre, Universal, etc. in the past.