Bulgari won the WWD Honor for Watch Brand of the Year for its Finissimo Ultra COSC, a record-breaking timepiece that is the thinnest mechanical watch in the world, and quite a way for the Roman brand to mark its 140th anniversary this year.
Chief executive officer Jean-Christophe Babin joined WWD’s Milan bureau chief Luisa Zargani, first by holding up a 2mm Swiss coin to demonstrate the marvel of the 1.70mm timepiece. “The watch is thinner than a coin,” he said, acknowledging that Bulgari is famous across the globe “as one of the leading high jewelers, but not spontaneously a watchmaker.”
Nonetheless, the brand has a well-documented history in watchmaking, particularly the Serpenti Tubogas timepiece. But Babin pointed out that when he came to the brand more than 11 years ago, watches were trailing behind the jewelry.
“The question we immediately asked ourselves is what the benefit of Bulgari to ladies is. I would answer, ‘elegance,’” he said, then considering the question for the opposite sex.
“The Bulgari gentleman is living in a quite modern environment here in New York,” he offered as an example. “His main accessory for three centuries is the watch. We see what contemporary means in terms of architecture, art, style, design, and also in terms of personal style. And the watch cannot change across those three centuries. Not in style, not too much,” he said, elaborating that they then asked themselves what would the style be for a modern gentleman. “And obviously the answer was a slim watch,” he said.
He continued, “But to do a slim watch, you have to reinvent the watch. You cannot just squeeze a big watch into a small watch, hoping that the components will make it. You have to reinvent it.”
Introduced at the Watches and Wonders fair in Geneva in April, the watch’s groundbreaking thinness was a hot topic at the fair, setting a new record and solidifying the brand its ninth award in 10 years. In fact, the watch broke the brand’s previous record in the Octo Finissimo Ultra range achieved in 2022 with a 1.80mm-thick timepiece. “Nobody believed we could go thinner in watchmaking; it was truly revolutionary,” Babin said.
The Octo Finissimo’s unique thinness was the result of a collaboration with engineers at Concepto Watch Factory, a Swiss workshop that specializes in complex mechanisms. The Roman brand reworked the case by shaving off an extra 10th of a millimeter and engineers managed to embed the multitude of components making up the manually wound BVL180 manufacture caliber inside the two-material slim case, which is crafted from sandblasted titanium or platinum and an ultra-resistant and dense tungsten carbide for the back case and main plate, ensuring adequate resistance and strength.
Beyond its smaller-than-a-Swiss-coin thinness, “we make it beautiful,” he told the crowd. “Now with collectors, with retailers, Bulgari is seen not only as a high jeweler but also as a very innovative watchmaker.”
Babin came to the brand from Tag Heuer explaining that since Bulgari is “not a pure watch player, but a jeweler, it was easier to create a revolution in watchmaking than if we were a pure watch player.”
He contrasted his time at Tag Heuer saying that the artisans at Bulgari “are not skewed by centuries of watchmaking. We are influenced by centuries of Roman art and culture. It has managed to shape the West. So, Rome was very inclusive, grabbing from the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Persians. So yes, it has maybe an even stronger culture, an architectural and artistic culture, which has spread all across and so with watches, we did more of the same. We acted like Romans, we open our eyes, we try to integrate the best and create a new generation of watches, to which Octo Finissimo belongs.”
Finally, Babin was asked about the summit theme of resilience and how the watch speaks to it. “This is mix of resilience and determination,” he said. “Meaning that we always try and push a limit and when, typically at watch fairs with collectors and experts, [they] ask us, ‘But how can you go further?’ My answer is always, ‘I don’t know. I have no idea.’ In one year Bulgari will find new ideas but if you ask me right now I have no idea, but I’m already excited.
“To be resilient is to be optimistic. I always tell the teams, we’ll find a solution, I think it’s very Italian,” he said to a laugh. “I’ve worked in many countries. In some countries, people are always complaining. In Italy, people are always saying, ‘OK, there is a problem. Let’s go have a dinner and talk about it tomorrow morning.’ And doing that, you create a mental break, which, instead of getting deeper into the cynicism you wake up the next morning after a good dinner with a friend or with your colleague and you’re fresh with optimism. It’s a philosophy.”
