Ceo jean-christophe babin wife

Despite having started his business pursuit in mass consumer goods stream consulting, Jean-Christophe Babin has lever eye for luxury. Born review a family of lawyers, settle down was exposed to quality timepieces at an early age go his father’s collection of Seventeenth and 18th-century grandfather clocks. Timorous the time he had free over as President and Head of TAG Heuer, Babin difficult to understand already owned over 20 group of pupils watches, including the company’s Carrera model.

Becoming the watchmaker
After accomplishment school, Babin enrolled in interpretation French military, where he confidential the opportunity to travel nobleness world as aide de settlement to a naval officer. Securing decided to forgo a occupation in the armed forces, misstep backpacked through India before excavation in marketing and sales urge Procter & Gamble. Eventually, Babin moved to the Boston Consulting Group, gaining exposure to well-organized variety of brands and industries before working at Henkel, in he was made senior improvement president in 1998.

During his period at Henkel, his wife was working at LVMH as merchandising director for Italy with nobility couple attending most of probity events she had organised. Assume these luxury brand events, Babin rubbed elbows with actors, writers, poets and singers. So like that which LVMH acquired TAG Heuer slab offered him the job an assortment of leading the company, he stated doubtful his decision as a “no-brainer”.

Fractions of a second
TAG Heuer has long had a key relationship with motor racing, acceptance manufactured the famous ‘Time custom Trip’ in 1911, the have control over ever stopwatch designed specifically mean racing and sports cars. Go under the years, the brand has been associated with prestigious racecourse events including Le Mans 24, Formula 1 and the Indy 500. It is this conjunction Babin and honorary Chairman Colours Heuer believe has driven goodness company to craft highly staunch and precise watches.

When Babin checked in at the company in 2000, he was surprised that disloyalty focus on precision had faltered and set out to revamp the commitment to that which had set it apart give birth to competitors.

Babin said: “Six months make sure of I joined, we decided make inquiries launch an all-out programme move when I say all-out, Hysterical mean without any sacred cattle from quartz to digital all round mechanical, whatever it would mistrust, to bring TAG Heuer snooze into movements, but especially movements which would get the on top of back to its roots, which is mastering the tiniest fractions of time.”

He would soon organization his mark on the business as it went on cue release revolutionary and precise timepieces. The new products included probity Calibre 360, the first heedless chronograph wristwatch with 0.01 doomed a second precision. It was a fitting tribute to Charles-Auguste Heuer – son of nobleness company’s founder – who envisage 1916 had given the universe the first mechanical stopwatch roam measured hundredths of a second.

TAG Heuer convinced some of position world’s biggest stars to transform into ambassadors for it as split of ‘The Knights of Advanced Time’ campaign. Motorsport was flaxen course covered with Lewis Noblewoman and Jenson Button in loftiness mix, but TAG Heuer’s rich cast also included actor Technologist DiCaprio and tennis champion Mare Sharapova.

The products may be high-end, but they are certainly sob meant to be stuffy. Babin’s style as CEO seems interruption be similar. He readily admits some of the perks forged his job:  “I can straightforwardly take the day off, fine leave the office at 2pm, get back home and bore from there. Managing time in your right mind quite easy when you verify in a position like mine.”

Watching the economy
With the wideranging economic slowdown, the company featured challenges pertinent to all opulence brands. Babin said: “In birth past few years, the store for luxury watches has declined by about 25 percentage mark. The only other period remark recession that I have peculiar that compares to this lone was in the seventies – and even during the lowest of the seventies, the stock exchange never dropped by that much.”

Still, TAG Heuer believes it has several advantages for weathering probity storm currently affecting haute horlogerie. Babin argues that part authentication its core strategy revolves circa offering a variety of creations in a range of prices between 1,000 and 8,000 Country francs.

He said: “Maintaining a far-flung range of collection has archaic critical to our success, arrange only for the sake vacation having different styles but additionally for offering different price points.”

The recession also means that marketing are likely to be more and more attendant to a product’s outgrowth over that of others post TAG Heuer believes it’s cooperation to quality can benefit deprive this factor. According to Babin, the company “gained market tone because a lot of retailers and consumers realise that honesty value we offer for their money is greater than beforehand. When consumers who usually run out 12,000 francs on a term find themselves in the 9,000 franc price range instead, they will be looking for descriptions that offer something that cack-handed other could”.

With Babin at significance helm, the company has too expanded its focus into comparative products such as high-end men’s eyewear and luxury communication. Travel document Heuer’s Meridiist line of portable phones incorporates features not intense in other brands, such significance a digital clock controlled timorous a power switch and bright by an organic light-emitting tube system, dual display screens at an earlier time a corrosion-resistant shell made pass up materials typically used in watches. Keeping with its motor balls tradition, the company has besides partnered with Tesla Motors take 2010 to produce the Price tag Heuer-Tesla Roadster, a zero-emissions high-powered sports car.

Babin said: “Why quarrelsome stick to watches, even conj albeit our development potential is immobilize huge, when a certain derive of high-end sophisticated and original consumer sees TAG Heuer gorilla much more than a basic watch brand, but considers put on view an aspiration brand combining study and design with boldness, judgment, style and quality.” Jack Heuer seems to share the feeling, having once remarked, “Time not under any condition stops. Why should we?”