News In recent months, the Russian market has generated sharply growing demand for upmarket timepieces, confirming its very promising potential for manufacturers of luxury goods. Active in Russia since Tsarist times and having managed to raise its profile there by its activities as official timekeeper of major sports events, Longines is now consolidating and expanding its market position, not least through its recent association with the noted Russian actor, Oleg Menshikov.
In the late 19th century and in the early years of the next, the complex luxury watches purchased by the Russian imperial family and nobility, high officials and the country’s leading artistic figures were practically all designed and made in Switzerland. Among the handful of Swiss makes that dominated the market at the time were Breguet, Omega and Tissot along with Longines—all of which today form part of Swatch Group.
The first Longines timepiece earmarked for the Russian market left the company’s Saint-Imier workshops in 1884 for St.Petersburg. This silver pocket watch signaled the start of a close and fruitful relationship between the company and the imperial family and court circles. While the bolshevist and communist regime would curtail all normal business relations with the outside world, high officials and members of the nomenklatura did nevertheless continue to acquire Swiss watches via the Soviet embassy in Berne or through the Kaufhaus des Westens in Berlin. Longines nevertheless managed to cultivate its image in the Soviet Union thanks to its international sports timekeeping activities, not least at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, sports reporting being free of the usual censorship, and thanks to the outstanding performance of Soviet athletes in various disciplines.
In 1991, the end of the perestroika and political change in general sparked the Swiss watch industry’s market re-entry. Under the guidance of its president and CEO Nicolas G. Hayek, Swatch Group wasted no time setting up a quality service network in Russia along with a selective distribution network to serve this vast country. That year, Longines had already inaugurated a sales outlet at Moscow’s new Sheremetyevo 2 airport. From 1993 on, it opened in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the country’s leading political, business and historic centers, then branched out to regional capitals including Samara, Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don, Volgograd, Vladivostok, Irkutsk... In 1993, Swatch Group also opened a representative office in Moscow.
Despite the 1998 economic downturn, this country of 150 million inhabitants has gradually developed a budding middle class with the means to purchase luxury consumer goods. Today’s Russian consumer is extremely conscious of his or her appearance and grooming and appreciates luxury products, as confirmed by the steadily rising number of specialist outlets opening week after week in Moscow and elsewhere as well as by the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry’s own statistics, according to which the Russian market experienced 56.6% growth during the first quarter of this year over the same period a year earlier and by 148.3% compared to the first quarter of 1999.
When buying a watch, Russian consumers are known to pay exceptional attention to the brand it is sold under, this in a country where demand for mechanical timepieces, including selfwinding designs, remains far stronger than in the rest of the world! What’s more, Russian watch buyers are as a rule attracted to pure metal timepieces—in gold, in platinum, in titanium, in steel...
With its selective distribution structures, including outlets run in partnership with Russian retailers and reserved exclusively for its own brands, Swatch Group, the world’s premier watch-industry firm, is the dominant force in today’s Russian market. Longines, for instance, can rightfully claim to be one of the country’s leading watch makes.
Longines runs some 70 sales retail outlets in Russia, including over 30 in Moscow and about a dozen in St. Petersburg. The two centers in fact account for two-thirds of total sales with the remainder generated by the regional stores.
With its Russian distribution network in the major urban centers now operational, outlets with after-sales servicing facilities are scheduled to open in regional centers including Vladivostok and Irkutsk, in Siberia during the current year. Longines is also sharpening its brand profile in this promising market by teaming up with the noted Russian actor Oleg Menshikov (on the left of the picture), today an “ambassador of elegance” in the image of silver screen legends Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart and alongside the many attractive contemporary personalities who contribute to the brand’s universal character.
In charge of Russian and Eastern European markets at Swatch Group headquarters , Longines president Walter von Kaenel (on the right of the picture) points out that “Oleg Menshikov’s appealing personality and handsome features perfectly complement our ongoing “Elegance is an attitude” campaign, conveying the Longines message in this particularly promising country and in fact through-out Eastern Europe. We are very happy to announce this fresh testimony to Longines’ unique way of reaching out to consumers everywhere, confirming yet again its universal popularity.”
Oleg Menshikov today proudly displays his new La Grande Classique timepiece. Its very name underlines the fact that La Grande Classique designs embody Longines’ long and distinguished styling record, albeit with distinctive contemporary flair. Their blend of past and present is particularly appropriate in a country that is reappropriating the glories of its own past. Oleg Menshikov’s Russia is thus exceptionally partial to classic elegance and well as to the standards of taste and style that make La Grande Classique as enduring and unimpeachable as the classic spirit itself.
June 06, 2001
