News Babette Keller, founder and CEO of the Bienne based company Keller Trading, has won the Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year 2009 award. A first for a woman in the world of watchmaking.
Staged every two years since 1985, the Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year was awarded this year at a reception held on 6 May at the Grand Hôtel Dolder in Zurich to Babette Keller, the founder and CEO of Keller Trading, based in Bienne. The prize winner is therefore the thirteenth woman and the first "watchmaker" to have received this prestigious award. Nicola Thibaudeau, CEO of the Bienne based company MPS, won it in 1997 but at that time was at the head of Mecanex, a Nyon firm specialising in aerospace engineering. Babette Keller was praised for her sense of innovation, her creativity and the success of her firm.
In the Bienne region, one person in every five works in the clock and watchmaking industry. While a large number work for well established companies, many others are employed by firms that have succeeded against the odds in finding a place for themselves on the market. Among the latter is Keller Trading, a blend of luxury watchmaking and haute couture. In this Bienne based firm, delicate fabrics created from nylon and polyester microfibres are produced with the utmost care. A wide range of woven microfibre articles requiring consummate expertise is supplied to nearly 2,000 customers all over the world. Every year, nearly 950,000 items are sold and dispatched to all four corners of the globe.
Babette Keller runs her firm with a passionate interest for its products and a sense of social responsibility towards its 26 employees, who are mainly women. She offers the latter flexibility, with working hours tailored to each individual. To enhance working conditions she has hired a masseuse who comes once a week to relax staff toiling for long hours on the work bench.
The mother of four children, Babette Keller is a self-made businesswoman who, after work, likes sewing small garments for her children. In 1987, she accepted an order from her father; during the night, in her bedroom, on a second-hand sewing machine, she produced her first thousand spectacle cases in cotton fabric for the company Breitling. After the first models were delivered, other orders flooded in. Fired by the combination of watchmaking and haute couture needlework, Babette Keller contacted other watch manufacturers and won new contracts. In addition to cases, she designed small covers, presentation cases and polishing cloths for her clients. Gloves followed shortly afterwards.
Unsatisfied with cotton, which produced too much dust, she sought to innovate. It was her husband who finally came up with the big idea: microfibres. The passionate entrepreneur inside Babette Keller traced these microfibres back to their source, a Canadian manufacturer, and obtained exclusive marketing rights for them in Switzerland, Europe, and subsequently the rest of the world. In 1999, she set up her own firm. Ten years later, her address book includes the greatest names in watchmaking and jewellery.
May 28, 2009
