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They have always concentrated solely on their watches, not focusing on the people who buy them. While this may seem like arrogance, The Wristwatch Annual of 2000 points out that this attitude is “spiced with a certain bit of self-mockery.”
However, this is obviously not the way to compete in a fairly small, exclusive market, with a variety of other top-end brands whose marketing is a little more sophisticated. Like many luxury watch brands, IWC was rescued from its own aloofness by the Richemont Group, which owns
Jaeger-leCoultre, Cartier, A Lange & Sohne, Baume & Mercier, Vacheron Constantin and Piaget.
Richemont, under South Africa’s own Anton Rupert, has managed to keep the identity of each of its brands completely separate, while boosting sales and the value of the products.
IWC has always made high-quality movements for its own watches, whereas other companies have sometimes used outside-manufactured movements for their branded watches. One of the most famous of IWC models was the military watch – the very famous Mark 9, Mark 10 and Mark 11. The airforces of several countries (including South Africa), sometimes sworn enemies, used the Mark. The Mark 11 of 1948 is perhaps the most famed aviator watch, says Peter
Machlup. The Mark was impervious to the effects of magnetism; this was achieved by housing the movement in a double casing, the inner casing being made of soft steel.
Peter says that in one of the biggest sacrileges of watch history, the South African Defence Force crushed its Marks when it did not need them any more. A number survived, though, and several have seen the inside of Peter’s offices.
One of the most wonderful of the IWC watches is the Da Vinci, a perpetual calendar chronograph. Peter explains that there was one small problem with the watch: there was not enough room in the case to fit a complete date-slide. This means that the date will only be able to reach 2199.
The watch comes with a small phial, sealed with red wax, containing a new slide. A note reminds the owner to take the watch and the phial to a jeweller in the year 2199 to have the new slide inserted. This will allow the watch to carry on recording the date (and, hopefully the time), for another three hundred years. “If it wasn’t so understated and brilliant, this could be called a marketing gimmick,” laughs Peter. “The company is effectively telling you that your watch has centuries of life ticking under its casing; it brings the future into the realm of the possible. The Da Vinci is extremely popular for the very reason that this is the intriguing stuff that the public wants to own.”
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