Swiss luxury watch brand Dubey & Schaldenbrand presents its new product strategy, along with the market vision of its new owner Jonatan Gil

Dubey & Schaldenbrand, a brand well known for its high-end mechanical watches with high added value, is presenting its new product strategy in 2010, along with the market vision of its new owner Jonatan Gil. While the brand intends to capitalise on its fundamentals and on the factors that have forged its reputation, it also intends to keep firmly in touch with the real and contemporary expectations of the public.

23 year-old Jonatan Gil, owner of Dubey & Schaldenbrand since June 2009, immediately enlisted the support of an efficient team with the aim of presenting an ambitious and attractive marketing strategy in 2010.

The brand renewal naturally involves a new corporate identity with an attractive graphic design, a thoroughly revised product range, a price positioning based on an excellent product/price ratio, as well as a professional international distribution network. It is with genuine pride that Jonatan Gil is introducing in 2010 a brand that has been treated to a complete makeover, while pursuing the task undertaken by its founders in 1946.

That was the year that Messrs George Dubey, professor at the Institute of Technology in La Chaux-de-Fonds and René Schaldenbrand, a man with considerable experience of the watch industry, jointly created Dubey & Schaldenbrand.

These two visionaries soon attracted interest in trade circles and earned recognition for their patented split second chronograph movement, as well as the subsequent invention and development of a number of exclusive and original products. Passionately dedicated to their research and technical developments, Georges Dubey and René Schaldenbrand were not really geared towards international distribution of their products, nor particularly concerned with developing a genuine marketing strategy. In 1995, an encounter with Mrs Cinette Robert was to prove a significant turning point in the brand history.

Fascinated by fine watchmaking, she was immediately enthused by the serious technical and aesthetic approach adopted by these two creators of incomparable timepieces. Won over by this magical world, she found herself in record time the owner of Dubey & Schaldenbrand, and within 15 years was to transform the brand into one of the jewels in the crown of the Swiss watch industry.

People and companies do not always grow by means of exclusively rational and well-reasoned strategies. The finest successes often owe a lot to feelings, to emotions and to common sense. Jonatan Gil is a perfect example of this truth. His fascination for beautiful watches has been nurtured within his family environment, as well as during the eight Basel Fairs he has already attended.

His determination to become a player, and not merely an admirer, in this world with its apparently boundless facets seemed to him a logical next step and a natural objective. A year of working alongside Cinette Robert was enough for Jonatan Gil to measure the real potential of the brand, to immerse himself in it, to establish a clear-cut vision of its future development, and finally to buy up the company in order to ensure its continuity.

Driven by a contagious enthusiasm and a strong will to succeed, the team now in place has already taken great strides towards the future. It is in complete respect for the Swiss watchmaking art that Dubey & Schaldenbrand continues the development of its own specific techniques, while maintaining an open-minded approach to new technologies in cases where they contribute to enhancing quality and innovation.

Product Policy

Dubey & Schaldenbrand is focusing its product policy on three fundamental principles:-

• Creating a powerful identity through a compact and attractive collection.
• Providing coherent interpretations of a few star lines designed to enjoy a long life-cycle.
• A constant quest for optimal quality/price ratio.

The brand identity must be developed by concentrating resources and creativity on a few star lines with well thought-out variations. Its multidisciplinary design and development team is dedicated to rigorous research destined to achieve balanced shapes and proportions, as well as uncompromising respect for the highest quality criteria duly honouring Switzerland’s fine watchmaking traditions. Each line is expressed in harmony with the aesthetic codes specific to Dubey & Schaldenbrand. This obsession for aesthetic and technical details makes all the difference between a watch and a great creation.

Collection pillars

Two brand icons that have been given an in-depth makeover in harmony with their DNA and in tune with consumers’ current demands:-

• Astro becomes Grand Dome
• Spiral becomes Grand Shar

Two new lines, each destined to play a specific role within a well-structured overall product offer:-

• Superbia
• Artisans Xtrême