Jack Heuer: Tag for Life

If you wanted a piece of watchmaking history, you should have been in Hong Kong last week. No, it was not unveiling a clock tower. Rather, it was hosting Jack William Heuer, the only living member of the fourth-generation Heuers who carries the name, and honorary chairman of Tag Heuer.

The occasion was the relaunching of Heuer Classics: three sports watches that were first released during Jack’s time in the company.

One of the watches was widely regarded as too avant-garde when it was created in 1969. Jack Heuer looks back on the year that saw watchmaking innovations such as the invention of the world’s first automatic chronograph with mircorotor and the first wristwatch with a fiberglass case. (Oh, yeah, in 1969 a guy named Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, too.)

"The only one who thought the Heuer Monaco was nice was actor Steve McQueen," says Heuer.

Then came the movie Le Mans in 1970. The film was about racing’s hardest endurance course, Le Mans in France, where racers hit country roads 24 hours a day. And who should be sporting the Monaco watch, the first chronograph with a square, water-resistant case, but the original King of Cool, Steve McQueen. Like the movie, Monaco Chronograph became a cult hit.

Tag Heuer’s history is intertwined with watchmaking innovations in Switzerland and sporting milestones around the world. Along the way came the cultural landmarks: Steve McQueen, Easy Rider, Carrera Panamericana, Ferrari, the Olympics, Formula One. Hit the road, Jack, and don’t leave home without your Heuer.

Called Tag Heuer since 1985 – when Heuer (which previously acquired Leonidas and was later bought by Piaget) joined the Tag Group (Techniques d’Avant-Garde) – the watch company has always been known as the watch that athletes choose whether to put on their wrist to time their sprints or racers to put on their dashboard to measure one-hundredth of a second or for casual wear and elegant events.

Now, three of Tag Heuer’s legendary sports watches are available to a new generation of watch collectors and aficionados. There’s Steve McQueen’s Monaco, which was first reissued in 1997 with slight design modifications, angering Heuer purists until the company decided to reissue the exact watch the actor had worn.

There’s Heuer Monza Chronograph, first launched in the 1930s, named after the fastest circuit of Formula One. Incidentally, it was on this Milanese circuit that Tag Heuer’s precision was put to a test. Back in 1971, two drivers, Peter Gethin and Ronnie Peterson, crossed the finish line together – at least that’s what it seemed to the eye. Thanks to Tag Heuer’s instrument, which was able to analyze the results of several drivers at once, the 1/100th of a second difference between the two drivers was measured.

Heuer also developed the first chronograph that was able to measure within 1/1,000th of a second. How fast is that? Let’s put it this way: you can’t even blink that fast (the human eyes blink an average of only 20,000 per day.

And lastly, there’s the Carrera, named after the popular race of the 1950s which runs through the Mexican section of the Pan-American Highway. Launched in 1964, the Carrera watch became an instant hit.

In 1971, Jack Heuer entered into a sponsorship agreement with Team Ferrari. Jack relates, "Ferrari was having severe problems with the timing of long-duration races like Le Mans, and Mr. Ferrari didn’t trust the time-keeping of the French – typical of an Italian, of course."

Ferrari had asked one of his drivers, a Swiss, to search for the best timing machine in Switzerland. The driver visited watch companies including Heuer, whose engineers would later create a dashboard instrument for the racers. Problem was, Ferrari did not want to pay for the development of the machine. "So we negotiated," Jack continues. "They would display the logo on the car and we would support financially every driver of Team Ferrari as long as they wore our patch."

The racers were also asked to pick a watch in the Swiss factory. Guess what they picked? The Heuer Carrera, the first watch to combine split-second timing with instant legibility (Jack had "pushed for a very legible dial").

To this day this watch remains close to Jack’s heart. This is the only watch that he describes as his "baby." It was his design, his innovation (a metal ring inside the glass that improved water-proofness). Back then, he says, designing a watch himself was the easiest thing. The company was small, all he had to do was sit down with his engineers and case makers, pool their ideas together and a watch was going to be made.

"Sometimes we were lucky, sometimes we weren’t."

So why are Heuer Classics being re-introduced at this time? Aside from their being bestsellers in the sports watch category and their design being timeless, consider the age of those who desired them but couldn’t afford them when they were first released. "The people who are wearing the Monaco today can identify with Steve McQueen because he was a rebel when they were young, and now they can afford to buy the watch," says Jack Heuer. Plus, they’re now probably CEOs, too.

"It’s a trend, I think. Not only Heuer relaunched classics; Longines has relaunched classics, too," he adds.

In Asia, especially China, the markets are embracing these 35-year-old watches. Tag Heuer specialists based in Hong Kong describe the watch aficionados of China – professionals mostly in their 20s to middle-aged – as "lovers of brand names. They love gold watches. They like to show them off. They love people to see they’re wearing luxury brands and jewelry." Sounds familiar?

Heuer watches arrived in Asia only after World War II, 91 years after the company was founded in Switzerland in 1860. And admittedly, it’s only in the past two decades or so that it has strengthened its market share here as Asians are becoming more affluent. Consider this trivia: The most expensive Tag Heuer watch costs $100,000 (around P5.1 million). They produced only nine pieces – "absolutely tailor-made" naturally – made of titanium. One is owned by a Tag dealer from Thailand.

In the same vein, Tag Heuer is now playing catch-up in the female market. While fashion houses like Calvin Klein and sport-wear companies like Nike have produced lines upon lines of watches for women, Tag Heuer fans have to contend with a handful: Link, Kirium and Alter Ego, the women’s watches by Tag, which come in sporty design or with diamonds.

Of fashion houses producing their own watches, Jack says they are just that: established brands that are also making watches. "It’s a different market segment," he says.

Jack William Heuer was born to a family that had three generations of watchmaking behind it. His father Charles Edouard had worked with his uncle Hubert in company; so did his grandfather Charles; and his great-grandfather Edouard Heuer, who learned the trade when he was 14 at Saint-Imier Valley, and founded his own company in Bienne, Switzerland, called E. Heuer & Compagnie.

If he had it his way, Jack would not take the same path. He had earned an engineering degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and had apprenticed at the American company Abercrombie & Fitch, which sold sporting goods and sports watches.

He wanted to do consulting work at Arthur D. Little company in Boston. "I mastered in production and management techniques and had very good job opportunities. But then we sold the family property in Bienne and we suddenly had cash and my uncle gave a me a checkbook and said, go and make a subsidiary in America. It was a huge challenge for a 27-year-old boy.

Okay, he would stay with the company for only a year. Those were his famous words and before he knew it, he was a Manhatannite expanding Ed. Heuer & Co. SA on the other side of the globe.

With Jack Heuer at the helm, the first foreign office was founded, called HTEC (Heuer Time Electronic Corporation), and still exists today as Tag Heuer USA, a division of LVMH Watch and Jewellery USA. The company acquired Leonidas, their biggest competitor, and within 10 years Jack had increased the sales 10 times and employed over 300 people (there were 40 when he joined).

Under his leadership, the company would pour from five to eight percent of its annual income into research and development. After all, innovation was a tradition among the Heuers. The generations before him had acquired patents for water-proof pocket watch case (1895); invented the first dashboard chronograph to measure the time of a trip (1911); launched one of the first wrist chronographs (1914); and invented the first split second pocket stopwatch measuring 1/100th of a second for use in English greyhound racing and other sporting event.

Under Jack the company would produce the world’s first automatic chronograph in 1969, the hand-held quartz stopwatch measuring 1/100th of a second and the automatic car identification and timing system (ACIT) that was used in Formula One cars.

Jack did not only inherit his family’s innovative spirit, he was also an avid sportsman: he skied competitively when he was at the university, he was into car rallies and sailing. While he loved Formula One, he did not want to become a professional – he had lost too many friends to accidents.

As a businessman in the United States, Jack also learned the importance of marketing and public relations, hence Heuer sponsored many a sporting event.

Jack laughingly relates the story of how he made a very good deal with an America’s Cup contender in the 1960s. "Back then, America’s Cup was in Newport Beach. One time the finalists were a French boat and American. I had designed a new yachting timer and offered it to both teams. I went up to Newport, had my picture taken with the French crew and then went to the Americans and had our picture taken. Then I went home and typed two press releases." He must have waited patiently for the results.

The 70-year-old Jack Heuer is pleased about where Louis Vuitton is taking Tag Heuer. An old company originally founded and run by a family itself, LVHM is continuing the sporting and avant-garde spirit of Heuer’s founders.

"Tag Heuer is not only a watch company with a sporting image but with a sporting soul," says Jack Heuer.

It was understandable then that after the Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur events, the chairman couldn’t wait to get home to Switzerland.

Jack Heuer had some skiing to do.