Glashütte Original Unveils Pavonina Collection: Exclusive Interview With VP Sales Dieter Pachner

By Valerie Jack | June 21, 2013

Yesterday in New York City, luxury watchmaker Glashütte Original unveiled a stunning new collection for women. Dieter Pachner, the VP of Sales at Glashütte Original, spoke to us about the new Pavonina collection during an interview at the Waterfall Mansion on New York City’s Upper East Side.

Haute Time: What can you tell us about the Pavonina collection, and what was Glashütte Original’s inspiration?
Dieter Pachner: For us it’s a very impressive momentum. With the new lady collection, we’re representing a completely new touch, a new idea of German watchmaking, a completely new idea of a female collection. The slogan of the campaign means, “We’re celebrating women”. For us it’s a very important day.

Glashütte and women go a while back. Once upon a time, in the 20s, Glashütte was very inspired by ladies’ collections. At this time, the ladies were basically the pioneers of the wristwatch, the men were still using pocket watches. Glashütte was very strong in ladies’ watches during this time, especially in the 20s, then later in the 60s and 70s, we created a lot of unbelievable designs. When I go through the museum of Glashütte, I see so many case shapes, it’s unbelievable what we did in the past.

We did all these ladies’ collections – the PanoMatic Luna, the Lady Serenade – very impressive watches, but all of these watches, they’re a little bit…downsized male watches. So there was an interest in developing a new design, an iconic design for iconic ladies. This new design is a product which is a little bit more extraordinary. We were inspired by the 20s and the 60s to create a cushion-shaped watch that is a bit slimmer. It gives the impression of jewelry on the wrist. This was a big moment – not only in terms of mechanical details – but it was also important to make a jewelry design, a design that is truly for our target group.

HT: A lot of manufactures have told us they see an increased interest on the part of women. Has it been the same for Glashütte Original?
DP: There’s a big movement, because in the past it was the position that a lady got a [watch as a] present from the husband, the boyfriend. Today, the lady is coming independently – similar to what happened with the independence movement in the 20s. If you look around, women have their own car, like the Mini Cooper or the Porsche Cayenne, their job description is completely different from 25 years ago. We see this reflected in the purchasing situation, because now the ladies come alone into the jewelry store or the Glashütte boutique, and she’s looking for a watch which she likes, which she wants to have. She’s more independent, and this is a completely new development for us in the watch business. The whole market is moving from a gift market to a purchasing market.

Haute Time: Glashütte seems to be on a growth path, with the opening of your new factory in Pforzheim this year. What is in store for the manufacture?
DP: Today, Glashütte is in a situation where we have a lot of efforts from the Swatch Group in terms of resources. We created a new manufactory for dials of the highest quality you can find worldwide, this weekend we have moved our whole administration to another property, and we have an additional property at Glashütte where we have the production line of the new lady collection. There’s a lot of development and improvement in our resources because in the last years Glashütte has seen a very positive development. We have more and more demand, our order income is very, very strong, and we will be busy in the next 12-18 months with so many orders.

But our target is not to enlarge our production from today to tomorrow. We want to grow according to a very high quality standard, the same philosophy that we have today, so the growth needs to be organic, with substance behind it. The ladies market is a target, but we don’t want to push by coming out in the next week with 50 different lines. For us it’s really important to go slowly, but with strong substance, in this market. Otherwise it would be the completely wrong feel, against what we’ve created in the last five years, ten years, when we’ve been very picky, very disciplined in our collection. But, to be fair, clearly the ladies collection will always be a bit more expanded than the men’s collection, because of all the dial options, the colors. So it will always be a little bit larger than the men’s collection, that’s fine, but it’s not our idea to enlarge like a mass brand.