Julien Tornare, CEO of Swiss watchmaker Zenith Watches, joined Haute Time for the latest edition of “Talking Time“, a series of live webinars with the time industry’s leaders and legends. Tornare is one of the youngest CEOs in the luxury watch industry, taking the role at Zenith in 2017.
Julien Tornare, CEO of Swiss watchmaker Zenith Watches, joined Haute Time for the latest edition of "Talking Time", a series of live webinars with the time industry's leaders and legends. Tornare is one of the youngest CEOs in the luxury watch industry.
He was hosted by Haute Time’s Seth Semilof for a conversation on the latest news in the brand and the timekeeping world’s shift to a more digital style of marketing given the recent lockdowns. Watch the full webinar below.
For the last three weeks, Tornare and Zenith Watches have been busy restarting operations. “We are resuming. Step by step, we are getting back to normal,” he said. “From March 17th, when we closed the manufacture, I called my Executive Committee and said ‘we have to talk every day.’ Every day, even if we had no business topics, I wanted to keep the social bond. It was important to create a daily routine of having a call. We had jobs and tasks to perform. We said, ‘Let’s see how we can digitalize and speed up the digital transformation that we already started to adapt to the new environment.’ We have been very present on social media and our website, very active and it has worked well. We adjusted.”
While on lockdown, Tornare led his team to keep engaged with the world outside of Zenith’s headquarters. “It’s our responsibility to stay connected with retailers, press, end-clients and to do our job from home,” he said
The dialogue touched upon recent releases by Zenith, including the Defy Carl Cox and the Defy 21 Land Rover editions.
Tornare has taken the opportunity to be even more hands-on in communicating with watch enthusiasts. He said, “Over the last few weeks, I’ve been connecting with so many end-clients worldwide, interacting so much with people that it has been a great learning experience for me.”
The storied trajectory of Zenith is well-established. Tornare is taking the brand to the future by combining that with innovations of the 21st century. “Zenith is the perfect balance of authenticity, the pure tradition of watchmaking history, but with new technologies,” he said. “We are giving a new approach to a long history-making brand. One key element is the dedication to quality we have. Today, we are not making watches for my parents or grandparents. We make watches for 21st-century people.”
