Hautlence, a relatively new high-end watch brand based in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, has secured US distribution through John Simonian and Westime. Simonian also distributes Richard Mille, HD3, Michel Jordi and Urwerk in the US, among others.

The distribution plan for the USA is to be very exclusive, focusing on a select group of retailers. “Our goal for sales in the USA is about 100 - 150 pieces a year,” Renaud De Retz, CEO of Hautlence, explains. “We have three or four retailers in the USA right now and we cannot deliver a lot of pieces. The few pieces we have delivered have already been sold.”

De Retz and his friend, COO of Hautlence Guillaume Tetu, started Hautlence, which is an anagram of Neuchâtel, to manufacture and distribute the pair's innovative approach to timekeeping. The goal of the company is to make interesting watches that tell time in different ways.

“We were fed up with the lack of innovation in the watch industry,” Tetu explains. "We decided to try something and we began to work on brainstorming new watches. We came up with some ideas and started discussing movements and new ways of reading the time. We were not thinking of building a new brand.

“However, the product we came up with was so different we couldn't go to another brand,” Tetu continues. “We wanted to do it ourselves. We didn't want to make any compromises. Our products are so special, many people told us they wouldn't work, but we believed in the concept. People told us we were too crazy, too young, didn't know anything about watches.”


Model reference - HL01

Every watch has a three-year warranty and Hautlence offers a free full service at three years. This way, Hautlence can get every watch back, add oil, check it and make sure everything is running correctly. In the future, Hautlence plans to have service centres in its key markets. “We won't have hundreds of people who will be wearing the watch, so we need our customers to be our ambassadors,” Tetu acknowledges. “We have to have customers who will say nice things about our watch. We have to have great customer service.”


Model reference – HL06

Source: Europa Star

www.hautlence.com

Contact: [email protected]
(Please credit europastar.com)