TAG team

The youthful CEO of TAG Heuer combines a passion for the brand’s heritage with a vision for steering it into the future.

Carerra Collection Chrono Sport

The ultimate success in business is when your brand penetrates the vernacular and becomes a figure of speech. In Australia, “getting a TAG” for your 21st, or your 18th, remains a cultural right of passage. It can also substitute for “getting a good watch”. It will come as no surprise, then, to discover the affection Australians have for TAG Heuer is reciprocated. For many years Australia punched well above its weight per capita in terms of sales, at times its ranking reaching as high as third after the US and the UK in terms of sales for the Swiss watchmaking giant. 

TAG Heuer’s CEO, Frédéric Arnault, is aware of the connection, and mentions it early in a Zoom interview he conducted from a COVID-safe TAG Heuer boardroom in La Chaux-de-Fonds, in the heart of one of Switzerland’s famous watchmaking regions.

TAG Heuer CEO Frédéric Arnault

“There is a real resonance with Australia and TAG Heuer,” Arnault says. “We have had some very strong, independent country managers in Australia over the years, who made the right decisions in terms of distribution and branding. We had lots of ambassadors who are performing well in Australia – recently we had Daniel Ricciardo and now we have Chris Hemsworth. You Australians are very sporty and we are linked historically in the universe of sports.”

It is hard to mention Arnault without also highlighting two things. First, his age. At 28, he is as young a CEO of a brand with revenue that topped 800 million Swiss Francs in 2017 and 2018 as you will find in any industry. Then there’s his lineage. He is the son of Bernard Arnault, the chairman and CEO of LVMH. Believed to be the wealthiest person in the fashion industry, Arnault senior owns both LVMH and Dior and has a net worth of well over $100 billion.

Arnault’s catapulting into the top job has come off the back of some successful roles and projects in the space of digital transformation. After graduating from high school in 2014, he worked at Facebook and McKinsey, and joined TAG Heuer in 2017 to manage the brand’s smartwatch activities. From there, his roles as chief strategy and digital officer in 2018, working closely with Stéphane Bianchi, the former CEO of TAG Heuer and the LVMH Watchmaking Division, were seen as leading to breakthroughs in the important field of smartwatches. Bianchi has since assumed the role of CEO of the Watches and Jewellery Division. 

Bianchi is clear on the reasons for Arnault’s rapid progression through the ranks, citing the “key role” he has played in the strategic repositioning of the brand. “[Arnault] has carved out a place for digital at the heart of the company’s aspirations, restored real momentum to the collections, and skilfully managed the development and launch of the hugely successful third Connected watch generation,” he says.

Digging deeper into this success, the masterstroke Arnault achieved through piloting the entire design phase was abandoning the previous two generations’ attempt to “reinvent the tech wheel” by developing their own technical software platforms for the watches. Instead, the third-generation Connected watch left the tech to San Francisco, integrating Google Wear OS to power the onboard apps and the rest – the build and design of the actual watch – to TAG Heuer. 

Arnault and his team refocused on incorporating all the luxury watch nuances that make it the least “smartwatch-looking” smartwatch on the market, both in terms of its appearance (you will fool everyone in the boardroom, should we ever return to it) and importantly, in the way it feels on the wrist. If you try on a new TAG Heuer Connected Watch and close your eyes you’ll agree it feels more like a traditional Carrera than any other wearable tech. 

This early achievement places Arnault further along his own self-set journey to success: “The short-term goal of mine is to be recognised as a legitimate leader of this company, both internally and externally. Longer term, my focus is on how to make a difference on this brand, which is historic, iconic. I want to do it in not too long a time, too!” 

The Carrera Elegance

Pressed on this point – of how his leadership will mark a distinct era in the history of the brand – he explains that the attention he has paid to the Connected Watch thus far will continue: “One big point of difference we have compared with our competition is that we are investing heavily in the Connected watch. We really believe in this segment; we want it to be a pillar of our collections. In terms of mechanical watches, we are investing little by little in having some higher-end products.”      

And what has surprised him about the reality of the top job? The shock of ultimate responsibility. “There’s a big difference in having ideas for the brand as an external or as someone who is not the CEO, versus being the actual CEO and being responsible. Decisions I thought I would have taken, actually being the CEO I see things differently and I have not taken them.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his father owns the brand, Arnault’s personal TAG Heuer story began in childhood. “My first good watch was given to me by my father when I was 11,” he says. “It was an Aquaracer Chronograph. That’s how I got to know the brand. I still have it today; for quite some years it was the only brand I owned. I loved the product and the communication about it.”

Several of those watches Arnault owns form the iconic nucleus of TAG Heuer, the Carrera, a collection first released in 1964, by Jack Heuer, one of the pioneers of the watch industry. Heuer’s life and achievements are shrouded in myth and mystery, and I wonder if in closing Arnault could name his favourite one.

“I really love the founding story of the Carrera; I think it’s great,” he says. “When Jack was on the race track and heard the name ‘Carrera Panamericana’ [a Mexican version of the Mille Miglia deemed to be the most dangerous car race in the world at the time], he thought, that is a great name for a watch. He came with the design, which is a pure, classic, very aesthetic design. It was also the first linked with Scuderia Ferrari, with which Jack was partner at the time. For me, it will always be the heart of TAG Heuer.”