Hublot CEO Looks Back on Ten Years of the Big Bang
Hublot is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the spectacularly successful Big Bang watch with a series of events including the opening of a pop-up store in Singapore this week. In town for the festivities was Hublot CEO Ricardo Guadalupe who shared his feelings about the history of the Big Bang and the future of the smartwatch with Blouin Artinfo.
Looking back, Guadalupe admitted that he had no idea that the Big Bang would be such a hit when it was introduced a decade ago. โAt that time (10 years ago), if you had told me we would have this kind of success I wouldnโt have believed it. Today, the Big Bang represents about 55-60 percent of our sales,โ he said.
โWhen we launched it, we revolutionized the construction of the case; before, you had a movement and then a case to protect it, but here weโre really worked on a watch case with a sandwich construction with more than 70 components that also gave us a lot of flexibility in terms of design,โ Guadalupe continued.
โI think itโs important to give an evolution to your model step by step, improving it yet still remaining faithful to the original one. The idea is that the Big Bang remains iconic, but at the same time a trendsetter using new materials or retouching a little bit the aesthetic to give it a new dynamism, and thatโs what weโve done.โ
Unlike some other heavyweights in the watch industry, Guadalupe does not seem to feel pressured to dive into the world of wearables. โSmartwatches is another world, itโs an electronic world and we donโt have the know-how,โ he admitted.
โBut we are still open to modernity and we are thinking about integrated technology in a Hublot connected strap.โ How soon can we expect to see this hybrid? Look for it in 2016.
