Omega’s Magnum Opus

Put aside for a moment the radical creativity required to produce something completely novel in watchmaking: no short order when you are contending with centuries’ worth of innovation. The Chrono Chime is Omega’s magnum opus for more reasons than that. Innovation is the very lifeblood of the brand. Earlier in the year when the Seamaster Planet Ocean Ultra Deep was launched, I wrote in an introductory piece that it represented industry-leading innovation that you can buy at retail and that is a value proposition that can’t be beat. The Ultra Deep may have recently lost the crown of the deepest diving commercially-available watch, but I’m confident Omega will come back swinging eventually. The Chrono Chime is a similar technical marvel which can also be had at RRP but only for a select few as the caliber 1932 is limited by the production capacity of five movements across the two references per year. Not to mention the limiting factor of price – CHF 420,000 for the 1932 Chrono Chime and CHF 450,000 for the Speedmaster variant.

To understand the Chrono Chime’s significance beyond the scope of its mechanical ingenuity, we have to examine Omega’s position within the Swatch Group’s hierarchy of brands. Within this structure, Omega sits somewhere in the middle with high watchmaking big brothers Breguet and Blancpain above, and more accessibly priced juniors Longines, Rado, Tissot, Mido, and Hamilton below it. While this may not be the Group’s crown jewel in absolute watchmaking terms, it is more akin to a do-it-all performance brand that still manages to achieve success in every area of its portfolio, contributing the most to the Group’s overall bottom line.

It is within this context that this “flex” by Omega made me wonder if it might alter its position within the established order of the Swatch Group’s brands. Was Omega moving up the pecking order? Was it preparing itself for a higher form of watchmaking, to position itself further upmarket or to leverage its massive industrial production capabilities and maybe bring high complication watchmaking to a wider audience? At the group press interview, I posed those questions to CEO Raynald Aeschlimann. In his response, he explained that the Chrono Chime with its limited production represents a small, exclusive part of Omega’s portfolio, which has always been multi-product. It is not the brand’s intention to disrupt the established order, or to intrude into the market space of sister brands Breguet and Blancpain. Instead, the intention is to remind audiences of Omega’s rich history in professional sports timekeeping, and create a product that is in-keeping with its DNA and in particular a certain minute repeater from its history. If you think about it, Omega could have only developed the Chrono Chime with the expressed approval from on high, from Nick Hayek Jr. himself. For now, it will remain firmly in the haute horlogerie segment and while we may see some trickle down effects where technologies developed from this project find their way into other product lines, there are no plans to expand high complication-level watchmaking at a more affordable price segment.

Watch the full group press interview with CEO Raynald Aeshlimann here: