The German luxury goods manufacturer Porsche Design offers a range of high end products from purses, handbags, executive cases and luggage to sports clothing and shoes. They also offer watches designed by themselves, but until now these have been manufactured by third-party Swiss suppliers.
After 40 years of successful cooperation with renowned watchmakers, in November this year, luxury brand Porsche Design for the first time launched two home-made automatic movement watches: a black Timepiece No. 1 and a Titanium model both with automatic movements. These will be made as limited editions of just 500 pieces. This marks the beginning of Timepieces made by Porsche Design watches era. Porsche Design Timepieces AG is based in Solothurn, Switzerland and all of their watch designs are manufactured in Switzerland.
Both of the new watches are based on the first Porsche watch designed by Professor Ferdinand Alexander Porsche (Porsche Design founder Ferdinand Porsche’s grandson) in 1972, consistent with the group’s style of design, aiming at perfection in technology, giving the best readability, with high-quality materials and user friendly features. In the launch press conference held in Hong Kong on Nov. 19, Chief Operating Officer Marc Platten explained, “These watches are very thoughtfully designed, for example, it is usually more difficult to read a watch dial when driving due to the reflection on the glass, but one can see the dial of these watches very clearly even from the side. In general, one will sweat after wearing a rubber watch strap for a long time, but the straps of these watches use a special material that one will not sweat when being worn, ”From watches to cars, Porsche design is very thoughtful of the user,” Platten explained.
There will be a production limit of 500 pieces for each of these two watches, which will be available for sale at Porsche Design stores worldwide before the end of 2014. Platten said he believes that there is better quality control on the watches under their own manufacture, which is in line with the Group’s high demand on product quality. The initial launch in Hong Kong takes account of the predominance of high-end luxury goods buyers in the city.
Platten confirmed that Hong Kong’s luxury brand consumption is quite high and with buyers from mainland China, sales are expected to have a good performance. He commented on the distribution of Porsche Design watches among consumers, usually it is male dominated. Platten said that among the group’s current clientele, 75 percent are male consumers, but as a company they are developing more feminine products to cater for the needs of the market. He took the market of handbags as an example, consumers are moving toward low profile design, people have begun to favor non-glaring but high-quality, less well-known luxury products.
Porsche Design handbags are made in Italy, with high quality, unique design, thoughtful in detail, to meet the needs of the market. This is why in a very short time, sales of Porsche Design’s women luxury products have surged. While the sale of many luxury brands slumped due to the effect of the fight against corruption in mainland China, Porsche Design to the contrary, grows healthily. They believe this is also because of their concentrated focus on brand design.
