In 1982, after taking a licking from Japanese competitors that had championed quartz batteries, the Swiss watch industry was facing an existential crisis. But rather than seeing the mechanical movement as a weakness, Jean-Claude Biver, who had recently purchased the defunct Blancpain brand, boldly declared that this artful anachronism represented the industry's future. "Since 1735 there has never been a quartz Blancpain watch," Biver's new slogan declared. "And there never will be." A decade later he backed up his words with results and sold Blancpain to the Swatch Group for $43 million. Today the Swiss watch industry is again robust-in 2013 there were more than $20 billion in exports-but the advent of the smartwatch and the release of the Apple Watch have pessimists once again wondering if time is run- ning out on tradition. So this March at Baselworld (the watch industry's annual Super Bowl) the 65-year-old Biver-now president of the LVMH Group's watch division, which includes TAG Heuer and Hublot-made another bold statement: "We cannot ignore the trend of the smartwatch." But this was no capitulation; rather, it was a rallying cry for the Swiss watch industry's counteroffensive against the smartwatch's incursion into its territory.
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