Tradition is at the forefront of our thoughts when we work on the annual Legacy issue. This is about as surprising as finding sand on a beach. The Legacy issue is our dedicated investigation of watchmaking histories and standards, right down to practices and personalities. Tradition obviously plays a vital role. Occasionally, this takes on unexpected meaning or, as some philosopher somewhere noted, it becomes meta. By no means do we mean transcendent here, rather that some stories become a tradition about tradition, in an issue focused on tradition.
If we felt like it, for example, we could have turned this very interview with A. Lange & Söhne CEO Wilhelm Schmid into a story about an interview, that references all the interviews we have done with him and other leaders at the brand (Tony de Haas and Tino Bobe). As we have previously discussed, these are the trio that typically face the press for A. Lange & Söhne and we have interviewed one or more every year since 2019. What is so ‘meta’ about that you might wonder. Well, it refers to a similar line we used in an older story where we specifically acknowledged that this pattern exists. Now, that which is meta can be useful – just think about meta studies, which group individual studies together to deliver new insights – and we should like to bring this perspective to our A. Lange & Söhne stories.
A useful example here is our interview with Schmid two years ago in Singapore, where he told us we should not hold our breath if we expected to buy a Lange 1 (then). Meeting him this year at Watches and Wonders Geneva, Schmid said that the situation has improved, in part as a response to the brand’s efforts to move its business to its own retail network. He cautions that things are still far from perfect.
“Our strategy is to increase our capacity because we will need the increased capacity within the different segments of watches”
This exchange only happened this year because of the exchange last year, and probably in part because the people involved are the same; you cannot have failed to notice that I do the vast majority of all interviews. Back to the point about availability, Schmid also reiterated that the Glashütte brand still makes approximately 5,000 watches. This number has been in our pages and online across many sources for years. It is supported by de Haas’ assertion that to make more of one model or another, fewer will be made of something else. When asked about this, Schmid nodded sagely. “When we introduce something new, we have to cut something existing. It is not possible (or good) to simply layer more references on top of all the existing ones (without some pruning) because in the end who is going to make all these watches?” said Schmid, with the barest of shrugs.
From all our encounters with him, we know Schmid to be a serious and compassionate man. He would never take any step that endangered A. Lange & Söhne. Happily, you do not have to take our word for this. Uniquely amongst his Richemont peers (A. Lange & Söhne is a Richemont brand), Schmid, de Haas and Bobe have been around a long time indeed. The latter two, along with communications boss Arnd Einhorn, have been with A. Lange & Söhne almost since the beginning (collectively). These guys would not have stuck by Schmid if he was not the straight shooter that he seems to be. Schmid himself would not have made it this long (he became CEO in 2011) if he had not been a positive force for A. Lange & Söhne.
Of course, we realise that opinions of A. Lange & Söhne and Schmid have changed dramatically over the last five years as the brand’s watches have become somewhat unattainable and prices have reacted accordingly. The man at the top has answers to those questions, which boils down to reiterating that A. Lange & Söhne is not interested in making more watches to chase growth.
“Our strategy is to increase our capacity because we will need the increased capacity within the different segments of watches,” said Schmid. “This means increasing the capacity of watchmaking hours that we can apply to each watch. Growth will come from more complexity throughout the range and not from higher production numbers.”
And on that note, we invite you to follow our conversation with Schmid and stay till the end for an important note about the Odysseus Chronograph.
It is the 25th anniversary of the Datograph and you are presenting two very special watches to honour this moment. Given that these are, shall we say, variations on a theme, how have people received them so far (at WWG)?
Let me begin with the Datograph Up/Down – you know that’s with a white gold case and a blue dial; this is a combination we’ve never used before. And remember, our clients are watch collectors, so they always look for the thing they don’t have (and that would be the previous limited edition with a blue dial). This they can’t have because we never did it again. For this limited edition Datograph Up/Down, we will produce in a slightly bigger number – I mean, 125 for us, that’s a lot. For most brands, that is just nothing.
And then the Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon Honeygold Lumen, which has two things we like: special materials and a new calibre. Of course, the calibre has a lot in common with something familiar to collectors. Tell us about what is different here.
First of all, yes the calibre is based on the existing one (that debuted in 2016), but it we had to do a lot of work on the reworked version here. For example, we had to rearrange the whole moon phase indication (which may not be obvious at first glance) and removed the power reserve display.
(The conversation then went into the technical weeds so we present the official A. Lange & Söhne response on this point from the FAQ on the Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon Honeygold Lumen. We present the information below as it was communicated to us.)
Why does the movement only consist of 684 parts compared to the 729 parts of the standard version? The further development of the movement also led to a reduction in the total number of parts. For example, the absence of the power-reserve indicator reduces the number of parts, but the additional components for realising the “Lumen” function do not compensate for this difference.
Is the movement new compared to the existing Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon? Yes, due to the special design features of a “Lumen” model and the omission of a power-reserve indicator, the movement has been significantly enhanced.
So it’s not like the same movement, just with lumen. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work. When you see the Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon Honeygold Lumen alongside all the chronographs (standard datographs), tourbillons, perpetual calendars and the honeygold (limited editions), this one watch represents everything.
On that note about gold, a couple of points – first, is this a signal on directions?
We are very clear in our direction. We have five traditional watch families and one that is quite contemporary in its design. So mostly, we are about very traditional watchmaking; we launched the Odysseus family in 2019 (to do something different), but one reason is definitely to give us a space where we can play with steel…if we play with titanium, if we play with the combination of white gold and rubber, this is what we could do with (in the Odysseus collection). We produce very, very few steel watches a year. This is to say we don’t produce even in the hundreds. We do not touch the other five families (with this sort of contemporary experimentation). So, in this way we can extend the playground of our design a little bit without losing our DNA and we protect the five families that traditionally have been around for a long time. Steel (and other non-precious materials) is not our core business. Precious metals like white gold and platinum, yellow gold and honey gold, that’s the sort of watches we are making. That’s our core business.
And so honeygold then, which we are always excited about! Will we see more watches in this material? It is one of the rare precious materials that has a functional benefit to match the aesthetic ones.
Yeah, but honeygold will always be used for limited editions, and we never produced so many. I think it’s about 2,000 in total. That’s how many we made in honeygold in total since we launched it in 2000. It is a very hard material so it is very hard to work with; it requires special treatment, and even in the event of refurbishment (for servicing), it also requires (special handling). You know, you say the hardness is an advantage to wearers and yes that’s true; it is also a liability in terms of production and servicing. Honeygold is difficult to machine because it is very hard (as opposed to regular gold, thus requiring specific tools and procedures). Therefore, there are not many who can do it and you have to be sensible about how many you want to make. If you make thousands, that will mean thousands to eventually service and the case requires an oxygen-free environment to refurbish it. Making more (than we do) is just not sustainable.
The new watches this year are both boutique editions, but A. Lange & Söhne is mainly available only in your own boutiques. Tell us how far along you are in the process of bringing the retail business in-house and how that has impacted availability and accessibility.
We are about 90 percent (own-boutique) worldwide. At the same time, it is not that we just sent our retail partners an email telling them we are not working with them (with immediate effect). Usually, we have had a great relationship with them over time, and it takes time (to port things over to our own boutiques). There are customers behind (any given) retailer, and we try to serve them as much as possible on whatever was promised on our behalf. We are still in that process; however, because we have reduced (the external retail network) a lot, I can tell you that there is a certain level of availability at boutiques now. It is not perfect but it is better than what it was 18 months ago… or six months ago! We think we will only see the full impact of our strategy in the next 18 months <this conversation took place in April so it means the third quarter of next year.
There is a process, yes, and there is even a system for it because I don’t like things that cannot be systematised. I think you get questions like that from people who don’t have a relationship with us because otherwise they would know! It all starts with getting to know someone at the boutique <which means visiting and having an informal chat, to summarise – Ed>. I’m always amazed by this kind of thing… I mean, if you want to make a friend, you don’t go out into the street and shout ‘I want a friend!’ and a friend comes along. In our personal lives, we all know how to make friends…how to establish relationships. It is based on (individuals) getting to know each other and establishing trust. Going beyond something purely transactional. So yeah, in the watch industry, there are those people who want to have the rarest watches immediately. They complain a lot, and we all know or have an idea about what they would do with the watches when they get them.
Has that situation improved, with the flippers?
Absolutely! Because we now know who is buying our watches. You know, anyone can do what he or she wants with their property – that’s not for me to decide. What we want is to understand if (someone visiting the boutique) is a real collector because collectors are our core market. Or is this person someone that buys and then sells quickly? We can do that ourselves; we don’t need a middleman. You asked also about people who want one great watch from us, and just the one. We’re happy to do that but (the person who wants one piece for a special occasion) is not our target. We target collectors who buy watches! They go through our collections to see what they like, and build up their collections. It is a longer journey that does not take just one year but years! That’s why we have to deliver novelties every year…that’s why we have to go the extra mile (all the time) because the collector is a very educated person.
Let us close on both availability and production with a follow-up on the Odysseus Chronograph, which Tony told us would be ready to go into production this year.
Yes, it is… It has moved from prototyping to manufacturing but it will take longer than usual (per standard chronographs at A. Lange & Söhne) because this is new territory for the watchmakers, as you heard from Tony already. It has no comparison for us from anything existing so the calibre is really being made from scratch. The watchmakers still need practice and experience to establish a routine for the automatic chronograph
This article first appeared on WOW’s Legacy 2025 Issue
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