Zenith has confirmed a staff consultation. The refocus on haute horlogerie reported by the press remains a project, to be distinguished from final decisions.
Zenith confirmed on 22 October the opening of a staff consultation around a repositioning project. Behind the prospect of a refocus on haute horlogerie, reported by the press, lies an industrial question: what becomes of the manufacture when its clientele and target volumes change?
A confirmed consultation, a scope still to be defined
In the AFP dispatch carried by FashionUnited, the house says it will not detail the project before the end of the consultation. A source close to the matter mentions around a hundred positions affected out of the 196 in Le Locle, as well as around a hundred internationally. These estimates do not amount to a tally of cuts already carried out.
Le Temps, cited in the same dispatch, describes a refocus on haute horlogerie, with the G.F.J. Calibre 135 as its reference. The daily places its starting price just under 50,000 Swiss francs and mentions, in the conditional, the abandonment of the core market between 8,000 and 15,000 francs.
Price alone does not explain the transformation
Moving to a more expensive range does not, on its own, describe a new industrial model. One would need to know the volumes envisaged, the crafts involved, the time devoted to the pieces and the way of distributing them. Without these elements, the economic equation remains open.
The analysis must therefore consider product and employment together. A watch can provide a creative direction; its success does not automatically demonstrate that it can organise the whole activity of a manufacture. The next decisive piece of information will be the content of the project at the close of discussions with employees. It is on this concrete scope, rather than on the price increase alone, that the repositioning can be assessed.
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