Father of Swatch dies

Nicolas Hayek, who saved the ailing Swiss watch industry with his plastic timepiece, dies at age 82
New York - Mr Nicolas Hayek, a Lebanese-born business consultant who is widely credited with having saved the Swiss watch industry with the introduction of the Swatch, the inexpensive, plastic - and, as it transpired, highly collectible - wristwatch that made its debut in 1983, died on Monday in Biel, Switzerland. He was 82.
A founder and chairman of the Swatch Group, he died of heart failure while working at the company's headquarters, according to an announcement on the company website.
'Nicolas G. Hayek's greatest merit was his enormous contribution to the saving of the Swiss watch industry and the foundation and the commercial development of the Swatch Group,' the company said in a statement.
The formation of the Swatch Group, which in addition to Swatch today comprises high-end watch brands such as Breguet, Omega, Longines, Tissot, Calvin Klein and Mido, made Mr Hayek one of Switzerland's wealthiest men.
The irony is that the company came about after he was brought in to help shut the foundering Swiss watch industry altogether.
A flamboyant figure with a roguish sense of humour, he was 'a rare phenomenon in Europe - a genuine business celebrity', as The Harvard Business Review described him in 1993.
He was born in Beirut in 1928 and moved to Switzerland as a young man. After studying mathematics, physics and chemistry at the University of Lyon in France, he started a consulting firm, Hayek Engineering, in Zurich in the early 1960s.
By the 1970s, the vaunted Swiss watch industry, a pillar of the national economy for centuries, was in jeopardy.
Japanese watchmakers such as Seiko had begun to undercut Swiss prices. And public tastes were shifting from the finely wrought analogue timepieces in which Swiss artisans had long specialised to the pale flickering faces of mass-market digital watches.
In the early 1980s, with no apparent remedy in sight, a group of Swiss banks asked Mr Hayek to compile a report on how the watch-making industry might best be liquidated. Instead, he merged two of its former titans, the nearly bankrupt Asuag and SSIH, which between them owned brands such as Omega, Longines and Tissot.
He bought a majority stake in the reorganised group, known as SMH - the Societe Suisse de Microelectronique et d'Horlogerie. He was fond of telling interviewers that the initials stood for 'Sa Majeste Hayek' - 'His Royal Highness Hayek'.
In 1983, SMH introduced the Swatch. Lightweight, with vibrantly coloured bands and breezy novelty faces, it was remarkably inexpensive to produce.
It had 51 parts, as opposed to the nearly 100 needed to make a traditional wristwatch. It retailed for less than US$35 when it was first marketed in the United States later that year. The Swatch quickly became a sought-after collector's item worldwide. It was very likely the first time that people had even considered owning multiple watches.
Known to wear up to four timepieces on each arm, Hayek said Swatch produced 'beauty, sensuality, emotionality in watches - and we also produce high-tech on your wrists'.
SMH had produced 100 million Swatches by 1992. The success of Swatch also resuscitated the high-end brands under the SMH umbrella.
In 1998, the company's name was changed to the Swatch Group, taking the name of a brand that had become a pop marketing icon. It generated about US$4.9 billion (S$6.8 billion) in sales last year, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
By redirecting consumers' attention to Swiss watch-making as a whole, the little plastic watch lifted all boats. Even the expensive brands, such as Breguet, 'we will continue to sell - and sell well', Mr Hayek told the publication Swiss News in 2008.
He became a national figure, despite his very un-Swiss flamboyance. In 1998, he came up with the idea for the ultra-compact Smart car, now made by a subsidiary of DaimlerChrysler AG.
He stepped down as the Swatch Group's chief executive in 2002 and was succeeded by his son, Nicolas Jr. His daughter Nayla sits on the company's board. He is also survived by his wife Marianne. He remained chairman of the group and head of Breguet.
Over time, the humble Swatch itself was borne upward by its own success: The company has issued limited-edition Swatches designed by noted artists such as Keith Haring.
In 1992, The New York Times reported that a Swatch by Kiki Picasso, a pseudonym of the French artist Christian Chapiron, sold at an auction at Christie's in London for US$28,000.