Tiffany & Co’s head of watches Head says he'll make them "great again"

Tiffany & Co.’s Vice-President and General Manager of Swiss watches, Nicola Andreatta, is certain the day will come when the American brand behind the little blue box will equally recognised for fine timepieces as for its jewellery. It’s getting there.

Watches, though not an entirely dormant category, still stand in the shadows of Tiffany’s jewellery as it has for over a century. But Andreatta is all about reminding the world that Tiffany has a blue blood heritage in watchmaking: “We’ve been making watches since 1847, before many of the brands we now compete with.”

Uniquely branded with both "Swiss Made" and "New York" on their dials, Tiffany & Co's watches marry the best of two spirits, he says.

It may surprise some to hear that Tiffany was once serious enough about its watches to have a watchmaking factory in Switzerland, though that was sold off somewhere along the line of the brand’s history. To prove the company’s renewed intent, one of the first things that Andreatta (right) did after he joined in 2013 was to start an office in Switzerland – world capital of watchmaking – and expand into a factory from there. The credibility of being a Swiss watchmaker would allow Tiffany to vaunt the craftsmanship and reliability of its watches.

“We’re unique in that every Tiffany watch dial has ‘New York’ and ‘Swiss Made’ on it. This is exactly what we are: We are Swiss in the way that we conceive and work on watches, and we are American in spirit and design. This mix of two different souls comes across when you look at our watches,” Andreatta says.

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