It is worn by A-list musicians, sports stars and artists, Timed a World Cup football final and appeared on the Olympic stage. I love it or hate it, it is impossible to deny that the Big Bang van Hublot has had since the introduction 20 years since the introduction of the Water button on the watch and the popular culture.
Released in 2005, the original Big Bang design was large and brash. It had an oversized case of 44 millimeters; a chronograph or stopwatch, function; And a bezel held in place with six exposed screws. Also prominent was the experimental material mix of steel or red gold, titanium, ceramics, carbon fiber, kevlar and rubber. That year it won the design prize in the Grand Prix d’Hoogerie De Geneva, the annual Awards event of the watch industry.
It also set Hublot, founded in 1980 and was generally considered an insider species brand to that moment, on the way to becoming something of a household name.
“The big bang was a miracle,” said Jean-Claude Biber, the industrial veteran who was the chief executive of the company at the time. “When we started in 2004, nobody knew Hublot. Ten or 15 years later everyone knew the name. It made Hublot. “
The name of the watch helped. “I came up with the name because I was convinced this kind of watch, with its materials, dimensions, colors and modular construction would create a revolution in the watch tradition,” said Mr. Biaver, 75.
The big bang was also expensive. “The first steel and rubber models were 8,900 Swiss francs,” he said. “It wasn’t cheap at all. It was brave to come out for that price. ‘
But its sale has changed the finances of the brand considerably. According to Mr Biaver, the 2004 income in 2004 was 28 million Swiss francs. He continued by 2008, the figure was “more than 200 million” and the brand was taken over by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the luxury giant who owns the Tag Heuer and Zenith Watch companies. Mr. Biaver said that the deal was worth it “nearly 450 million Swiss francs.”
The growth of the brand has continued. Although LVMH does not break the brand performance, the annual watch port of Morgan Stanley estimated the company’s annual income from the company that reached a peak in 2022 at 744 million Swiss francs and 495 million Swiss francs in 2024.
The influence of the Big Bang was not limited to the sale of Hublot. Mr. Biaver and Ricardo Guadalupe, who succeeded Mr. Biaver as Chief Executive of the brand, invested heavily in marketing and sponsorship in areas where few high-end watch brands had previously ventured, the company and his watch in football and the Chinese Poia-Kylia Mbappé and the Chinese Poire-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Star-Foot and-Foot-Foot-Foot-way way French football, French football, the French football. Such as in creative collaborations with the American street artist Shepard Fairey and the Swiss tattoo artist Maxime Plescia-Büchi, founder of Sang Bleu.
At the World Cup 2022, the referee, Szymon Marciniak, wore a connected version of the Big Bang to timen the final.
Critics were impressed. “Biber was a can of a easy start in the carburetor of the watch industry,” said the watch expert James Gurney, referring to a product that helps cars to start on cold days.
Mr. Gurney was the editor of the specialist watch magazine QP when the Big Bang was released. “De Big Bang has set up Hublot to become one of the most successful brands in the industry,” he said. “That is why the industry has picked up a lot in terms of how they can do marketing based on the example of Hublot.”
The Big Bang, however, was not the first oversized high-end watch. In 1993 Audemars Piguet introduced the Royal Oak Offshore, a muscular piece that Arnold Schwarzenegger counted as his fans. The big bang was criticized for his agreements with that timepiece – the Offshore’s Bezel, for example, was also held in place by visible screws.
“It was the most difficult part,” said Mr. Biaver of those reviews. ‘It is never easy to fight against people who believe you look like your brother or sister. But it was also positive, because the more people talk about you, it nevertheless brings you consciousness. “
Twenty years in, what is the next step for the big bang?
The fame of the model is perhaps the biggest threat, said Julien Tornare, who became the Chief Executive of Hublot in September after eight months at Tag Heuer.
“It became so fast and so much that it might have become a bit too normal,” he said, and noticed that the 130 models in the Big Bang collection today are good for about 40 percent of the sale of Hublot (and there are spider -offs, such as the Spirit of Big Bang collection). “And if Hublot normalizes, it loses the impact, loses power and I think that would be wrong. Hublot must remain very different and disturbing from the other brands. “
In the United States, the prices of the Big Bang Collection now vary from $ 11,300 for a steel diamond 38 mm to $ 550,000 for an integrated Tourbillon Full Blue Sapphire 43mm.
Mr Tornare said he was planning new retail concepts and marketing campaigns, with the inspiration of a provocative advertisement of 2010 with a bruised Bernie Ecclestone, the then Chief Executive of Formula 1 Racing, after he was robbed and the attackers his big stable. The head, a quote from Mr. Ecclestone: “See what people will do for a Hublot.”
Mr Tornare said that the introduction of the Big Bang shook an industry that grew old. “It was a wake-up call for an industry that was usually heritage-driven,” he said.
The same is what today, he noticed: “We can’t just look at the past and do revivals, we have to create the watching of the future.”
