Transparency is our core message: Elie Bernheim

The dashing Elie Bernheim joined the company in 2006 after graduating from the prestigious Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne Swtizerland. As third generation of the family-owned company, Elie and his brother Pierre — both grandsons of Raymond Weil — have retained the soul of the brand’s heritage based on watchmaking knowedge. Another passion Elie inherited from his family and above all his mother, a professional pianist, is music.

Years after finetuning his piano skills, he decided to specialise in cello and was awarded a professional diploma. The passion he shares together with his brother for wines and gastronomy led them to open their two restaurants: Le Café des Banques and Chez Lucien. Raymond Weil’s latest symphony presented at the Basel Fair is composed of 40 new timepieces. With new variations and models in the maestro, freelancer, Parsifal, nabucco and jasmine collections, the brand is playing a choice musical score.

What have been your key learnings from Indian market?
It is a complicated market. There are different influences and different cities like tier two and tier three cities. Each city has its own aspirations and demands and we have to customise our offerings to suit varying tastes of myriad customers. Say a big time piece which works well in the Mumbai market may never be sold in Chennai or Ahmedabad. That’s one of the biggest challenges we have faced.

The most important thing for us is to convey our core message of transparency to the Indian customers of what we are and what we want to be. For an accessible price they are given a nice design. With Rupee dwindling we had no option but to increase our price by 10 percent. It’s never good for the business. What can we do? We are hoping for a stablised economy which is more structural, organised and regulated.

What’s the brand’s digital strategy?
I am proud to say that we were one of the first brands in the industry to enter into the digital space. We were the trendsetters in social media. We have a webpage dedicated only for India with customised and specialised content for Indian customers. India is one of our key markets of focus right now.

Do we see the brand associating with Bollywood celebrities?
Our strategy is not that. Indian celebrities are definitely good friends of our brand but having them as brand ambassadors where they are wearing the watch in the campaign will not bring content, substance or DNA to our brand. We are a family brand and we have to build our brand universe in a smart way.

Who is a Raymond Weil consumer?
A Raymond Weil consumer is anywhere between 25 and 40 year old. He belongs to the Gen Y generation. He is very well tuned with social media form of communications and that’s why we are focusing there. They are looking for out-of-the-box products and something different from their peers.

Music has been an integral part of the brand’s DNA. How do you do these artistic tie-ups?
Music is definitely our brand universe. We are investing a lot in music in different ways. We want to associate with charity organisations dedicated to music, music celebs and the emerging talents — the up and coming icons are important to us.