IWC chief wants watch brand to boldly go where it has not gone before
IWC Schaffhausen CEO Christoph Grainger-Herr discusses the brand's recent success at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Geneve, where their Portugieser Eternal Calendar won the top Aiguille d’Or prize. The win validates the company's strategic focus on high-end, innovative watchmaking.
Why it matters
The award highlights the intersection of traditional luxury craftsmanship and complex mechanical innovation in the modern watch industry.
Christoph Grainger-Herr says his role as chief executive at IWC involves “inventing things, innovating and bringing things forward”.
Listen SINGAPORE – There is a moment when IWC’s Christoph Grainger-Herr talks about winning watchmaking’s biggest prize and the polished chief executive briefly disappears.
In his place is a bundle of nerves sitting in Geneva’s Theatre du Leman, convinced things are going badly.
It was November 2024 and IWC Schaffhausen’s Portugieser Eternal Calendar was in contention at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Geneve , the watch industry’s equivalent of the Oscars.
As category after category went to other brands, Grainger-Herr kept texting his team. Then Laurent Ferrier won the Calendar and Astronomy Watch Prize, a category in which IWC was also nominated.
“I was destroyed because I thought this was our prize,” he recalls.
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