Timeless Appeal

It especially counts for a business that produces, and easily sells, just 5,000 watches a year (compare Rolex’s 800,000) and which doesn’t have the capacity to produce any more, even if it wanted to. Which perhaps makes Lange’s recent corporate strategy – which has meant the appointment in 2004 of a new CEO, formerly of Fiat, and store openings in Dresden, Hong Kong, Beijing, Dubai and Moscow – seem overelaborate, rather like hand-engraving those tiny parts of the mechanism that only a watchmaker will ever see. But then, Lange does that too.

Indeed, Lange is one of the few prestige watch companies to entirely design and manufacture its own mechanisms. From within its pristine, austere workshops in Glashütte, a town that is close to Dresden but still in the middle of nowhere, its lab-coated technicians silently crouch over their loops, working at their own pace, without quotas. “Henry Ford invented mass-production in 1913. That still doesn’t impress us today,” a sign in the lobby proclaims.

“This being both an old and a new company, the clash between tradition and innovation is an asset,” says CEO, Fabian Krone, a dapper 44-year-old German. “In my former position [as head of worldwide distribution strategy for Lancia, Alfa Romeo and Fiat] I also had to deal with customers who didn’t buy the product for rational reasons, but because they loved the brand or the mechanics, which is what you find at this level of the watch industry. Five years ago I was in Italy, near the sea, vineyards and mountains. So why come here? It was the passion the people put into the watches – that could provide a useful case study for the car industry.”

Lange & Söhne’s return has taken more than passion, however. When the new company announced in its first ad campaign that “The economy in Germany’s east begins to tick differently”, the subdued statement hid a victory against long odds. Expropriated by communist authorities in 1951 to become part of GUB, a giant, mass-market watch manufacturer, Lange’s revival still seemed unlikely even after reunification in 1990. Fortunately, the brand name had been merely put on ice for four decades, not run down. This allowed Walter Lange, founder Ferdinand Adolph Lange’s great grandson, to take ownership of it again, albeit after protracted legal wranglings. That was the least of his troubles. It transpired that expropriated company buildings would not be returned to their original owners; Walter Lange had to buy it back, and then in a dilapidated condition. This was one reason why getting Lange back on its feet cost an estimated €10m.

Walter Lange then had to fight pressure to take over the entire GUB and its 1,000 staff, which would have meant starting a new company with immediate and sweeping redundancies. And there was the problem of finding watchmakers with levels of technical expertise unheard of under the communists. Potential recruits insisted on meeting outside of town so they wouldn’t be seen. The threat of Stasi surveillance may have passed but old suspicions lingered.

Yet in four years Lange managed to overcome these hurdles, introduce several watchmaking innovations – including a now signature outsize date display and an off-centre time read-out – and in 1994 launch four new models to critical and commercial success. Six years later Lange & Söhne’s holding company, LMH, was acquired by the mighty Richemont Group, making it the minnow with the legendary name – and, for some of its models, an eight-year waiting list – amid fashionable brands such as Panerai and IWC.