Jack Heuer - The Man Behind The Iconic Brand

His time as CEO of Heuer started suddenly when he was working for Heuer in New York. He received a call from his father one night saying that due to a family dispute, control of the company was about to be sold outside the family. Jack Heuer rushed to the Airport for the next plane back to Switzerland and within a week had secured the bank funding needed to take control of the company. At only 30 years of age, Jack Heuer would be CEO during the most exciting challenging and ultimately heart-breaking period in the company's history.

In 1964 Jack Heuer launched the iconic Carrera and followed five years later with a range of watches built around the world's first automatic chronograph movement - the legendary Calibre 11. That range of watches included not only the Carrera, but also a new "concept car" style watch to showcase the new movement - the Monaco. Not only did Jack Heuer lead the development of these legendary automatic watches, but he also understood the importance of quartz, with Heuer also pioneering digital watches, such as the Chronosplit. It was also under Jack's leadership that Heuer developed its series of diving watches, including the TAG Heuer 1000 series and the 2000 Aquaracer.

But all of these great watches were developed in a context of great uncertainty - a combination of low-cost quartz movements from Japan and the appreciation of the Swiss Franc against the US Dollar meant that the Swiss watch industry was in danger of collapsing. In 1982, Jack Heuer lost control of the company, when the banks stepped in and sold Heuer to Piaget/ Lemania, starting a chain of events that would see the company sold to Middle Eastern investment house Techniques d' Avant Garde (TAG).

Jack Heuer left the watch industry in 1982 and built the European marketing arm of a Hong Kong based consumer electronics group called IDT (Integrated Display Technology Ltd), which today employs more than 5000 people. It wasn't until current TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Christophe Babin invited Jack Heuer back to the company as Honorary Chairman in 2001 that Jack was reunited with the company started by his family. His role today is not just as an ambassador, but as someone who gives feedback on new watches, for example, playing a significant role in the development of the Grand Carrera series.

Few people have contributed as much to a watch company as Jack Heuer has to what is now TAG Heuer, so you can bet that TAG Heuer will mark his 80th birthday in style. The rumour is that a special 80th Birthday edition watch will be released as a tribute to the man whose vision and values remain embedded in TAG Heuer today.

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