YouSaid · the spoken record

Wilhelm Schmid

lines on the record: 39
first: 2025-11-28
most recent: 2025-11-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think it's always good to look for. But if I now share secrets, there's no surprise. And that's the one thing people love surprises. But I can share with you. As much as this is not the last surprise for this year.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This one, because of chronograph, we're in a car world. It's the 1815, so that's a more classical line. I'm a huge fan of chronographs and it doesn't get any better than a chronograph ratrapont. So, you know, that. And I admit... I think it worked very nice with my tan color right now.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The only thing that met us. That's right. I say the natural habitat of a wristwatch is the wrist. So forget about looking at thumb sing and I like it. That's a good start. But the moment of truth is you grab that watch, you put it around your wrist, you look at yourself and see, is it me or is it not?”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and easy accessible information you know you can do your research without leaving your room that was impossible in times you know where i started to get into the hobby”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, gladly we don't have a real issue here. We have a surprisingly young customer base. Always say that, and I never understood it. I mean, if you're young and you're interested, what speaks against quality, longevity, classless, and timeless design, robustness, value creation, I mean, it doesn't matter whether you are 100 years old or 10. If you're into that, you're going to like it. The way we connect with these people is different to the way Let's say I was connected to the watch industry because as I grew up, it was very difficult to find even specialized magazines for. for watchers today you have everything you can think of i believe we live in absolute paradise times for for watch and enthusiast because never ever in history have there been more watch friends um higher quality more information”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's why I believe it is so important to remain a secret. I also admit the real challenges to secret, to share the secret with the right crowd of people because I feel the duty on my shoulders because now they start a career as watchmaker and they're in for the next 40 years. So we need to make sure that the next generation knows what we do and we stay relevant for this.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, that gives you a certain confidence and a certain, and I'm sure you can agree on it, if you see somebody that is also having a Lange on Zerna, It's not difficult to get a communication started, isn't it? You have something to chat”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, it is, it is, it is. In the wide world, we are still absolutely unknown, and I think that's a good place to be. There are three reasons to it. The one is what we do. Is very difficult to understand specifically at the price point that we request for people that are not into fine watchmaking. Why would you spend so much money on a watch when your iPhone gives you the time more precisely? You know, the general thinking.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. That's why they built the 912. Put the four cylinder in. You know, that's exactly what they did. That's funny sometimes.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Later on with titanium. So, of course, there was a heated debate. Of course, there was. And we were aware of it because that is a tension that on purpose we wanted. There were a lot of people that said, it's not for me. I see Langa as Dress Watch only were luckily a lot more people that say, I want that watch desperately where we can produce fine. However, it just opened up a new chapter in our design language because now we have a playground. to try out things that we would never do with our classical watch families.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. So, when people say, Oh, you come with a small watch because you follow trend, I say, look, I mean, I wish we had known seven years ago when we started developing the movement. We are not in the fashion industry business. Our process is and the time it takes to come to market is so long that you maybe can anticipate, but maybe you have to stay true to yourself. And I think the one thing which our customers expect from us is authenticity. It has to be an Alanga unzuna. And if you had followed the discussion after we launched the Odysseus, because we always said we only precious metal and here can we steal?”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After that, and if you then go and analyze what happened from then to the following five, six, seven years, a lot of chronograph movements came out. That's why this watch is so important for us because that was the first real complication other than the Tobion Polymerit that we worked on. And I think that was a wake up call and it just gave us a reputation as a solid watchmaker that it's the next level up.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's It's more than just a watch. I'm a watch collector for a long, long time. I can remember when I opened a newspaper in 94 and I saw the at with the four Langa watchers. 99 were most companies around the world were still using somebody else movement and often the same supplier. Here comes a chronograph, which is one of the crown things in watchmaking from Germany in a very unique design with an outsized date. I think it was a wake-up call. And we must not underestimate what that watch started in the watch industry. Because before that, chronograph didn't play a role. They were two supplier and that was it basically.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you look at it and you see it's an Alanga on Zuna watch. If you have something complicated like this, you have a lot of hands to work with. You have the sub dials. You have to push, but you can do a lot But I think one of the biggest challenges for designers is you have two hands to work with and not a lot on the dial. Make it an Alango unzuna.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Entry level, we do not distinguish in quality at all. It's all the same emphasized on lofty detail, craftsmanship, hand polishing, decoration, hand engraving. There is no difference. Double assembly, it's one process. It doesn't matter whether the watch will cost. 25,000 euro or 2 million.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no. You know, if you look at our process in the manufactory, the people that work on finish, they sometimes have no idea where that part will end up. So they will not say, oh, that goes into grand complication. We do it a little better or that goes into thin. Oh, we do it a little. The same thing regardless. Million dollars.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They are more simple. That's how I show it. For us, it's all about the amount of parts, the years it takes to develop, the hours it takes to assemble. That at the end will define whether it's a complicated watch or I would say a more simple watch and two hands. I think we don't go more simple than two hands.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very different, you know, Odysseus, as I said, took us 25 years basically. I think that the real process where we identified that's the phase, you know, that looks Different to anything else in the market. Will not cannibalize anything within our own range to launch, to watch it the 24th of October in 2019, always a good seven years.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very easy because they are yet together So, if you reset it, the minute hand will do as many turns as the second because it's linked. And it is so quick that you can't see it. I probably would take a good camera and then you slow it down to see it. But basically, if you have stopped 17 minutes and let's say 30 seconds, what Works like this as factually seven times going around to come to zero.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you take the dial off and you look at the movement, the upside of the movement, you will see it's almost all blocked. So there is no way that you come through. And of course, we also didn't want to increase the size by much. We want to have a wearable watch. So the only way was to utilize the center even more than we usually do. And that's why the chronograph, the second and the minute hand comes out of the center.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That doesn't make any sense. So, that's capacity balanced by what we think we can expect from a customer. To wait, that usually gives an idea about the limitations.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we know that in today's world to come up now with this sort of capacity and say we produce 100 means the last one will get to watch in eight years.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Production She makes Very easy. You know, sometimes let's take the minute repeater perpetual calendar that we launched this year in April. We know it's going to take us three to four years to build a 50 watches.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that means to maintain a statical and technical perfection, you first have to make sure your movement is absolutely up to scratch. All tolerances are there. Everything is adjusted. Everything works. You go through the test. And if you have assurance, you know, that movement is like it has to be. It goes back to the watchmaker. He or she will disassemble it, clean it. put in the final decoration because now you know you don't have to adjust anymore because that's done You clean it, you oil it, you put the final decoration in case that it goes again through the test and only then it ends up in a happy wrist.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's because we use the original sources. We believe that anything, that nothing is much better than German silver. That's the perfect material. It's been good for the last 150 years. So we believe in this. And we don't want to coat it, which means over time it will develop a very nice patina. You know, the silver will get that little golden glue, which is beautiful. Problem is you breathe on it or you touch it. It will look very ugly very soon and you cannot even clean it. You have to machine it.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Look, I think it's more an advantage than a disadvantage. First of all, I always say there is no Swiss watchmaking and there's no German watchmaking because think about it. I mean, you can find Swiss made watches for 100 euro and then you find the same for a few million. How can be there any common denominator that covers the Swiss mate from there to there? So same for Germany. You have watches that are very inexpensive and then you have us with sometimes watchers up to 2 million. Obviously at the top end it's like a package. Like a box of chocolate. And our chocolate is craftsmanship, history, and design. And we stay very strict to it.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Any impact and the mechanism will be destroyed. So you have to be very careful in what you do. That is just one example where we think out of the box a chronograph with sort of a running minute, which most of them do. You know, the second hand goes and it's catching the minute counter and then as the second hand goes on, the minute counter slowly moves, which makes it quite difficult. Is it now two minutes or three minutes or four minutes? Ours in most cases have the jumping. So the second then crosses the 12th, it jumps by one minute. So you're absolutely clear. It's one minute, two minutes, three minute or four minute. Is it two and a half or is it three? Just little things that don't mean a lot for people that are not into fine watchers, but they mean the world for our customers.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We then went one step further with the 1815 Torbillon, where you not only stopped the moment you pulled the crown. That second then goes to zero, which is the best way to adjust your watch properly. Now, that sounds easy, but if you take into consideration that the Torbillon has about 85 little parts. The total weight is about 0.75 gram.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And of course, it's a very delicate mechanism. It does do the job because think about you put your watch on desk next to your bed. So at least for 10 hours it is exposed to gravity without moving. Anyhow, I want to argue the necessity of a tour billion. What we found very interesting is that it was there to enhance the accuracy, but it was impossible to set time correctly. Because if you do that with a running second, It is pure luck that you hit exactly the point. So we were the first in 2009 to come up with a mechanism that makes the Tourbillon stop. So, the second hand comes to a stop, and you can adjust the time properly.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, first of all, it takes strict discipline. The moment you do things that are not in line with who you are, you may surprise people, but probably not positively, and for sure eventually will dilute your brand equity. So the third thing is you have to apply discipline. That's why we have six different watch families. And we have sort of a horizon of seven years, and we want to apply each watch family at least once, let's say, within 24 months rolling. So that's sort of the engineering structure, all attempts. That doesn't answer your question. I know. Staying traditional but thinking out of the box because our value set is very traditional but our thinking is often very much out of the box. I give you a good example. The Torbion has been invented by Briguet I think about 280 years back or so something like this”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say 90%. I'm not in interviews with you. I'm out there and talking to our customers. That's the most important for us because at the end, we mustn't forget all that is not paid by Langa on Zoe. This is paid by our customers.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do like what I call the odd bolts, the pores that I have are actually the exceptions because everybody knows what a 9-11 is and probably many people know what a 356 is. I don't say utility, but these cars are the 356 is my Swiss pocket knife because, you know, you can go on a tour with it, which I take that car a lot. And if the weather is nice, you just open the roof and it takes you 30 seconds. And if the rain comes. It takes you 30 seconds to bring the roof back on. It is not as watertight as you think it is, I have to say. There's still a lot of water coming through, but at least you roughly protected against the environment. And the 9-11 is the car that I never wanted, and I will never sell. It's just a fantastic driving car But you know, the other cars that I have are more for people that really know about cars.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did very well, absolutely. They did. Absolutely. No, but I think the car was made for one purpose. I was winning races in the first place and paving the way for Masidas internationally to be back where they wanted to be. And that is very high up. Don't forget the price of these cars. I mean, you could probably bought streets for the same price, not houses, streets in the mid-50s.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. For the body, the seals were too wide. So they just came up with the doors. And you know what they did at Les Moore? They wanted to permit that because in the book.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, if you go back and think about the mid-50s in Germany. I mean, I wasn't born there. I'm not that old, but I saw pictures. I saw pictures of the Autobahn. I saw the cars on the road back then. And then think about very suddenly something like the gold wing appears. I mean... alien could have landed and caused the same result. Tub”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Compromises, you end up with something which is a little bit of everything, but nothing particularly really good. So I think that's what you can take from cars into watches, identify the purpose, and then everything should direct to achieve that, if I call it the North Star, you know, that purpose. And for watches is exactly the same.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's, I don't think you can immediately take something from that world into our world. But if you look at these cars, well, the first thing that comes to mind is some of them are 50, 60, 80, 100 years old. And we look at them today and they're still fascinate us. So obviously that design survived all the different fashion change of taste, odds of time. They are here today and they're as attractive as they were probably back then when they were brand new. If you look at specifically the purpose-built car, you know, the race cars, they were built for only one purpose. And that's what they were perfect in. And I think in watches, you also have to identify what is it that you emphasize on. And then don't compromise too much on it. Because if you start making big...”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's about design, and if you look onto the pillars on which our brand rests, it is exactly its history, heritage, its design, and it's, of course, the craftsmanship. And trust me, these cars that you see here, as they were built, they were built by proper craftsmen. And even today without proper craftsmen, you will not keep them on the road.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fine mechanical time. Some mean people say me because I like cars and watches and watches and cars, but I think it's, of course, more than that. You know, watchmaking is what we emphasize on 90% of our energy will go into watchmaking. That's our home tour. But I believe as a global brand, you also need to find the world that is focused on something else, but where you have sort of a common ground that you can walk on. And about 14 years ago, we were looking for a platform where we can show the brand and we can bring customers to entertain. And if you look at these cars, let's start with the cars and look at the word concourse of elegance. So we're not in vintage cars or racing. It's about concourse. Of elegance. You know, it's about beauty, it's about heritage, it's about craftsmanship.”
2025-11-28 · Masters in Business · Lange & Sohne CEO Wilhelm Schmid's Take on the Watch Market and Luxury Timepiece Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source