Interview: IWC CEO Christoph Grainger-Herr On Digital Tradeshows And Desert Inspiration

IWC has had a big year. Not only has the company released two new downsized watches, Big Pilot 43 and the Pilot's Chronograph 41, but it also announced the release of the Big Pilot's Watch Shock Absorber XPL – a design built around proprietary SPRIN-g PROTECT technology, a cantilever spring that suspends the movement inside the case. We took a moment with IWC CEO Christoph Grainger-Herr to recap IWC's latest wares and hear about the backstories behind them. What were some of the key lessons IWC learned from doing a digital show like this? There is a major gain in terms of the personal connection and the efficiency of all of us being able to connect with many more people on a one-to-one basis in the run-up to and during Watches & Wonders than we ever would have been able to do physically in Geneva. Of course, there are some technical upgrades as well. When I think about the fact that we used to try and do podcasts in the noisy environment of Watches & Wonders back in the day, I think we've learned from that. We have proper studios now. We have decent camera tech. We have decent audio now. I mean, half the time at Watches & Wonders physically, you didn't even have light conditions where you can show watches properly in an interview setting. So those kinds of things, I think we learned very quickly. Having said that, I was quite glad that after the day yesterday that I didn't have to quickly change into my dinner jacket and attend a huge function last night. I was pretty finished. I do think that going forward, we're really looking at a balance between the two. I think in terms of building relationships and building our sense of an identity as an industry, it is important to physically reconnect. And we augment that with all of the wonderful tools that we've just developed over the last 12 months that have helped a lot. The Big Pilot 43 struck the right chord with IWC fans. But is it still...big? I totally sympathize with the whole discussion of "when is a Big Pilot a Big Pilot? And is it a Big Pilot when it's 43 or not?"  I would then half ironically say, "Well, the original Big Pilot was 55 millimeters in 1940. So it's been a downsizing exercise ever since." But joking aside, I think for me, it's not a question of absolute millimeters. I did not want something that was collapsing into a slightly larger Mark XVIII watch that felt like a simple, flat, three-hand automatic. For me, the essence in a Big Pilot and the utility of the Big Pilot is that it has a certain presence on the wrist, that it has a little bit of height and that it does feel different from a slim dress watch. We went really in half-millimeter increments on every single dimension of this case until we found that balance. And roughly speaking, 44 millimeters looks almost the same as 46. So even if I put these watches in front of me, the 44, next to the 46, you'd have to look twice. And from 42, it starts to really become an oversized Mark XVIII. And at 43, when we started to add a little bit of height above the case screen and really play around with the crown dimensions. And once we had this 43mm version, I put the prototype on at work and started to walk around with it, and nobody stopped me asking me whether that was a new watch. And then I knew, okay, from a distance, it looks, feels, and wears like a Big Pilot. The two new "Mojave Desert" releases really stuck out to me. I spend more time than I should looking at government auction websites for ex-service '90s Humvees in Desert Tan. There's something very IWC to me about this watch, but it's also something of an oddball when it comes to the rest of the line. Can you tell me a little more about the inception of these watches? One of the first discussions we'd had when I was up at China Lake talking to the Navy about the watch was literally looking at the different color codes in flight equipment and seeing this unique military thing where you have lots of different materials coming together in the same color code. And that really has a tactical background, but it's made a huge transfer into apparel. And whether you're looking at sneakers or you're looking at different technical outdoor equipment, you do see this tone is quite present even in fashion. And I think this duality was really what inspired me for the Mojave Desert's color code, because you have this clear functional military background of this actually being the subdued color code for the hot arid desert environment. But at the other end of the spectrum, it's also something that just gives you a really interesting look. I have a road bike that is completely in the Mojave Desert color from BMC, the road machine that they did in all-desert finish. So I love to pair my sneakers with these watches and the bike. And that's sort of where you have a fashion lifestyle component, which is not really straightforward military, but it's how this color works. I was driving back from China Lake and I thought, "Okay, we've got to do this." I stopped before some gas station and there was a sign up saying "Mojave Texaco," and there it was. On top of the new downsized watches, we saw something rather wild from IWC this year... Similar to how Formula One technology makes its way from a Formula One car to an AMG-1 car essentially, then to new C-Class AMG over time, we are really playing with this field of extreme environment watches in the cockpit, mainly with a U.S. Naval application, and then filtering this into research projects, which then come down into the wider benefit of our general watch families. And I think the first example that we showcased was what we did with the Big Pilot's Watch Shock Absorber XPL There are three elements of this watch: First, we have our proprietary Ceratanium case, which we're very familiar with because of the HODINKEE watch from a couple of years ago. Then we have a second part of the movement system that is a finely formulated BMD spring that holds the movement. The third bit is really a lightweight version of our caliber 32 using an aerospace aluminum base plate that actually makes the movement lighter in terms of the inertia forces. And the third part, and this is really the party trick here, as well, is a Bionet closure flexible coupling between the movement and the crown. And what that does is that when the crown is fully pushed and screwed in, it partly decouples the transmission from the movement, allowing the movement to actually move around the case. And then, when you unlock this mechanism and pull the crown out, the clutch system fully reconnects the transmission to the movement, allowing you to set and to wind the watch and so on. Those three components together actually mean that we have a mechanical watch movement here that can travel more than a millimeter in every single direction, and actually give you an 80% reduction of all of the shocks making the movements survivable above 30,000-G impact forces. So I would say [we are] showcasing what IWC can do in terms of engineering and, of course, those learnings are really then filtering through into all of our pilots' collections and beyond, to give clients the benefit of all of these insights that we're really gaining from testing watches in extreme environments. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.And how a 30,000-G force affects a watch – or doesn't.