Interview with Jeremy Lim

Prior to Cortina Watch, I was an auditor at KPMG, but in 1999, after two-and-a-half gruelling years, I was looking for a new challenge in my career. That was when Raymond [Lim, CEO of Cortina Group] asked me to join the family business instead. At the time, Cortina was still unlisted, and we agreed on a role which would utilise my skills but also offer me an advancement in my career. So I joined Cortina Watch as an operations manager in 2000.

When I came back to Singapore after graduation in 1997, Cortina was the retailer for people who were in the know about watchmaking. It was still a private company and we had retail outlets in many of Singapore’s leading malls at the time. But we certainly didn’t have the public presence that we have today.

I always knew that at some point in my life, I would find myself in the family business. So when I found myself in the operations part of the business, I started to examine how it was being run. I suppose this was in part due to my background as an auditor. Processes, setting up controls and ensuring accountability were my expertise, so I spent a lot of my time behind the scenes, ensuring that every part of operations was up to code.

We had already had discussions about publicly listing the company, and let me be clear: this plan was already in the works before I ever stepped foot into Cortina. It may have been sped up when I joined the business, but this was a plan that my father, our Founder and Executive Chairman, Mr Anthony Lim had championed. The fundamentals of the company were strong and we were confident that listing would bring a good result.

At the time, our biggest competitors in the market – Sincere Watch and The Hour Glass – were already listed, and we understood that going public was an important milestone we had to set, both financially and to ensure we were on the same standing as they were.

Once we had listed, it became clear that I shouldn’t be involved in the financial reporting anymore, because there was a conflict of interest since I was part of the family. So I began to focus on developing operations across the region, starting with Singapore. I was also more involved in brand-building, which is how Jewellery Time came about.

This was just after our public listing and we needed a signature event that would drive public awareness of our brand. At this time, other retailers had created events targeting fine and high mechanical watchmaking. Raymond and myself, we believed it was necessary to carve out a new segment for ourselves.

While jewellery watches were not yet trending, we knew from our customers that there was emerging interest. In the ’80s and ’90s, we saw that jewellery watches were growing in popularity. This was a segment that wasn’t restricted to ladies either; not only were there more men starting to wear jewelled watches, they were also keen investors in these timepieces. So we developed the first exhibition in 2000 and we iterated and improved on it with each new version every two years.

First of all, I think the perception of jewellery watches has evolved in the last 20 years. Collectors don’t only expect full pavé, gem-studded watches that cost several hundred thousand dollars. There are great jewellery timepieces for both genders that start from $50,000 onwards, even including a simple complication. But it has certainly become more mainstream today.

I think that Jewellery Time helped to drive that trend forward for collectors in Southeast Asia, by showing watchmakers that there was interest from consumers, and putting products on display that demonstrated the diversity in jewellery watches to interest them. We certainly encouraged brands to deliver products that scaled down the price point for customers compared with the full gemset watches of the ’90s, the era of bling.

Part of that consumer acceptance has also come because today, gemsetting is seen as a traditional craft in watchmaking. Fine and high watchmaking brands have really communicated in depth about this mastery, from the different settings used to how stones are employed artistically on a watch. Today’s customers are paying attention to the aesthetics of a watch, compared with one or two decades ago, when the focus was all about technical watchmaking.

In hindsight, Jewellery Time was ahead of its time and [Cortina] became the go-to retailer for jewellery watches because of this signature event that’s unique to us. In the early 2000s, most watch brands and retailers were focused on highly technical mechanical watchmaking. Even our brand partners faced challenges when introducing jewellery timepieces to the market at the time. A lot of high jewellery watches were produced with quartz movements at the time. By creating this platform for brands to showcase high jewellery quartz watches along with gemset complication watches, we elevated the former and raised awareness of the latter.

The earlier Jewellery Time exhibitions provided a strong platform for brands to bring forward jewellery products that they were not usually associated with, and for customers to appreciate how gemsetting is truly a watchmaking craft. In the last decade, however, brands have become more focused on presenting their own savoir-faire with monobranded exhibitions, and themed exhibitions like Jewellery Time have mostly ceased. That’s not to say it’s over and done with. As trends change, and if there’s interest from brands and customers, we could possibly re-introduce an event like Jewellery Time.

For myself, to always be trustworthy is the lesson that I live by personally, and we stand for as a company. Trust is something that our brand partners expect of us, and our customers demand from us. It’s essential that we always honour our agreements, whether it’s a reference that’s promised to a client, or an order made with a partner.

Certainly things were executed differently than today. Our leadership has changed. My father was still very active, and my brother was already a veteran in the industry. Perhaps the key difference was that in the past, deals were often made as gentlemens’ agreements or verbal promises.

Coming from a corporate environment, especially from an accounting firm, it was a very significant change. To me, emails are a mode of communication and a reference for discussions that change as deals develop. And when the deal is done, naturally we formalise it for fiduciary and legal purposes. We do have more documentation today but the process of creating that deal is still a very organic one, and we always build on past successes to create agreements where everyone benefits.

After our listing, we began to focus on growing the brand and in 2004, I took on my first overseas expansion project in Indonesia. Further to that was our intention to expand into Thailand, which also occurred in the same year and I spent a lot of time in these two countries at the time.

We had a presence in Thailand but that prior partnership ended in 2000. There were two other partners involved and it was something my father had initiated. Our very first brands to break into the Thailand market were Chopard and Patek Philippe. However, we always believed there was great potential for growth, given the strong domestic demand for luxury products and a steadily expanding middle class audience. So when we were ready, we re-contacted one of our previous partners to discuss bringing the Cortina brand into Thailand.

We established a subsidiary and appointed someone who was already familiar with the market to establish our business there. Today, our success is evident in how well Cortina Thailand is performing today. Our Erawan boutique was the first, and today we have two boutiques in Bangkok, with the potential to grow in other parts of the market.

I personally believe that it is an ever-evolving role. Today, our brand partners expect us to convey their brand equity and their unique position in watchmaking to customers. If you were to go back 20 or 30 years, retailers were where customers obtained their information. We were the sole source of reliable knowledge about watches. But brands are more willing to share their savoir-faire today openly to the general public, and access is also made more convenient by digitalisation.

In the past, they would only release information via us to customers. But what we offer today is more of the brand experience within the store. That has impacted how we design our stores, the way we present watches in multi-brand shops and even how we train our staff. Our retail team is well experienced in bringing across each brand’s vision and message to our customers. You can learn a lot about the brand from the Internet, but to experience it personally and fully absorb a brand’s identity, that’s where retailers play a role today. We help customers continue their journey with our partners, through a cultivated retail experience and with collaterals, whether it’s a product catalog or a special gift.

What that translates to is greater effort spent by us on creating the best retail environment for our customers, where they can experience each brand even within a multi-brand store. More importantly, we spent time and energy on training our staff. We also have spent great efforts in developing what’s known as “O2O” (online-to-offline) or click to mortar solutions. After all, other retailers are putting similar efforts to attract customers, so why would they choose Cortina over others? So we’re investing in systems and solutions that ensure what we build will be visited.

In the past, because customers have less or no access to the brands or products directly, they have to come through us. That’s changed. Today, everyone has equal access, but what we offer is an environment for customers to experience the brand.

We started our e-commerce in 2018 and it has grown, but this is in part due to the pandemic and therefore it’s difficult to gauge whether that growth will continue to hold. We started planning for it a few years before that and it was challenging. There was a lot of resistance and other challenges such as retail geography, et cetera. So we came up with digital solutions such as geofencing.

We view e-commerce as an extension of our physical retail, to enable us to reach online shoppers and customers who want to access our products but cannot do so for various reasons. We curated a collection of watches within the website, by brands that are willing to work with us. The idea was to show some of the watches we have, to entice customers to come discover more in store, or to shop the products online.

We also commissioned exclusive timepieces for our e-commerce platform. So for customers keen to try these models before buying, they could go to one of our stores to try them, and purchase it online on the spot. Otherwise they could check out other products in-store to see if anything piqued their interest. This experience offers several benefits for us.Firstly, it removes the first barrier of entering a watch retail store for new customers.Secondly, once they are in the store, it’s easy for our staff to engage them and draw them further into a deeper brand experience.Finally, it also allowed us to gain more data on our online shoppers and customers and learn what their preferences are.We have our own criteria when it comes to commissioning exclusive e- commerce models, but we also want customers to be excited by them.We had two early successes and another special edition released last year that have all sold out.

When it comes to O2O solutions, we developed a campaign during the pandemic to connect our offline retail to our online platform, with partner brands participating. This solution enables online visitors to our e-commerce store or website to connect with our sales staff, and we can study the data obtained through this data to see what each customer is interested in. That means that when they return to us in the future, we are better equipped to engage them, online and offline. This kept our retail team busy even during periods of lockdown or restrictions, instead of sitting around waiting in empty malls.

You’re right. Take for example the launches of new watch models during 2021. Due to restrictions, even though we had new models in the store, it was difficult to circulate that information to our customers and the public. Even if we could, we had to make arrangements and schedule appointments since introducing these watches took time. So with brands that were interested in partnering with us, we used our O2O campaign to drive awareness and engagement, or remarket to them.

We spend a lot more effort today trying to understand our customers and their desires, because we also need to know how to plan our programmes such that they engage our customers at the right time. Many of these ideas were already in the works, but the pandemic drove us to accelerate our digital transformation in many ways. It also requires us to analyse the data we have on our customers, whether it’s useful information and how to filter that data to make it valuable.

We’re in the process of upgrading our systems to really help us understand our customers better, so we can create a more tailored retail experience for them when we meet them, whether it’s online or in-person, or even through our digital marketing. So far our efforts have been very successful. We believe we can achieve even better results, by using data to match our customers to the products they would be interested in.

We’re also very circumspect when it comes to finding the right markets and ways to develop or open them. In countries where we can fully own our subsidiaries, these are places we see strong growth and investment potential. In countries where we have trusted partners, we also invest our resources in growing them. So when we make decisions as a company, it’s when we all agree that every due diligence has been done to ensure our efforts will reap rewards for the company and our staff.

Yes, undoubtedly. We’re seeing that the starting journey of a customer has changed significantly. Today, our clients are starting their watch collection at a higher price point than in the past. They are not only more informed, but they also want to own watches that make a statement and are well-recognised in the community. They’re looking for next level products.

We do have to treat them differently, and when they are new customers, it’s our responsibility to try to understand them better. As a retailer, we do our best to try to provide them with the models they desire to help them start their watch collecting journey, even with models that are hard to obtain. This can be a challenging task for any retailer today. We’re investing these efforts because we want to support the next generation of collectors, and we’re using this time to reconnect with customers in Singapore and strengthen our relationship with them.

We’re really mindful of how we need to offer both our loyal customers and welcome new ones with the best products we have. We want to nurture a new generation of collectors and support our existing clients with great timepieces that they desire. New customers today don’t want to have to start from the basics when it comes to watch collecting. What they are interested in, is to know the brand better, to understand the value of their watches apart from their intrinsic value. They want to share in and appreciate the values behind the products they are buying. We’ve developed a strong after-sales support programme where we follow up with customers regarding the pieces they’ve bought, keep them updated on new launches and events and more.

One word: trust. Regardless of which generation we are in, or which era we are in, trust is critical to our success and our longevity, it’s what has led us this far. We trust our business partners to deliver on the agreements we have, to create the finest timepieces for our customers. Our customers place their trust in us, that the watches we sell to them are authentic and of the highest standards. When we sign an agreement, what’s implied in a contract is the trust that’s shared.

Calligraphy is the style of art we chose for our 50th anniversary logo, precisely because an artist needs to have absolute trust when the brush touches the canvas. They need to trust in each brush stroke, to be certain of what they are doing. So in my opinion, trust is the one quality that has shaped us.