The Business of Watches [032] Henrik Ekdahl (Managing Director, Leica Watches, And Accessories)

0:00Welcome to the Business of Watches, the Hodinkee podcast, where we go behind the scenes to talk to the executives of the industry that are making things tick. I'm your host, Andy Hoffman. Today, I am in Wetzlar, Germany, at the headquarters and the home of Leica, the world famous and storied camera and lens maker. but Leica, since 2022 when they launched, has also been making watches. And we are joined today by Henrik Ekdal, who is the Managing Director of the Watches and Accessories Division at Leica. Henrik, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

0:47Henrik Ekdahl:Thank you very much, and thank you for accepting our invitation to come here to Wetzlar. We are very happy that we get the chance to show you the heart and soul and muscles of Leica. Indeed, it is a fascinating place. It's a whole, basically a campus here, Leica land. There's lots to see. It's extraordinary. And it's fantastic the way that the company showcases its place in photographic history, being right at the center of it and all the new products and innovation as well. It's quite an extraordinary place. It is, and I think here we have the possibility to show everything that Leica stands for.

1:32Henrik Ekdahl:We have everything from an archive to a museum with a lot of exhibitions. We have our own hotel. We have the headquarter, of course, There's one of two factories we have. So it's pretty amazing here. And we have up to 60 ,000 visitors per year. But at the same time, it's never too crowded either. But I can recommend to everybody who is flying into, especially Frankfurt, Germany, to make sure to visit us because it's only 50 minutes from the Frankfurt airport. Indeed, it's just a short hop from Frankfurt. So let's talk about you. It's interesting, I didn't realize, this is your second tour, as it were, at Leica.

2:17You worked here quite a while ago. Tell us about your career, which has spanned cameras, watches, I think automobiles. Yes. Yeah, tell us where you've been and how you got here.

2:31Henrik Ekdahl:Well, first of all, I was born in Sweden, so I have a Swedish father and a German mother, so I'm bilingual. and after studying in Sweden and working as an officer in the Swedish army for a number of years I did a year of postgraduate studies in Germany and and while doing that I was starting to look for a job and I saw an ad that like I was looking for somebody in the international sales department and I applied because I had been a lot into photography I took a lot of black and white photography when i was younger and developed and and was dreaming of a career as photographer and then i ended up studying business administration instead um so i i started to work here at leica in 1996 and it was a completely different like it was of course the same brand and the same dedication and love to the brand and to photography but it was much smaller and you cannot compare the Leica of today is much bigger more successful more impressive what you see here etc but actually quite a number of colleagues from those days are still here which I think is a nice sign that they never left Leica so yeah I worked here for two years then I felt I have to go to a bigger city again coming from Stockholm and going to small Wetzlar which is a nice but rather small city and so I moved to Munich and started to work for Cartier, which is a pretty successful watch and jewelry brand as well.

4:09Henrik Ekdahl:We've heard of them. So I was a product manager for watches there, but in a subsidiary. And it's a huge difference whether you work in a subsidiary or in headquarters. And after that, I took over the communication department and then I thought maybe now it's time to work work for another brand so i joined the rolls royce so i joined the bmw group and i still remember during the application process i was asked for which automotive brand would you like to work and in those days mini was the coolest brand yes and they they hang carbon fiber uh cars on on walls and it was very cool and I said mini and I got Rolls-Royce which I wasn't too sad about but so Rolls-Royce was quite an experience and I still remember the first time I drove a Phantom near Goodwood in southern England it was quite an experience and after the brand strategy department with a focus on Rolls Royce.

5:23Henrik Ekdahl:I had the chance to go back to Sweden and work as the marketing manager for Sweden and Scandinavia for BMW, which was awesome as well. Very much enjoyed that and fantastic brands and budgets and great combination with the marketing sales working together towards the goal of increased market share and etc. etc. And then one day I got a call and it was my ex-boss from Richemont, to whom Cartier and other lovely brands belong. And he said, hey, Henrik, want to come back and take over IWC Schaffhausen as an MD for Central Europe? And I also got at the same time a nice offer at BMW to take over the marketing department for Germany, which is pretty important absolutely big and somehow i felt like hey come on iwc is a cool brand i love watches uh let's go so i joined uh i rejoined richemore in 2006 and worked as the md for iwc schaffhausen for central europe but also for russia and for turkey and israel so i had three subsidiaries and up to 32 countries and um yeah had a fantastic years there with a fantastic brand and and great team but after 17 years it felt like hey it's time for something new and and i had all the time kept in touch with leica because leica was always uh yeah i i never lost the love to the photography and and and and the brand and um yeah one day um one of my former colleagues contacted me and said hey i think they are looking for somebody and they want to talk to you uh so yeah now it's almost two and a half years since i rejoined laika right and i haven't regretted it for those who don't know i mean let's talk you know first about laika itself as a camera manufacturer and a lens manufacturer also a microscope maker a great history and then what is that link you know within that natural link between cameras and watches i believe ernst lights at one point studied uh watchmaking but yeah tell tell us i mean you know what is the what is the the link there and what is the history indeed i've been asked this question of course quite a number of times but less and less because there is more and more acceptance of the fact that that leica is kind of allowed to to produce watches because as you said and slice the first our founder when he was 20 years old he went from wetzlar to neuchatel in switzerland and did a watchmaking apprenticeship for about two years and he learned about precision engineering about about using the materials used in watchmaking.

8:31Henrik Ekdahl:He learned about serial production, which was very, very important. And this knowledge he took back to Wetzlar. And that laid the foundation for the Leica of today. We started to build, I would say, the best microscopes in the world. And 101 years ago, the Leica I was launched, which was a revolution. and a lot of the the parts inside our cameras especially the analog cameras remind of larger parts of a watch or a clock and as i showed you earlier today the the iconic leica m6 and analog camera our best seller which has been on the on the market since 1986 when you take off the top cover you see a mechanical time keeping device controlling the shutter consisting of bridges gear trains springs it's amazing and it's super precise completely mechanical and it it it controls the shutter from one thousandth of a second down to to one second or up to an up to a second and you you see how the parts move when you when you change the the shutter speed and i would say the heritage of ernst leitz the first and the fact that we have products which to a large share remind of of watches entitles us to to actually um yeah i don't want to say go back to the roots but somehow to to to enlarge the product portfolio a little bit carefully but a little bit yeah so So, you know, we talked about that link between watches.

10:18Indeed, you know, when you talk about that M6 camera, I mean, that's a timing device in some ways that is in that. And then so, you know, historically there have been some Leica branded watches in the past, in the 1990s, I believe. But, you know, the current iteration and this, you know, the Leica watch brand as we know it now, that project started in 2015. I mean, tell us about the history of that and then up to the launch, and then we'll talk about where we are now.

10:53Henrik Ekdahl:Indeed, even when I was working for Leica for the first time, 96 to 98, there were some watches being either sold or given away for free with the camera. So as you can imagine, those watches were quite different from the watches we are talking about now. so whenever a camera reached a certain peak of its life cycle and maybe sales started to decline a little bit or so we started to offer bundles with the watch that somehow had a certain Leica appeal and design Bauhaus style and that helped, they became very popular and I showed you earlier a photo of me in 96 with a Leica r8 and a leica watch and then more or less the same photo i took in 2024 when i started with the with our current model and and the leica zn2 so that's a nice picture i'm happy i took that one so moving forward leica had a very tough time when the shift came from analog to digital photography and was big companies like polaroid and kodak had problems in in yeah coping with that and they didn't make it more or less i'm not surprised that that the rather small company like leica had difficulties but luckily in 2004 uh dr andreas kaufmann our our majority shareholder and the chairman of the supervisory board, he saved Leica.

12:33Henrik Ekdahl:He invested. He has been heavily involved ever since in Leica and the rest of his family as well. They all work for this lovely brand. And once he enabled Leica to digitalize the iconic M system and then it took off like a rocket. Because there were so many Leica enthusiasts, photographic enthusiasts out there just waiting for a possibility to continue to use Leica but digital Leica so once we had the financial means Dr Kaufmann who loves cameras but he also loves watches he said now it's time for the Leica on the wrist knowing about the heritage with Ernst Leitzer first our founder and knowing what is hidden underneath the top cover of our analog cameras so there was a project team set up in 2015 okay and they picked different people Reinhard Mais was a movement constructor who worked for Lange & Söhne and IWC they picked Professor Achim Heine who is a designer who has designed a number of Leica products so they handpicked a couple of people and the small project team started to think about how should Leica watch look like, which characteristics should it have.

13:57Henrik Ekdahl:And I'm sure they had a lot of long sessions trying to figure out, should it be something we just, you know, we sell the license or we do it in-house and probably it became clear very, very fast or maybe it wasn't even up for discussion. It's a serious project, so we have to do it ourselves, not meaning that we have to assemble everything in-house or so we, like the rest of the industry, We use suppliers and the help of partners. But the decision was made to go for a hand-wound manufacture movement. So actually, we developed our own movement with partners. The main partner is Lehmann Precision.

14:36Talk about them. Yeah, it's interesting. The German company, machine maker, among other things. But they created the first movement for you, a mechanical hand-wound movement. and they are German, but it's not a name that we necessarily think about with watches that much. It's quite an interesting partnership.

14:55Henrik Ekdahl:They are, I would call them the world champions of milling. Whatever they can mill, they mill instead of stamping. So they produce, among others, machines which we use to produce cameras. They also produce machines which the biggest watch brand of all, is using and um they mean that watch brand in geneva yeah and um so the key players involved knew each other and lehmann was big enough to to conduct the serial production yet they were small enough to be interested when the the startup Leica wants to start with watches, came and knocked on the door. And so the decision to go for a hand-wound movement was actually deliberately taken because the relationship between the person wearing a hand-wound watch and the watch is, I think, much tighter than if you have an automatic watch.

16:03Henrik Ekdahl:I mean, I have both. I have collect watches, of course, and I have automatic and hand-wound watches. but personally I love to wind a watch and you have to take care of this hand-wound watch in a different way. You have to feed it every second or third day or so. You have a relationship. Yes, it's like a living creature on your wrist somehow. In 2022, the first two watches were launched, the ZM1 and ZM2. ZM stands for Zeitmesse. sight messer is time measuring device uh which is kind of what you find on top of the leica m6 camera so that fits pretty well and these watches are 41 millimeter uh steel case um hand wound like i said 60 hours power reserve they have five and seven complications and the main features of them are certainly except for the for the design which uh i personally but also a lot of other people think fits leica because that is important but the main feature is certainly the push crown so you don't have to pull the crown but you push a red dot just like you push the shutter release on the camera and um that stops the watch uh there's a small second zero reset the watch tells you i have stopped now you can set me exactly like precision is something that of course goes for all watches but especially also for for for like and for for our cameras so you it's very easy to set it you never end up in a in a situation where you don't know did i pull the crown now to to set the date or the time and on top we have a very easy to read power reserve which reminds of the shutter of a analog camera so they were launched in 2022 we also had a very limited series of 50 golden watches right is that the one which were lovely as well and there's a parallel there in terms of you know gold finished cameras that have been you know i mean special order that have been made in the past i mean it's not out of sync for like it to do something like that no no and of course we also have to be realistic we had to start with a few hundreds the first year and it takes many years to establish yourself as a watch brand in the market.

18:39Henrik Ekdahl:The others are not sleeping. This is certainly true but it's interesting I mean let's talk about a bit you know just the ZM1 and the ZM2 I mean how you know that Leica philosophy and the Leica sort of aesthetic is portrayed and conveyed in the watch. I mean, it's interesting, you know, the movement is quite something to look at, but it's not, you know, you talk about the Leica camera as being a tool and, you know, the watch has a lot of toolish elements. It's not overly finished, although certainly nicely finished with the movement. Yeah, I mean, talk about how, you know, you're conveying that Leica philosophy.

19:23The trick is, of course, to have a certain but not too strong link

19:29Henrik Ekdahl:between cameras and the world of photography and the watch. We're not into gadgets. Leica is not a gadget company, so we never thought about producing a watch that can take photos or having a light meter, even though a light meter would maybe be nice in the future. But at the same time, of course, also to have credibility and to create desirability the watches had to have a certain Leica DNA and that's why we used Achim Heine as a designer who as I said before designed a number of binoculars and cameras and other Leica products and the project team was of course looking for certain features of cameras that made sense to be transferred to the wrist and our cameras we don't see our cameras even though they have a certain price or value as the luxury industry always says the value of this product is this and that they are pretty expensive but they're worth every euro or whatever currency you're using but we don't see them as luxury products they are tools they are fantastic tools to which which which focus on the essential meaning it should focus your attention on on on being able to take a great photo and we try to transfer that to the wrist as well meaning the the the watches have a number of uh features that are really usable for example last year I traveled through Asia four weeks and I woke up in a new city every second day and a new time zone and the ZM2 with the second time zone was fantastic and easy to change the time and adjust the date etc so Leica is a lot about I talk of course regularly to our camera designers and they try to reduce as much as possible until they get to the point where a further reduction would decrease the usability and so yeah one thing was of course this push crown relating to the shutter release of the cameras the power reserve relating to the to the shutter of analog cameras So there are a number of features included, but they make sense.

22:13And there's not like a red dot on the dial of a ZM1 or a ZM2? The red dot is very dominant. And if we had put the red dot on the dial, it would have overshadowed the rest somehow.

22:31Henrik Ekdahl:and I think that the red dot has been used on too many products in the past maybe not even sellable products but merchandising products and we are reducing that massively right now we have other means to to to label them with our brand but the red dot should be found on on cameras on binoculars on other products but not on on the watches it's interesting though Before we go on to talk about the ZM12 and the ZM11, the other models in the lineup, you said that Leica cameras are not luxury. These watches are, you're in the luxury watch space, are you not? How are you squaring that circle? I would say that part of the mission we have with the watch project is to bring Leica a bit closer to the luxury industry with parts of the products, meaning the watches.

23:36Henrik Ekdahl:We still don't intend to make the cameras luxury products, But if you ask customers, they might see them as luxury products. But I hope that most of them actually see it mainly as a tool to take fantastic photos. But yes, we of course also want to bring new customers into the Leica ecosystem. And we have already managed to do so on a small scale. but still because about 50 % of the watches have been sold to existing Leica customers and 50 % have been sold to new customers. Interesting. And let's talk about the ZM12 and the ZM11. The other models are sort of, you know, I think it was sort of two model lines.

24:28And then we should talk about distribution and where you're selling your watches and how so. But yeah, I mean, you know, the ZM1, ZM2 both marked made in Germany on them. the following watches the zm12 zm11 are swiss made yes so yeah we talk about how those models have evolved and what you're doing with those and we can talk about price points as well

24:51Henrik Ekdahl:of course to if you want to establish like as a as a watch brand you have to have more than one product line and and the zm1 and 2 they also came as monochrome editions monochrome meaning we have actually cameras that can only take black and white photos right they don't have a color sensor and they take the most fantastic black and white photos you can imagine and those are called monochrome so the the monochrome watches are very low contrasts very black and they are very cool so we had of course different models belonging to the ZM1 and ZM2 range but it was still one family and you need two or three later when you grow maybe three product lines when you have too many you can really support them either but the second product line should was decided that it should be a bit more modern, a bit more sporty increased waterproofness and the inspiration for the ZM11 and ZM12 came more from the world of photography and the most fascinating with those watches is the fact that the dials are dual layered and dual colored so depending on, like in photography depending on from where which angle and in which light conditions you look at these watches suddenly you see a second color appear.

26:32Henrik Ekdahl:And that's pretty fascinating. And so far, nobody has answered, yes, I know another brand on my question, have you ever seen something like this? And I keep on asking wherever I am in the world. And so we are the only ones and these dials are fascinating. And the major use P or raison d 'être, why do they exist of the ZM11 and 12 is not that they offer the watchmaking complications the ZM1 and 2 do, but they are simply beautiful, fascinating watches with gorgeous dials. And of course, high quality movements from our partner Cronod, based in Le Loughlin in Switzerland. And yes, it is a bit confusing.

27:17Henrik Ekdahl:We have made in Germany and Swiss made, but life is complicated sometimes. Indeed it is. And talk about the price points that you're in and then where you're distributing and selling the pieces well the zm1 is around 10 000 euros or slightly below the zm2 is around 14 000 euros the zm11 and 12 are around 6 ,800 to 8 ,000 euros, depending on whether you choose titanium or steel and a bracelet or a strap. So it's below, which is good because it doesn't feature the manufacturer movement with the complications. At the same time, it's a Cronaut movement. So we need, of course, different price offerings for the customers.

28:12Henrik Ekdahl:and the current distribution is almost completely limited to Leica stores. Leica is a medium-sized company. We are not part of any group or so, yet we have 120 stores worldwide. And that is pretty impressive, I have to say. When I came, returned here, when I left, we didn't have a single store. And when I came back 26 years later or so, we had 120. many oh remind me most of those stores are corporate owned some not all about about 90 are our own or even above 90 and then we have a few uh franchise operated or partner or operated but actually i've seen quite a few of them and for the end customer of course there is no real difference so it's it's a leica store and we have we have stores from from uh the most western is in LA.

29:11Henrik Ekdahl:New York is super important for us. We had a very nice event with Odinki there one and a half years ago, I think. Then all the way to Tokyo. And most stores are in Europe or in Asia. In the US, we are currently expanding. We just opened Chicago only a couple of weeks ago. We have so far only one watch dealer or jeweler. And he's actually based here in our hometown of and he loves selling leica because he says he has so much nice stories to tell and he he puts his own leica cameras he has a couple of leica cameras he puts them on the display whether we want it or not and um people keep staring at them and of course a lot of visitors international visitors coming to wetzlar they they are here because of their love of leica cameras and he has probably gotten more requests to buy his cameras than our watches but we plan to expand but slowly we cannot produce that much either and we need to find the right partners, we need to find partners who understand that this is a fragile little plant which needs fertilizer and care and love to grow into a strong tree and And it's not the immediate cash cow, but we offer, of course, something different than the other brands.

30:42Henrik Ekdahl:We offer this fantastic combination of cameras and watches, and nobody else has that. There are a lot of fantastic watch brands around, but there's only one Leica. And talk about, you know, how, if you can give us any sense of production, as you say, you're basically only online from your website. You sell the watches as well, I believe. And then that distribution. Can you give us a sense of what the production is per year? And, you know, what are your hopes in terms of growing that? We definitely want to grow, of course. We will grow, but it takes time. but the annual production rate is low four-digit.

31:27Henrik Ekdahl:That's as much as I would say. Also depending on whether we have a launch or not and we currently do not have the capacity to conduct two launches a year or so. It's a very small team here. But that's where we are right now And I would say if we in 10 years are selling 10 ,000 watches, that would be amazing. Maybe it's only eight, but that's kind of the direction. It also depends on how the plans of increasing sales in our own channels, as well as expanding into wholesale is proceeding. Indeed, yeah. No, it's quite a challenge. But, you know, that wholesale market is obviously shifting and changing as we speak.

32:24So there are certainly opportunities. So, you know, looking forward, I mean, you at the moment talk about, you know, how the watches are produced and, you know, what role. Obviously, you're the designer and creator of these pieces. But yeah, I mean, I guess some of the watches are basically produced and assembled in Switzerland, others in Germany. What is that going to look like going forward? And when will we see, you know, I got to tour the manufacturing here today and obviously manufacturing in at least one other manufacturing plant. I mean, what might we see more of Leica in the product going forward in terms of that manufacturing side, do you think?

33:13And the design, I guess, too.

33:15Henrik Ekdahl:Actually, regarding the design, we one and a half years ago recruited Gerd Plange, a former colleague of mine working for IWC Schaffhausen. And he was in charge of the Portugieser and Pilot Watches for 22 years. pretty nice watches and a super nice guy with whom you actually can discuss oh not it's not possible with every designer um so yeah gert has um of course he had to actually i was told that many years ago he was thinking about how a leica watch should look like so that's pretty pretty funny huh and um of course we brought him here and and he's a lot into photography as well nowadays also with Leica of course and he had to the brand was not new to him but he had to take a deep dive into it and he is very good in taking what we have and further developing it because we don't want to start from scratch every time there's a new MD in charge of the watch and accessory division or a new designer joints or so but it has to be I think Porsche with the 911 does it perfectly, it's an evolution and we don't need a revolution all the time from time to time you need a bit of excitement and disruption of course so where do I see us in a number of years we definitely plan to increase the share of our value creation we have the capacity and the will to produce more of the watch parts in-house we have two fantastic factories we have all the machines we need we have a lot of competence and we have already looked at the first prototype samples whatever you call them and and we will do that oh and we will uh also i mean uh i i dare to say that we are the world leader in in optic yes development optics this is what this town uh runs on that that specialty that expertise and and and uh we are looking at meaningful ways of transferring some of this competence to the wrist that's all you will uh uh hear from me today but that looks very promising and a clear customer usp oh and um so so we will do more in-house we do not aim to neither develop nor assemble watch movements short to midterm i wouldn't rule out that we assemble uh watches in whether it's here in Wetzlar or we build up something somewhere else long term, but we will do more ourselves, which we can do it.

36:20We also need it for credibility and it's interesting and fun to do more. Yeah. But I think we will remain very close to the current design languages for quite a while. Then again, they are extremely interesting and there's a huge

36:40Henrik Ekdahl:heritage related to cameras regarding designs and materials and colors and I think that we can do much more in the future without trying to transfer a camera to the wrist that's not what I'm talking about but to get even more inspiration from these fantastic cameras and do something like the monochrome, which is a prime example. There are other things we can do and we also plan to do it already. I mean, there is so much design history and distinct design history and specific models from the past. Leica itself on the camera side, the production side has done a lot, done a number of partnerships, collaborations with others.

37:32Is that something that you would explore on the watch side as well? You know, partnerships, collaborations with other brands?

37:40Henrik Ekdahl:Leica has indeed done that a lot with cameras, sometimes also binoculars or so. And I think that that might be a very good idea, but only once we have our own base to stand on. We have to create something ourselves first, which is 100 % Leica and not a collaboration with somebody else. And once we have that, I think we can spice it up with the smart collaborations, whether it's some designer or another strong brand or so. I mean, we've had collaborations with brands who have produced straps and different carrying devices for cameras in the past. And there are amazingly a number of brands that would like to collaborate with us.

38:35Henrik Ekdahl:And we are talking about the absolute top brands out there, whether it's fashion or automotive. Or Hodinkee has collaborated with Lega in the past. Exactly. And we feel honored. And then again, you shouldn't dance on too many parties, so you have to choose your partners, and Hodinkee certainly is a great one. So I could well imagine doing that, but first we have to do our homework. Yeah. And then, you know, last thing looking forward, I mean, you know, you've got the two model lines. You haven't released a new watch in a while. April 25 was last. Since April 25. So, you know, what should we expect next?

39:17What's the next big hurdle for the Leica watch division going forward?

39:22Henrik Ekdahl:Actually, it was June 2025. The Urban Green came after the ZM12. Sure. ZM12 came last year in the beginning of the year and in April and then the urban green. So not so long ago. So, well, we are working on, we have a plan to launch either one or two new models in the ongoing fiscal year. However, in watchmaking, you sometimes are being surprised by long lead times or challenges or whatever kind. but we will certainly see very exciting new projects in 2027 which is related to I would say a more accessible product line but with a lot of Leica DNA in it with the cases made in our plant so we still need some time and then yeah then after that the sky is the limit Excellent well Henrik Ektral thank you so much for welcoming us here in Wetzlar and helping us learn more and know more and get excited about Leica watches thank you very much Thank you very much

40:53and that's the business of watches for this episode we hope you enjoyed please head on over to hodinky.com where you can join the discussion and leave any comments or questions about this episode or the business of watches in general who knows we might even answer your question on a future episode thanks for listening and see you next time Thank you.