Rudy, what an absolute pleasure to talk to you.
It's so good to meet again.
I am very excited to talk to you today.
I want to start with an easy question, okay?
We're going to keep the hard questions for later.
What, if you had to think back to your, let's say, professional history, what is
the most proudest moment that you would think back to?
I think the most proudest moment was when I was promoted within Swatch to take over
the worldwide marketing position as marketing director.
Being able to really, after being completely responsible for all watch
products, be able to market it into not only the European and North American
region, but especially the Asian one because that market is really different.
and it gave me this kind of an edge to really prove myself.
And I think that is still one of the highlights out of my career, out of my
entrepreneurial career.
wow.
I have so many questions to ask.
OK, so I'm a big fan of Swatch.
So first of all, tell me a little bit about the, let's say, what's your favorite
thing about the company?
The non -confirmistic way, so I have to go back a little bit in time.
Mr.
Hayek Sr., who unfortunately passed away, I think he was a brilliant mind.
After I did my masters, I learned a lot from him from a practical angle.
And what he was able to do is being on the one hand the entrepreneur, but
nevertheless being somebody that kept the...
creativity and the mindset of an eight -year -old and that combination was for me
brilliant so I was very lucky to spend a lot of time with him and the development
of the concept of Swatch where the art, the music, the sports came into the wrist
of people as a second watch because that is how the name was created the second
watch on your wrist because a lot of people used it for going on vacation.
using it for a fun time.
And that was something for me where, yeah, it was mind -blowing.
We have to bring the audience into this.
So I'm a Swatch fan, so of course I know, but tell us the history of Swatch from a
perspective of what was the innovation there, right?
Because there was something very new and special about Swatch when it came to the
market.
Yeah, I mean the innovation of Swatch was that, well, I would say the Swiss watch,
let's say industry was under heavy attack from, especially at that time, the Asian
competition like Psycho, like Citizen.
It needed to revamp.
They were not connecting anymore to young people.
And the innovation about the Swatch concept was that the movement with a
superb accuracy has only 51 parts.
And that was a breakthrough, which was later, later celebrated as we see it still
now, System 51, which is an automatic watch, that is highlighting, let's say,
the roots of the brand.
And being a non -confirmistic brand that was really like a canvas for people to do
art on, like I said before, and do expressions which even went into MoMA.
And that was something unheard of so all the big artists in the beginning like Kiki
Picasso These kind of people did special editions So the special edition part was
always a big part of the success of swatch Because we were in the beginning never
able to fulfill the demand it didn't matter I mean all watches are produced in
Switzerland, but there was no way that we could
cover the demand that was coming from all territories.
So it was more or less in the beginning like, we need to distribute those products
and we need to find a quick way to accelerate our production capacity.
So you come into this market with incredible demand.
That's every sales and marketers dream, right?
So, you know, that's great.
But there were challenges that came with that.
Tell me about the challenges that come with incredible demand and how you met
those.
I think the biggest challenge we had, what I recall from that time, was that you need
to keep a fine balance between people being enthusiastic and people getting
disappointed.
Because the major issue is that if you get disappointed, you lose interest.
And that was the most difficult task we had at that time.
is how to distribute in a smart way to keep the momentum going and on the back
end to make sure that production and logistics would be able to cover the gap.
So obviously, this is a commercial commodity product, or I don't know if
commodity is offensive or not of a word to use, but this was potentially large scale
distribution.
You must have made mistakes on the way.
Yes, you make mistakes.
The mistakes are...
one of those.
Tell us about what it was.
And I told you that the hard questions would come.
So tell us, like, look, we're looking for a happy ending here.
So tell us the challenge.
Tell us what brought of it.
This I know, this I know.
But in the micro, in the story, tell us about what the challenge was, what brought
and led to the challenge.
And then how you overcame the challenge is really the interesting.
I think the thing with Swatch was always we tried to expand the horizon, to do the
impossible.
And with doing the impossible, you come to a point where you have to say, my gosh, is
this going to be able to produce on a large scale?
Can we homologate the products?
Because of course we are dealing with...
high quality standards.
We are a brand that is still produced in Switzerland.
There is nothing done outside of the country.
And I think that was one of the things where every time we were thinking about,
okay, a new product line, we had the normal gent in the beginning.
We had the lady, the small one.
We had the automatic, then the chronograph came.
Then we came with a diver's watch.
Then we came with a bigger diver's watch.
And these are things where...
Yeah, you see as you go what is finally the really demanded product and where are
we going from there?
And I think we were able in let's say the 90s and the early 2000s to really do this
fine balancing of what is the ideal situation of a collection.
because we were more or less like a fashion label.
We came out with new collections, spring -summer collections, fall -winter
collections, doing the catalogs and still trying to be relevant not only for Europe,
but also for the other parts of the world.
And the taste is not everywhere the same.
And there's where you learn the hard way to some part, like, this is working here,
but this is not working there.
So we need to find an alternative.
We need to come up with things that are going to fulfill, let's say, the demand in
that market.
And that was the...
Yeah.
SKUs or products inside of the lineup didn't work.
No, because let's say you have on the one hand you have the creatives.
And I remember in my time as a product manager, I had to be the critical voice
without, let's say, being too negative towards a designer because they put their
heart and blood in it.
So to somebody you have to say, hmm, I don't know if this is going to work.
Perhaps we should revise this or we should add that.
But
On the other hand, we are not the designers.
So it was always an interesting process.
And what we had, we always had the input from the markets when the first initial
presentation of the so -called mock -ups, which were the handmade prototypes of
every watch.
When that collection was shaped, we always had big, intense debates.
concerning is this the final collection?
What do we need to change?
And to some part this was like hardcore.
Hardcore discussions, heavy discussions, but at the end always a great result and a
great product.
Did focus groups play a part and how much did you listen to the focus groups?
And then after that, a follow -up question, were the focus groups right or
were they sometimes wrong?
Focus groups, when it comes to design, we get in people that give their comments,
for sure.
But I think at that time we had a very capable group of people within the
countries that could really rate in a very precise way these products are going to
sell for my market or not.
Because that is what finally the whole process was.
The process was you have 120 SKUs in the collection and every country had to rate
the products one by one how much volume they would order.
And that was a commitment.
So because we had to pre -produce.
So it is not like to some part fashion where you pre -sell a collection and then
based on that,
they start buying the fabric, they start production.
We had to produce already before launch to market.
And that is where we still had, let's say, a certain percentage of the collection
that was committed already, especially the A styles, which are, let's say, from all
countries, the best sellers.
We would go in with a very high percentage of committing final product.
With the styles we were not sure, we kept it at, we keep the components in stock,
but we would not necessarily do the final production completely.
And that is how we were able to leverage and we had with our sister company, ETA,
which is the production company, they were able to quickly change one style on the
production line for another.
And that was really helpful in the season because we had already the components
there.
And then it was a matter of putting the dials and the hands and the straps on the
casings and then you had a finished product.
But it is a very complex logistic project for the people that are working in the
different factories.
That's amazing.
I mean, I think there's a lot of commonality now with the mobile phone
manufacturing process.
I was deep in that industry, so so many things that you're saying are like, that's
obvious, of course.
But let me change the topic.
You said that there was these differences between markets.
So you talked about the Asian market.
Tell me about those differences.
What were the mistakes that were made and what were the insights that were gained?
between the two markets.
Let's say we always had logically a heritage that is European based.
The design studio was in or is still in Italy.
The company is headquartered in Switzerland.
And the Asians to some part love it very colorful.
And again, also Asia, you cannot compare like Japan is the same as China or Hong
Kong.
So you have to differentiate.
And the best way for us was especially with the long, let's say, term managers we
had and very capable people in the markets, is to really truly listen to
their inputs.
And of course, we don't have a crystal ball.
Even if we truly believe this is going to sell everywhere, you have your surprises.
But in the final end, you learn from...
those mistakes in a certain way.
The thing with the Swatch product is, every season the product looks different.
With the exception of, let's say, the so -called basics or never out of style,
where you have products that...
a black watch with a white dial, a classic one, you don't need to change every
season.
So that means they will continue to carry over until we see that there is a decline
in demand.
and then we have to do something about a replacement or an update or something that
goes in a direction like that.
But let's say coming back to your question, we of course, we had in every
collection, we had positive and negative surprises, things where we were believing,
wow, this is a masterpiece, this is going to sell really well.
We had things where we had to say, my God, it doesn't work.
But I think that it's life.
The same experiences like I said I had in fashion.
It's even more volatile.
Because you have much more trends as a little accessory on your wrist.
So yeah.
I need to be careful because I could probably have us talk about swatch the
whole day, but I'm not sure that our audience is interested in that.
So let's and I look, everybody's gone into like the digital watches.
I'm still there.
Right.
That's my I think there's something about having high quality watch, high quality
shoes.
But, you know, that's that's a different topic for another day.
Let me ask you something else.
When you think about and not necessarily in the swatch era, but across your
professional career.
What is the hardest point that you had interacting with an employee or a
I think the hardest way is always when things are not going as smooth.
And that is, to my experience, that is normal.
I think if somebody has some kind of demands, because that is also something
where you are confronted with, like people come and say, hey, I think I'm up for a
race or I'm up for this or for that.
It depends how things are framed.
How is the actual situation?
Is that something that indeed is due?
And I think important is that you stimulate people, that you make sure that
people can develop themselves.
The difficult part starts then when the objectivity is not completely there.
And then you have to maneuver in a way to make sure to not demotivate, because that
is definitely you don't want with people that are performing well, because I'm a
true believer that a team is the backbone of the success of an organization.
It's not the managers only.
It is how the whole team, like a soccer team or a sports team is working between
manager and field players.
And...
Let's say you have to some point you have to find the middle way to make things
nevertheless happen But also you need to be careful because you need to be fair
towards the others around it because that person is not alone in your organization
So it is it is not always easy But I think important is for me always to listen.
What are the arguments the person is bringing?
Is there is there demand realistic?
Is it fair?
And then you take it from there.
And unfortunately, there is not like a dictionary where you can pull a book out
of your shelf and say, let me look.
How do I take care of this?
It comes with the years.
And I must say, this is something where...
Yeah.
You alluded to the fact that, and you said this very like politically, and I
apologize, I'm sick, so I have to take a little bit of this, but so I don't choke,
but you alluded to the fact that sometimes the way the employees see themselves and
the way maybe you or the rest of the company see the employees is not the same.
You said that in like very lightly, with just a little bit of salt.
Tell me more about that.
Let's say I I think if let's say what I try to do is to be proactive to be
proactive with my team giving them feedback during the course of a year
because the performance of an employee is not measured one time per year at the end
of the year.
This is an ongoing thing and I have learned throughout the years that if you
have a regular feedback for people a constructive one.
Because it is not only pointing out something that's negative.
It is about, okay, where is room for improvement?
And I must honestly say, if you practice that really thoroughly and consistently,
at the end of the year, there are not many differences in how a manager sees things
or how an employee sees things.
But if you have no communication during the year,
Of course, that is a given potential clash factor.
Definitely.
is everybody doing?
Is everybody doing what you're saying?
No, everybody's having like a quarterly or every nobody's doing what you're saying
Rudy.
Like I just need the audience to listen very carefully because this is special.
This is unique.
This is not something that is common knowledge.
I have seen this happen again and again and again.
Great, great, great, great, great.
End of your comms.
shit job.
What?
What happened?
What did I do?
Like, like this is special.
So I want to.
don't understand.
We need a lean into this because this is really important.
something...
So I think coming back, and you're totally right, if you give just for people to be
quiet a great, great, great during the year, and then for whatever reason, you
can be as a manager under pressure from the next layer on top of you.
And then you have to sell your people like, hey guys, it was not that great.
But that is not necessarily the problem of the people, that is the problem of the
person that was giving the wrong signal.
Because disappointment, believe me, is quicker given as a positive attitude.
So I think you have to be on top of things and coming back to communication.
Communication can be done personally.
Communication can be done through meetings.
Communication can be done by monthly reports where you give already a direction
towards the performance.
Let's take a salesperson.
a store, whatever.
You can say, hey, we have a deviation there.
What do you think?
Because I think also that is important.
Engage the people in coming up with how can things be improved?
Because I am too far away to some part from the things the teams are doing, but I
need to be aware what's going on.
And that is what I've done personally always, both in fashion and at Swatch.
I'm always in the stores.
Because what is finally important is how is the consumer thinking about us?
About our brand, about how we treat them?
Are they happy?
Are they leaving without a sale?
And what is the reason?
Were they nevertheless treated well?
Are they going to come back?
And I think these are all factors where we have to say, hey, we need to pay attention
to those little details to understand the bigger picture.
And...
to make sure that finally at the end of the month or end of the quarter or the
year the budgets are met and reached.
no executive in the world that will tell you that KPIs or CARAs are not important,
but you glanced over something so important.
I love how you say these incredibly important things as if it's nothing.
You said in between the lines that there is an importance of the employees to have
a sense of honesty in regards to their own performance in the process of reporting.
Tell me more about that and tell me, tell me.
If you've seen that go terribly wrong, when they don't do that, tell me about
that too.
Because this is so important to the whole strategy that you're describing.
me give you one example.
I have to go back a little bit further in my career, but it was a very interesting
one for me to learn from.
After Swatch I took over because it was a commercial partner of Swatch.
They did all the telephones for us.
So I was bombarded by the top management of Siemens.
So Siemens Mobile.
So no, no, no.
No, no, no.
They didn't do anything wrong.
But it was an interesting thing in culture.
So I was engaged as senior VP marketing worldwide, taking care of mobile products
and all telephone products they had.
And our sister company was Networx.
The interesting part was that the employees were not used to an open kind of
communication.
they couldn't criticize, they couldn't really tell their opinion because it was
more or less dictated how things should be done.
Which is fine, but the issue is that people to a certain extent are stopping to
care.
And that was for me, it was heavy.
It was very heavy because if you experience something like that, you have a
big...
a big task of keeping the motivation up.
And I think if you can create an environment of honesty in both ways, I
think that is something that will flourish.
That is something where people will be coming to you and expressing their doubts.
If the doubt is objectively correct or not, it doesn't matter that much.
But at least the person is not punished for coming and saying something where they
are worried about.
But the alternative would be people don't come at all.
So, and that means that you are completely cut off of what is going on in the
organization.
And finally, you have a more difficult time to make sure that you are able to
direct the department, the company in the right direction.
And I think that is something where, let's say we are living in a fast -paced world,
even today more as back in the days.
But I think the principles are still the same.
I think we need to take some time to withdraw a little bit, have a little bit
of an helicopter view and being honest, are we still doing everything in the
correct way?
And that is something I have learned out of that period where I had to say,
the discrepancies in company culture and how things entrepreneurly should be done
and how they were finally done, there was a big, big, big gap.
A big gap.
Absolutely.
I can tell you one story of a company that was basically punishing people for being
honest.
Complete demoralization.
Like you couldn't say something negative.
You had to be positive or you had to be nice, right?
It was this culture of positivity at all costs.
And what happened is that the metrics, yeah, basically it was this culture of
pleasing.
and the metrics all looked great until the company shut down.
It's just, you know, it was a slow...
I...
I think that's amazing.
But there's another thing to this, right?
Like it's not, people think it's easy.
let's just, but no, there's a culture that supports this, let's say philosophy or
this way of operating.
I'll tell you a short story.
So when I hire people, I tell them the following thing.
And there's a very specific reason why I do this.
I say to them, look, in three to four years, whatever, two years, three, four,
five years, but not in a year's time, but.
Yeah.
Either way, you committed to me, you've given me your commitment, I give you my
commitment.
Yes.
Yeah.
No, that's clear.
us, we will be here for you.
And this is how I behave.
And what I see is that employees are so committed.
And finally, I'll tell you one story.
Elden, maybe I should cut the name.
I don't know if I should say his name, but anyway, one of my employees, finally he
left Siemens and he calls me up and says, Ari, will you refer me?
Absolutely.
So the hiring manager calls me up and says, you know, what, how is this guy?
Is he good?
Not good.
I say, look, you're asking all these questions, but let me say something very
simple.
I will write you a check right now for $5 ,000.
If you're not happy with this employee, you, you cash the check my money.
It's yours.
I am that confident that this person is amazing.
So that's the kind of relationship that.
Exactly.
That's the kind of relationship we had.
And it starts from the day that the person was hired.
It's not once a year.
I love that you were talking about the fact that the feedback is building the
person.
It's not once a year, slap them in the face.
And then based on that, they get a bonus or don't get a bonus.
But that's what happens everywhere, right?
That's the common thing.
Amazing.
don't forget, I mean, people always think that money is the big motivator.
But let's say an increase in salary is a motivation for a few weeks and people get
used to it.
There are different things.
Yes.
It is...
Appreciation.
No, it is appreciation and like you said, building up people.
That's right.
a big difference.
And I was in a very lucky situation that I founded my own company.
And that is finally where you are in the situation.
You are the responsible.
There's nobody above you in the organization to go to and point fingers
because you have to solve the issues.
You have to make it happen.
You have to protect your people.
And I think that was one of the most important things also for me to have that
responsibility.
over a period of eight years.
So yeah.
Right.
Again, this is such an amazing topic.
I think there's been so many interesting, interesting, like insightful comments that
you've made.
But again, I want to make a shift.
OK.
This is a nightmare.
You're going to I know, like, but we have to talk about it.
Tell me about I know, I know, I know.
I told you the hard questions would come.
Tell me about your worst experience in restructuring, firing people, basically
letting people.
Let's say to start in general, then I come with more specifics.
To let people go is always something that is affecting you.
It depends on the circumstances how people need to be fired.
If something has been decided, and that happens normally in bigger companies,
where you have to reduce the team,
for whatever reasons.
Even though the people were performing well and the people were great, I think
that is the most difficult decision you have to go through.
If somebody doesn't perform and somebody was made aware more than one time, it is
also something that affects a human being, but it is a different decision.
For me, the biggest things...
were happening in one of the companies I worked for where the restructuring had to
be done because we were about to be taken over by another company and management
wanted to look the company lean and efficient.
And whatever the definition of lean and efficient is, it affects people because if
you have less salary cost, you are already more efficient.
because on the short term, your sales are not going to drop.
And that is something where to some part I have to say, these are decisions I cannot
really stand behind, but at that moment, you have to execute them.
And that is not something that you do with a pleasure.
Definitely not.
And we've been for everything, right?
We've been through these baths that companies take before acquisitions or for
different reasons.
We've been through, I was going through this, this bad quarter that sales didn't
sell enough.
So my team was like, fine.
Like it's not our fault that sales was disincentivized by the acquisition
process.
They wanted me to fire my team.
So I was, I was upset.
I fought it tooth and nail because you know, it was like it's some other team is
not performing.
So now I'm in power, but we're one company, right?
So.
But go explain to that, to your team that you're telling him you're great, you're
great, you're great.
But these other guys, fuck, excuse my language, messed up.
And now I need to fire you.
Like that was, I, you know what?
In that story, after that happened, I was managing a consulting group in Siemens.
I decided I'm going to do sales myself.
So, so at least I know that I never have to fire my own people.
And actually that, that employee I mentioned before.
He ended up, he said, I said to him, hey, you're going to do sales now.
He said, no, no, sales is disgusting.
I said, I said, no, no, no, I'm going to teach you how to do something called
relationship based sales.
I gave him, you know, how to influence people and make friends, right?
The great book.
And I said to him, look, we're doing relationship sales.
It's about the customer.
It's not about us.
That guy, he was an engineer.
He ended up closing a million and a half quarterly.
Quarterly.
It is.
You know, he had a, he was working with Siemens and Apple, sorry, not Siemens.
He was, we were Siemens.
He was working with Qualcomm and Apple, but he built such a wonderful
relationship.
And you know, the reason why I pushed him into that role was because he was a very
smart engineer, but the customers at Qualcomm, the customers at Apple, they're
smart engineers.
I knew it would work.
And he ended up being like great, great sales guy, but that was all because of my
nightmares of, of I need to fire people.
So the fact that I had to fire somebody, right?
I had to fire some other guy, David, because the sales guys were not
preferring.
So I was like, never again.
Like, this is never, I'm not gonna let this happen.
You
You know what?
do so, I think that is a great way how to resolve things.
You know, in consulting, it's easy because you're on the ground, you're working with
the customers, you're building trust.
So introducing sales into the consultative process is not that difficult, but it is a
shift of a mindset.
But it's almost like you have all these gifts, right?
Like you can, you're already there as opposed to like opening doors.
That's very difficult.
Account management, opening doors, you know, cold sales, that's hard.
But we had this gift, so I was like, let's use it.
And we built a huge P &L based on that.
Rudy, what an absolute pleasure.
This has been so much fun.
I feel like there were so many things that I was like, I need to talk about this.
We didn't have the time.
So let me ask you one last thing.
For all of our listeners who are looking for their next job, who are looking to be
successful in their current job, looking to be promoted or whatever it is, what is
the one piece of advice?
that you can give to our listeners on how to be successful.
I think stay true to yourself.
Base yourself on the strengths you are having.
Hopefully you have somebody that is in charge of you who gives you an honest
feedback.
Keep your eyes open.
Develop yourself because we have a very volatile situation both on the labor
market as in the market in general.
So there are a lot of new things coming into play.
A lot is based on AI, a lot is based on new technologies that are flowing into our
workspace.
Instead of being afraid, embrace them and look where you can build your synergies to
make your performance better.
Because I think that is finally the future.
You need to stand out.
You need to make sure that you are up to date with what's going on and believe in
yourself.
I think the first thing is the self -awareness of be mindful.
of your strengths.
Be also mindful where you can do better because I think that is a two -way street.
It's not only about everybody is perfect.
We have our flaws.
We have our things where we definitely can do better.
And I think if we are honestly striving to do so, the next opportunities will come
and you will force it.
It is something which is automatically coming.
just glancing over these things there.
So I got to stop it just This is a superpower.
You're talking about a superpower Self -awareness is a superpower.
I I I need to ask everybody to listen carefully to what Rudy is saying the
ability to and and what did Rudy say he said you don't have to be perfect It
doesn't mean you don't make mistakes
But the ability to learn from your mistakes, to be aware of yourself and to
put yourself on the journey where you're getting better.
That's a superpower.
What an absolute joy, Rudy.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
I'm sure our audience will enjoy this very much.
Absolutely.
I'm going to go pick up my daughter because she's going to be kicked out of
her friends in a second.
So I got to run.
But thank you so much.
And you need to come back.
I think there's a lot more for us to talk about.
No problem.
I happily rejoin again.
Thank you so much for having me.
you so much Rudy.