The Swiss Gaucho Who Helped Bring Luxury Watchmaking to South America

Ask a South American what Switzerland means to them, and you’re likely to hear talk of cheese and watches. This cliché is hardly surprising when you look at the socio-professional categories of the Swiss who have emigrated to this continent since the 19th century. Genevan Lorenzo Eichmann worked in both fields.

But let’s start from the beginning, in the first half of the 20th century. Slender figure, undecided in the streets of Buenos Aires and… Geneva accent, Lorenzo Eichmann tells us his story and that of his family. In 1917, his great-uncle emigrated to Argentina, hired by a Briton to run a sugar factory in the province of Tucuman (northern center). The company was prosperous and employed up to 4,000 people at harvest time. As he got older, the great-uncle insisted that a member of his family take over the business. His nephew, Lorenzo Eichmann’s father, showed interest. Then newly married, he moved to Tucuman, before moving to Buenos Aires where Lorenzo and his brother were born.

Temporary

Lorenzo Eichmann stopped studying after his baccalaureate, started a furniture manufacturing company with a friend, got married, and then decided to settle in Switzerland with his Argentinian wife in the late 1980s. He liked the world of watchmaking and managed to get a temporary job at Baume & Mercier. “This brand had existed since 1830, but when I started, I wondered what they had done since then,” he jokes. He managed to get a transfer to the after-sales service, which he says is dysfunctional.

Lorenzo Eichmann then became interested in the catalog of supplies and spare parts: “We started to list the parts of our watches because we didn’t really know what components they contained. So we had to take them all apart, and stick the parts one by one on a piece of cardboard so that someone could draw them and give them a number. It was a real titanic task, but also a brilliant project!”

Such a catalogue allowed for better price control, since the components of a given watch were precisely known and valued. In addition, this system virtually eliminated shipping errors that could cost the company dearly, particularly in customs fees, when the parts had to travel to the other side of the world.

Before working for Piaget, Lorenzo Eichmann was active for years for Baume & Mercier.

Keystone / Salvatore Di Nolfi

Back to Argentina

Lorenzo Eichmann’s life took a turn in 1996. The director of Baume & Mercier at the time offered him the chance to return to Argentina to manage a subsidiary that the company had recently opened there. So he returned to South America with his wife and three children. A fourth was born shortly after his arrival. His position evolved regularly and soon Argentina was joined by the South American and Caribbean markets. Over time, his duties evolved further and he became responsible for these markets for the entire Richemont Group, of which Baume & Mercier is a part.

However, the constant travel and changes within the company led the Swiss to change careers. He decided to settle in Uruguay, where he bought a dairy, raised beef cattle and grew soybeans. He owned about 900 hectares, which was not a very large area for this region.

Although Lorenzo Eichmann largely gave up travelling, he continued to work for Geneva watchmakers in Argentina.

From watches to polo shirts

The watch brand Piaget has just launched its model on the market Polo. Due to its pampas and its horse breeding, Argentina dominates this sporting discipline, with the three most prestigious tournaments and the record number of medals in the world championships. Piaget wanted to form a polo team in 2005 and asked Lorenzo Eichmann to take charge. After close contact with specialists and coaches in the discipline, the Pilara Piaget team was born.

Two Argentine polo players compete in a match. (illustration)

KEYSTONE

However, “polo champions are country people, passionate about horses, but not at all about watches!” The Swiss still had to make sure that they felt connected to the brand. At the time, the director of Piaget wanted to bring one of the best polo players of all time, Marcos Heguy, to Geneva for promotional operations. But the Argentinian was not tempted by the proposition: “Imagine a guy who lives in the middle of the pampas, 700 kilometers from Buenos Aires. A generous remuneration was supposed to convince him to come and do a photoshoot in Geneva. But nothing interested him less than money!”

By giving him a glimpse of the benefits that the team could gain, Lorenzo Eichmann finally persuaded Marcos Heguy to go to Geneva, but the player did not want to stay there for more than three days. “We went there during the SIHH (International Exhibition of Fine Watchmaking, now called Watch and Wonders, editor’s note), but because there was a mistake in the date, I did not have time to change and I went there in jeans and a t-shirt. I appear in many photos next to the director of Piaget!”, the Swiss recalls.

Today, he still returns regularly to Switzerland, which he enjoys very much. But he has no plans to move back there. “My four children don’t want to live there, they really consider themselves South Americans now. And when you’re not part of the ever-high proportion of people living below the poverty line, you have to admit that life is quite pleasant there.”

Text proofread and verified by Emilie Ridard/sj