via st.barts online webcam

Today 11:23am (local time), current weather is quite cool at St Barth.
30°C (86°F), humidity 63%.
Too bad I am not here now, but have a look, good for our eyes and mood ;-)

Our colleagues and friends from occam capital have finally launched their corporate website! Good news, also because Marc (Goldberg) has “lost his voice” in the blogosphere ;-)

Occam Capital focuses on high-growth information technology-enabled companies companies with at least €1M€ in yearly revenues. The firm invests in europe, and has global investment and operating experience from investments in the United States, Europe, and Asia Pacific. The firm offers significant European expansion assistance to companies and global expansion assistance in the United States and China.

We focus on fast growing companies in the following sectors

• Homeland Security
• Information Technology (hardware, software and services)
• Media, Ecommerce and Telecommunication
• Banking and Financial services
• Industry and Aerospace
• Technology-Enabled Services

We invest in all the European countries from Israel to iceland…

Congrats to Laurent, François and Marc (who they are) for this launch and the announcement of their investment in Mandriva.

Since about 4 months now, I have discovered the Hublot watches and the Hublot company and brand. Quite an interesting story. And a very good example of an emotional brand linked and strongly represented by its very charismatic CEO, Jean-Claude Biver. Hublot is bringing high-rage watches internationally (top-range watches are defined in Switzerland by their price, i.e above 8’000 to 9’000 CHF).

Jean-Claude Biver is one of those rare men who have genuinely left their mark on Swiss watchmaking. He is born in Luxembourg on 20 September 1949, and his family moved to Switzerland when he was 10 and he became a pupil at a school in Saint-Prex. He continued his education at the Collège de Morges, then at Lausanne University. He arrived in Le Brassus with his degree fresh in his pocket.

The birthplace of fine watchmaking, the Joux Valley was to have a profound effect on his life. He fitted in very quickly, living near a farm which, years later, would become the headquarters of Blancpain. He married in the valley in 1979.

Jean-Claude Biver worked hard to hone his skills from 1975 when he joined Audemars Piguet. He moved on to Omega, in Bienne, where he remained until 1981 and that year, with his friend Jacques Piguet, he bought the dormant Blancpain brand. […]

Ten years after its creation, the company was flourishing. Despite this, the two partners decided to sell, to protect the company and enable it to develop in a balanced manner. Nicolas Hayek and the Swatch Group bought Blancpain in 1992, but Jean-Claude Biver remained as Managing Director and joined the board of Swatch until end of 2003.

Jean-Claude Biver is undoubtedly enjoying is new challenge as a CEO of Hublot watches with a seat on the Board.

Hublot has launched the new and very innovative “Big-Bang” collection in 2005. These watches are 44.5mm diameter watches, always with a so-called “fusion approach”, that means that there are very different types of materials used, as for example ceramic, titanium, kevlar and rubber. Actually, the brand Hublot was the first watches brand which has used rubber for making the straps (in this high-end range of the watches segments). Huge immediate market success. And what for a success:

• Revenues 2004: 26 mio CHF
• Revenues 2006: 96 mio CHF (and about 116 mio CHF of orders which had to be delayed)
• Revenues 2007 (forecast after Baselworld): 270 mio CHF

Hublot is manufacturing about 17’000 pieces per year. It is generally speaking difficult to find an Hublot watch. The jeweler’s shops have normally just some pieces in stock (4 to 8). If you are ordering a watch, you will have to wait about 8 months before receiving it, perhaps now longer after the BaselWorld event ;-)

The website of Hublot is also quite interesting (see below). It consists on a Big Bang watch in the background, which is giving the hour and the date. This website is receiving about 9’000 unique visitors per day (i.e. 270’000 visitors / month or more than 3 million visitors per year). The main communication media used is the video. You can find a lot of short videos (with a majority of them with Jean-Claude Biver ;-), plus a so-called “Hublot TV”

Another innovative marketing process was launched by Hublot with their sponsorship partnership with the UEFA Euro 2008 event, which will take place in Switzerland and Austria! It is the first time that a luxury watch brand is supporting a sport as football (our European soccer). Hublot is also, more traditionally in this industry, sponsoring sailing activities (America’s Cup and Luna Rossa, PalmaVela).

This one is my preferred model, the Big Bang Black Magic:

Manu and myself will be again at the Montreux Jazz Festival on Juli 18, 2007. We will have the chance to see Van Morrison and Candy Dulfer, for me the first time for both artists!

via Seth Godin

Again, a good post from Seth. And as usual very inspiring.

Is it possible that people recommend a Mac so often because of things that having nothing to do with a side-by-side analysis of the speed of data entry in Word?

All a rhetorical way of pointing out that businesses (and people) do two things. Most of focus on just one (at least when we’re doing the task at hand) which is the task at hand. But, there’s something else that’s far more important, something disconnected from what’s produced but certainly related: how you made the customer feel.

How’s this for a 98% rule: By a factor of three, what you do is not nearly as important as how it makes people feel.

If you buy that, then the question is this: why do you spend almost all your time on the wrong thing?

March 2007 was a good month concerning the number of visits on my blog.

The third best month till the launch in March 2004. That means 3 years of blogging, already! Pffuuu.

March 2007: 103’156 pageviews (3’328 pv/day), 58’718 unique visitors (1’894 visitors/day), and 12.21 GB of data transferred.

By the way, Friday April 13, was the most active day ever for this blog with 6’825 pageviews during one day… Wow.

And this, although my very rare blogging in the last weeks.

Thanks a lot for coming back here and investing a bit of your time, very appreciated :-)

The last autumn was a kind of spring, the last winter a kind of autumn, and now we have a spring-summer ;-) With one beautiful consequence, a lot of flowers in the garden. Have a look.

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As you have seen, I am not very active (again…) on my blog because of some quite interesting professional coming changes, which are *very* time consuming, also during the week-ends ;-) More to come till end of Mai.

Thanks to all of you who are supporting me in the “background” during this tough phase.

Upon that, as you know, we have some elections in France… I have already voted this morning and my wife and myself have taken our son (5 years old) with us because he wanted to see what does that mean “to vote”. He was quite impressed and couldn’t understand why he has to wait till his 18 years to be able to vote :-)

To my French readers, do not forget to vote, this citizen process is so important. You know how many people say that we are lucky to live in a democracy. So, VOTE and express your choice!!!