SINGAPORE – Mr Akio Naito is sitting in a room at Grand Seiko’s new flagship boutique at The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands.
He readily takes off the clean but arrestingly handsome watch on his wrist when asked what he is wearing. It is a 140th anniversary limited edition of the first Grand Seiko (GS) watch launched in 1960.
“I couldn’t resist buying it because I was born in 1960. And I was appointed to be the president of Seiko Watch Corporation when this model came out on the 140th anniversary of the company’s founding (in 1881),” says Mr Naito, who joined the Japanese watchmaker in 1984 as a lawyer.
For the uninitiated, Seiko and GS are different brands, even though they come under the Seiko Watch Corporation. The former specialises in affordable watches, while GS produces high-end luxury timepieces. Although it started out as part of Seiko, GS was for the longest time a cult brand known only to watch aficionados for its artisanal beauty and ground-breaking technology. The reason? It was not available outside of Japan until 2010.
It became an independent brand in 2017. Since then, it has been on a relentless drive to be a major player in the luxe watch market. In 2018, the Grand Seiko Corporation of America was set up to sell, market and distribute GS.
In 2020, we created Grand Seiko Europe in Paris. And last year, as a final piece of the puzzle, we created Grand Seiko Asia-Pacific in Singapore,” says the amiable 62-year-old in fluent English.
The little red dot won over Hong Kong “because the Chinese market has always been a bit of a challenge for us”, he says.
We’re still exploring what the best strategy would be in China, including Hong Kong. But in Singapore, we can count on the popularity of the brand with cult followers and passionate watch lovers.”
The pandemic, he says, did not put a damper on expansion plans.
“I think we were rather lucky because during the pandemic, people stayed home. And rather than spending money on vacations, they went looking for something new on the Internet. There were lots of activities about watches on social network services. And we emerged as a fresh new brand outside Japan,” he says.
It helps that GS has been winning some big prizes in the horological world. For instance, the Grand Seiko Kodo Constant-force Tourbillon – unveiled at the 2022 Watches & Wonders international watch fair in Geneva – nabbed the coveted Chronometry Prize at the 2022 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Geneve, the Oscars of the watch industry. The timepiece made horological history because it managed to combine a tourbillon and a constant-force mechanism as one unit on a single axis.
Taking the brand global has not been easy.
Mr Naito, a Fulbright Scholar with a master’s from Columbia Law School in New York, recalls the resistance he met from top retailers when he was transferred to New Jersey from Tokyo to head GS’ operations in the United States in 2016. They associated it with Seiko, which was known to be affordable, not luxe.
He explains: “Because of changes in the economic environment, especially changes in exchange rates, it became very difficult in the mid-1970s or 1980s to continue exporting high-end products globally. So we shifted production from Japan to other parts of Asia, including China, Malaysia and Singapore. So the image of Seiko has become associated with a more affordable price point, but that is really not the original DNA of the brand.”
To overcome that, the brand organised talks and watchmaking demonstrations showcasing GS’ unique traits, including Zaratsu polishing, a technique done by hand which produces a mirror-like finish free from distortions. GS is also famous for its beautifully textured dials, such as the Snowflake, which are inspired by nature.
The strategy worked. According to a 2021 Forbes article, GS is in the top 10 in every price band, including above US$30,000 (S$40,500) in the US.
In many ways, Mr Naito is the perfect candidate to make GS one of the big boys in luxe watchmaking. The father of three men aged 27 to 36 has been with the organisation for about 40 years and taken on several roles in different Seiko companies around the world, including general manager of the legal department in Tokyo and head of Seiko Australia.
Not only is he fluent in English, but he is also known to be a self-starter. When the human resource department turned down his request to study overseas about 20 years ago, he inveigled an opportunity to talk to Seiko’s then head honcho about how promising staff like him should be given the opportunity to upgrade themselves, so they could serve the company better.
Still, Mr Naito – who walks 4km every work day from his home to his office in Tokyo’s Ginza district – did not expect he would be made president of Seiko Watch Corporation.
“When the organisation was looking for someone to head Grand Seiko operations in the US, none of our members was experienced in the retail and luxury watch segment because Seiko was mostly a mid-tier business. The luxury market is a totally different ball game,” he says.
“The external directors mentioned that maybe it was difficult for a strictly watch guy who grew up within the organisation to bring drastic changes to the business model in the US, but, at the same time, bringing in somebody from outside was risky. So they pointed to me,” he recalls with a laugh.
Beaming, he says he is pleased with the attention GS is getting, especially from millennials and Gen Zs. This demographic, he says, makes up a large portion of new fans in the US.
“I gave a talk at the NUS Business School yesterday and I’m so happy to see that many students posted about GS on social media today. Some said they would buy one when they graduate,” he adds.
His work, he says, is cut out for him.
“I don’t believe there is a big challenge in front of us. We have just begun communicating our brand stories worldwide. We have more things to do, but we are on track with our strategy.”
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