Under the Porsche Lifestyle Group, Porsche Design offers a 360 experience of the world of Porsche. The Porsche name is traditionally known for its cars, but in 1972, Porsche family member Professor Ferdinand Alexander Porsche took his expertise of designing cars to take beyond the automotive world to offer a full lifestyle experience to customers.
Jan Becker, CEO of the Porsche Design Group
Today, Porsche Design covers a huge range of products from fashion to lifestyle and everything in between with Ferdinand Alexander Porsche’s philosophy still clearly expressed through each and every product. The continued vision is to offer products that combine functionality and design.
Created in Austria, Porsche Design’s products are available around the world with a huge presence in the Middle East. This year the brand celebrates 50 years with an exclusive capsule collection that takes elements of the brand’s products over the last 50 years and brings them together in this unique offering. Carefully curated design classics from the early years are joined by new designs that showcase the design expertise of the brand. Highlights of the collection include two limited-edition reissues of a legendary timepiece, as well as eyewear from the 50Y Porsche Design Capsule Collection. Items from the bags and luggage, sportswear, and fashion and shoes categories are also featured in the collection, alongside an exclusive fragrance. As the collection prepares to launch we meet with Dr Jan Becker, CEO of Porsche Lifestyle Group to find out more.
Tell us about the Porsche Lifestyle Group, what is the mission and where are you at in 2022?
Porsche Lifestyle is a Group within Porsche that is responsible for all kinds of accessories. Within that, we have the Porsche Design brand which is turning 50 this year. In 1972 our founder, F.A Porsche used to work for the car company when the family decided to step down and go out of the operational business so he decided to create his own design studio.
Porsche Design is a lifestyle brand that features a balance between design and functionality. So everything that we do has a certain aspiration in terms of design, but it is also always functional, and that’s what we stand for. The brand is present worldwide and we have close to 100 stores. We’ve been here in the Middle East for a while and it’s a very important market to us.
We cover a broad range of products including watches which was the first product category to be launched when F.A Porsche founded the company. Other important categories for us include sunglasses, luggage and in recent times, all kinds of electronics from smartphones to televisions to laptops which have been very successful.
Who is the customer you are targeting today?
There is an overlap between the Porsche car customer but we also have other customers that have no relation to the car brand. We are targeting primarily male customers, although we do have unisex products, like our sunglasses for example. Our customers are typically very independent both financially but also in terms of their mindset. Their age differs depending on the region, but they are affluent people, who like design and are looking for a combination of functionality and design.
Would you look at expanding the ladies offering?
It is something we did in the past however we found that we went too broad. We are offering such a wide range of products so there is already a challenge to position the brand in the right way, and to venture into the women’s market would be too diverse so we will stick to men.
What can you tell us about the plans for the 50th anniversary of the brand?
Indeed we started the launch campaign in January which also includes a capsule collection that features products that refer to the 50th anniversary with their choice of materials. They incorporate colours and materials that have been used in our products over the last 50 years. The Chrono 1 watch was the first product we launched 50 years ago and we have relaunched it in a limited edition of 500 pieces. It is in fact sold out already! The design takes the original watch from 1972 but translates it in terms of modern technology. So it looks the same but from a materials standpoint, we are using different materials and different work in the watch itself. We are also launching a special edition of the 911 Targa with 750 pieces available worldwide and this car comes together with a watch that can only be purchased by those who have bought the car.
And next to the car and the watches we are offering a capsule collection that carries the 50 years of Porsche Design text and we are using a lot of materials that have been used over the last 50 years to refer to some of our highlight products from the past. This collection will be available in the Middle East this Spring.
What can you tell us about the Group in the UAE and the Middle East in general?
We have been present in the Middle East for a long time working together with franchise partners that are running the stores for us. Right now we are working on a new store in The Dubai Mall and we already have a large store in Mall of the Emirates. We are present in Saudi Arabia, in Lebanon, and in Qatar. So we have a great presence across the region and it is a very important market for us because we are targeting the local customer, but also tourists and those that are travelling for business. For us as a brand, we must be present here in order to present ourselves as an international brand.
Do you work on any localised products for specific markets?
In the past we came up with local fashion collections, for example carrying the image of the skyline of the city the products are being sold in. When it comes to hardware like watches and sunglasses we want to keep the product the same across all of our outlets.
How are you using the innovations and design expertise gained from the automotive business and applying them to Porsche’s lifestyle products and categories?
Our cooperation with Porsche cars is quite close. It starts in the area of development; Porsche has a very large research and development centre and we work with them when it comes to materials for example. We are using titanium for our watches which is a material that is also used in our race car business because it is light and resistant. We are also using carbon fibre in our luggage and we are working quite closely with the design department on that. And we are also working closely when it comes to watches in the way that we are offering limited edition watches alongside certain cars that are only available to car owners. We have a custom-build pieces programme that out of 1.5 million possible options allows customers to customise their watch to set it up like their car. So if you have a beige leather interior, you can have a beige leather strap on your watch for example. And you can also have the serial number of your car engraved on the backside of your watch. So when you have to leave your car parked in the garage, you always have your Porsche on your wrist.
And there is also cooperation when it comes to retail and we collaborate on this. So the mother company may display some of its cars in our retailers and we have our products on sale in their dealerships.
What else is in the pipeline for this year?
The main topic of the year is of course the anniversary. We have also recently launched a hotel brand. This is something we have already had a lot of positive feedback on. We launched it last year together with Steigenberger, a German hotel brand that stands for quality. What we want to do is to launch a lifestyle, luxury hotel brand that carries our design philosophy and their service excellence. We are planning to launch around 15 hotels worldwide and there’s a good chance that there will be one here in the Middle East!
We are also expanding in the residential and real estate category. We already have a tower in Miami and there is one under construction in Stuttgart our home base in Germany and there’s more to come. I expect that over this year we will probably sign two more projects.
What is the biggest challenge in what you do today?
Coming out of the pandemic I would still say that our offline retail business is the biggest challenge. Traffic in stores and travelling is still much less than it used to be and I’m not sure if it will ever be the same again. There is a positive side because we have compensated through our online business but the challenge is still getting customers into our existing stores. We need the stores also for the brand being present because as a design and function orientated brand it is difficult to operate only online. We want people to touch and feel the materials that we use in our products. So that’s the biggest challenge; to operate our retail stores after the pandemic in a profitable way.
What is a message you would send to your customers in the Middle East?
I would say that it’s a perfect year to get to know Porsche Design because our 50th anniversary is a good occasion to get to know more about the brand. We will have a lot of events coming up in the stores and we will have a big campaign. So it’s a perfect moment to get to know our brand because we will be presenting who we are and what we stand for in a broader and more intense way than ever before.
