Text / Du Heng
In the more than two years since the outbreak of the epidemic, the voice of whether the plague will be complicated by an economic depression or even a war has been heard endlessly, and our fear of the great depression is no less than that of the epidemic.
01. The Other Side of the Great Depression
Before the Great Depression of 1929, the United States experienced a glittering Gilded Age. The government at that time stimulated the economy with a loose economic policy and low income taxes and achieved good results. Cities are building up, buildings are rising, Americans are building up demand that has been suppressed by the pandemic (pandemic), people spend a lot of money on vacations, clothes, cars, and sports games, and consumer goods are quickly produced and then suddenly rich people consume quickly.
Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, summed up this age: "The new generation has matured, and they will find that the gods are dead and all faith in man is shaken; all they know is that America is on its way to the grandest and most fancy carnival in history." ”
Sure enough, on October 24, 1929, the Stock Market on Wall Street in the United States suddenly plummeted, the financial market collapsed, and in just two weeks, $30 billion of wealth evaporated, and the life savings of thousands of Americans were wiped out. The crisis soon spread from the United States to the entire world, after which the global economy entered a decade-long Great Depression.
With the Great Depression came a large number of enterprises closed, the people fell into unemployment, hunger, poverty, many enterprises at first only reduced the working hours of employees, and then had to lay off departments, dismissal of employees, so that they could barely survive.
During the Great Depression, the unemployed lined up for relief
But looking back at this history, when we think that the Great Depression meant a lot of corpses and a wailing for the business world, we were surprised to find that not only did many centuries-old companies successfully cross the cycle, but also many newly founded enterprises that survived during the Great Depression. For example, Unilever was founded in 1929, the LEGO Group was founded in 1932, Porsche was founded in 1931, and Nissan was founded in 1933.
When we look at the time span longer, from 1855 to 2009, the US economy was in contraction for about 33% of the time, that is, if the company wants to live long and live well, it is inevitable to encounter an economic depression, and how to survive these bad years should also be an essential ability of the enterprise.
02. Women's employment growth during the Great Depression
Another change brought about by the Great Depression was that while the number of unemployed people increased significantly, the proportion of women in employment increased. In the United States, for example, the proportion of women in the labour force increased from 11.7 per cent in 1930 to 25 per cent in 1940, and the proportion of employed women among all women increased from 24 per cent to 28.9 per cent. During the Decade of the Great Depression, the proportion of married women in the female labour force increased from 29 per cent to 35 per cent.
This is because the Great Depression caused the transformation of the industrial structure, from the industrial economy to the service industry as the dominant, prompting women to enter the office, engaged in the use of transcription machines, form fillers, bookkeeping machines, the number of white-collar workers in the 30s increased from 19% to 28.9%, of which women's employment direction is mainly marketing, publishing, accounting, insurance and other new career fields, but also women continue to become lawyers, professors, real estate sellers, etc.
Nevertheless, the current situation of discrimination against women in work has not changed significantly, on the one hand, long working hours and low wages, on the other hand, most women are in a worse working environment than men, such as long-term operation of looms, dry cleaning machines and other machines, in addition to overwork, but also for a long time from tuberculosis, pellagra and other occupational diseases.
In the Decade of the Great Depression, as the number of working women continued to increase, women's sense of independence increased, and after Roosevelt's New Deal in 1933, groups interested in participating in social reform and improving women's overall interests were given good opportunities, and President Roosevelt's wife Eleanor Roosevelt was an important representative of these forces, and these forces effectively promoted the Roosevelt government to protect the rights and interests of working women.
President Roosevelt's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt
It can be said that during the Great Depression, women underwent a slow but meaningful transformation, and women began to truly move from tradition to modernity after the awakening of self-awareness.
03. Women entrepreneurs in the Great Depression
There are not many entrepreneurs who can lead companies through the Great Depression, and women entrepreneurs are even rarer.
In 1932, Frédéric-Emile Blancpain died suddenly, he was the seventh generation of the well-known watch company Blancpain, but his daughter Nellie had no intention of inheriting the family business, so the first swiss registered brand watch company was handed over to Betty, the female manager of the then director of Villeret studio Fiechter's hands.
Ms. Betty Fichte
Betty joined Blancpain at the age of 16, starting as a watchmaking apprentice, and after a three-year apprenticeship, she was formally hired as an assistant to Frederick-Emile Blancpain and gradually grew into the core manager of Blancpain.
Betty was faced with a tricky situation at this time, according to Swiss law at the time, if the company used the family name as a name when it was founded, the trademark could not be used unless the family member served within the company. Due to the death of Frederick Emir and the acquisition of the company, no member of the Blancpain family has any association with the company, so Betty can no longer use the name "Blancpain" as the company's brand. At that time, when other companies encountered the same problem, they would use opportunistic methods to find a person with the same surname who was actually not related to the family to enter the board of directors in order to continue to use the same brand as the surname.
Instead of using this unrighteous approach, Betty and her partner, André Léal, temporarily changed "Blancpain" to "Rayville Rayville"—a clever alphabetic recapitulation of Villeret, the town where Blancpain originated.
The small town of Villers at the beginning of the 20th century
Blows always followed, and her partner, André Lyle, was tragically killed in an accident while on a business trip. Betty and André met during World War I, when Betty volunteered to take part-time jobs to comfort French soldiers who were seriously injured and hospitalized in St. Imier, just a few kilometers from Villers. During this time, she met André Lyell, who was then a French military assistant, and they became very important partners in life, and André was Betty's most trusted partner in business, and this friendship lasted for several years.
Betty's departure was devastating for Betty, but she didn't have time to dispel the shadow of grief, because it was the worst moment when the Great Depression swept the world, businesses across Switzerland were collapsing, and Blancpain was facing a huge crisis, betty had to pick herself up and face the Great Depression on her own.
Realizing that she could no longer operate as in the past, Betty decided to take a unique approach and adopt a different strategy, temporarily shelving the development of Blancpain into a brand watch company that took into account all watch types, choosing to take a single-point breakthrough approach, focusing on women's watches and women's watch movements.
Women's watches and movements are smaller and more refined, making them exponentially more difficult to produce. Fortunately, Blancpain's polishing of the production technology of small timepieces began in the era of Frederick Emir, and produced the world's first women's self-winding watch ROLLS. Betty was the manager of the studio at the time, very familiar with the technology, and she was confident that Blancpain would be able to emerge in the field of women's watches and thus open up a new market.
But this is still not enough, the traditional watchmaking is rooted in Europe, has a deep historical background of the industry, after years of education in the European market is the watchmaking enterprises for many years of deep ploughing mature market, the competition pattern between enterprises is relatively stable, but the development space of the European market itself is limited, the Great Depression period is very sluggish, looking for an incremental market has become the most urgent problem in front of Betty.
Betty set her sights on America. Compared with the rest of the world, the economic situation in the United States is relatively dynamic, can Americans see the charm of the Blancpain watch and open this huge new market? With her keen market insight and courage, Betty led Blancpain on a voyage to the New World.
Betty sold Blancpain's women's watches to the United States. In order to avoid the punitive tariffs charged by the United States on finished watches, Betty came up with a very innovative and successful business model, she installed the movement, dial, hands in an internal case, the user can design the desired external case, and then place the semi-finished watch inside. Blancpain's women's watches were a great success in the United States, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe... These legendary stars of Hollywood's Golden Age are loyal users of the Ladies Blancpain watch. Blancpain has also become the representative of the top watches in the hearts of Americans.
The success of the women's watch allowed Betty to successfully lead Blancpain through the difficult Great Depression and to a new level. Later, Betty created the legendary Fifty Fathoms watch, the Ladybird Lady Bird watch and Marilyn Monroe's Blancpain cocktail jewelry watch, which had a profound impact on both Blancpain and the watchmaking industry.
Marilyn Monroe's treasured Blancpain cocktail jewelry watch
In business, Betty has a rigorous and determined personality, and at the same time, she has a delicate and intimate side of women. Not only did she know everyone in the studio, but she also worked hard to get to know their spouses and children, and was accustomed to giving each employee an important gift every year, each gift with some meaning, which was served in trays or other silverware to show solemnity.
With a keen sense of business, a love of the watch business and a kind person, the little girl who started as an apprentice in Blancpain, Betty Fichte, has also grown from a professional manager to a real entrepreneur, she is innovative, honest, adventurous, and does the right thing...
In the era in which Betty lived, it was not easy for women to achieve such achievements, and this road from tradition to modernity was rarely crossed, but there were always pioneers with their wisdom, perseverance and strong will to forge a path of their own. Betty not only led Blancpain through the predicament during the depressed years, but also found his own way of respecting tradition and embracing modernity. Betty, who did not yet have universal suffrage for women in Switzerland during her lifetime, became the first female head of a watchmaking company, and betty Fichte, who showed her contemporaries another possibility of being born as a woman with her own life course.
Blancpain Ladybird women's watch
In 2021, the Blancpain Ladies Watch Series was officially renamed the Blancpain Ladybird Women's Watch Series. In order to pay tribute to the legendary female manager of the watch industry, Ms. Betty Fichte, Blancpain launched the new Diamond Ball Brilliant Watch, which is the best interpretation of the entrepreneurial spirit represented by Ms. Betty.
Resources:
1. A Comparative Study of Women's Employment Development in the Economic Depression and Financial Crisis, Li Lifang
2. "Gain and Loss in Distress: American Employed Women in the 1930s", Yang Lihong
3. The Great Depression in America, Weckert
4. "The First Lady of the United States from Tradition to Modernity: Eleanor Roosevelt from a Gender Perspective", Lu Shujin
5. "Mary McCarthy's World of Hers– Take 'Them' as an Example", Huang Chi