SINGAPORE: In the highly competitive world of luxury watchmaking, how does an independent brand manage to keep afloat? We speak to three successes — De Bethune, MB&F and Urwerk — to find out.
The watchmaking industry is not unlike a parliamentary democracy. The biggest luxury conglomerates — Kering, LVMH, Richemont and the Swatch Group — are akin to major political parties, constantly engaged in a tug of war to establish dominance. Then, there are the autonomous brands, such as Chanel, Chopard, Hermès, Patek Philippe and Rolex, which function like minor parties. They are not part of any group but are horological powerhouses in their own right.
Finally, operating almost on the sidelines are the independent watch makers — the Philippe Dufours and Vincent Calabreses of the world — who can be considered the horological equivalent of independent politicians. As in a true democracy, they add colour and diversity to the watchmaking landscape and provide much-needed counterpoints to the dominant views expressed by the big brands and groups.
But in an era of rapid consolidation — the conglomerates seem to be acquiring smaller brands faster than you can say “triple axis tourbillon”, while also leveraging their heft to hegemonise distribution channels — surely it cannot be easy for the independents to thrive. “It was never easy [to begin with],” says Felix Baumgartner, co-founder of Urwerk, which is now in its 18th year of operation. “But if you’re true to yourself, and if you have a real vision, then you’ll always have your place.”
The 40-year-old adds: “I was inspired by [independent watchmaker] Svend Andersen when I worked for him for several years. Before that, [all I knew] was just Patek, Rolex, the big companies. And I was too [intimidated] to do something myself. But when I was at Svend Andersen, I learned that when you have a vision, your own dream, just do it. He has done it for 35 years. That gave me the power [to start my own brand].”
Baumgartner and his Urwerk partner Martin Frei are among the lucky few; many other independents have tried, but failed, to launch or sustain their own brands. The Great Recession of 2008 to 2010 separated the wheat from the chaff. Baumgartner attributes his success to the rise of the Internet and its proliferation of forums, blogs and fan sites, which he says exponentially increased his brand’s awareness and reputation among horophiles. Not one to toot his own horn, Baumgartner fails to acknowledge how the brilliance of his watchmaking abilities and the sheer uniqueness of his designs have captured the imagination of an entire generation of collectors.
Uniqueness is a characteristic also shared by brands such as De Bethune and MB&F. De Bethune’s sales director Alessandro Zanetta and MB&F’s founder Maximilian Büsser, along with Baumgartner, were in Singapore recently at the invitation of The Hour Glass. The luxury timepiece retailer has carried all three brands for at least a decade, and organised a special themed event, “Rebels with a Cause: The Trilogy”, to demonstrate its continued support for independents.
In the blood
Born into a Swiss-German watchmaking family in Schaffhausen (the historical home of industrial giant IWC), Baumgartner spent his childhood tinkering with clocks and watches and learning the secrets of minute repeaters, perpetual calendars and tourbillons in his father’s restoration workshop. Upon graduating from the Schaffhausen watchmaking school, he flew the coop and headed to Geneva for a two-year stint with Svend Andersen.
In 1997, at the age of 22, he heeded Indie spirit In the highly competitive world of luxury watchmaking, how does an independent brand manage to keep afloat? We speak to three successes — De Bethune, MB&F and Urwerk — to find out. Baumgartner (right, with Frei) attributes his success to the rise of the Internet and its proliferation of forums, blogs and fan sites The new UR-105 TA dial side showcases Urwerk’s signature satellite indication his own instincts and established Urwerk with Frei (whom he got acquainted with socially) and his brother Thomas (who left in 2004). Their idea was to shake up the staid watchmaking scene with haute horlogerie pieces that blended traditional watchmaking techniques with space-age designs. That same year, the trio presented their first watch at Basel, the UR-101, exhibiting under the auspices of the Horological Academy of Independent Watchmakers (AHCI).
“We came with cheap heating plates and put our prototypes on top and said we were ‘cooking’ a new style of watchmaking! [Visitors] were shocked! We had quite a bad fist BaselWorld,” recount s Baumgartner, laughing at the memory. But by 2003, things had turned around. Buoyed by the positive reaction to their newly launched UR-103 watch, the trio called on Büsser, who was the then managing director of Harry Winston Rare Timepieces.
Born in Milan to a Swiss diplomat father and Indian national mother, Büsser, 48, had carved a name for himself with his Opus series for Harry Winston, a project that involved collaborations with external talents on unique, complicated concept watches. Büsser liked what he saw in Urwerk and invited them to work on the Opus V. It was a definitive moment not only for Büsser, Harry Winston and Urwerk, but indeed the entire watch industry.
After the success of the UR-103 and Opus V, Urwerk’s trajectory trended upwards. Milestones along the way included 2011’s Zeit Device, a pocket watch created to tell the time for the next 1,000 years, and 2013’s Electro Mechanical Control (EMC), which redefined the term “smartwatch” by allowing wearers to electro nically monitor their watch’s accuracy and adjust the timing rate accordingly.
This year, Baumgartner and Frei trotted out the new UR-105 TA in various executions, including the “Black Orange” and “Black Lemon” versions that depart from the brand’s typically sober palette. The dial side showcases Urwerk’s signature satellite indication, which operates on the principle of orbiting arms that bear rotating hour numerals. Here, four satellites, each bearing three hour numerals, successively reveal themselves beneath a guilloched surface.
Magnum opus
With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the Opus project was the forerunner of MB&F. While at Harry Winston, Büsser had also dreamed of starting his own brand. But a clause in his contract prevented him from doing so. In 2005, he left and launched MB&F — Maximilian Büsser & Friends for short — with the intention of collaborating not just with watchmaking talents, but also those in other disciplines, such as art, engineering and music. Growing up in a multicultural environment led Büsser to develop a cross-cultural, broad-based approach to life and to business; this would become the cornerstone of his success.
Two of his friends, watchmaker Laurent Besse and designer Eric Giroud, with whom he got acquainted at Harry Winston, helped him produce his first timepiece, the Horological Machine No 1, or HM1. It debuted at Basel in 2007. “My greatest Basel fair was the year when I unveiled the piece,” says Büsser. “[For the duration of the fair,] I rented a little table on the terrace of the Swissôtel, arrived at 9am when it was still cold, and didn’t leave until 7pm. One day, I had [then CEO of Hublot] Jean-Claude Biver and [then president and CEO of Jaquet Droz] Manuel Emch visit me and look at my watch. It was a really nice week!”
Accolades from industry peers aside, Büsser nevertheless faced an uphill battle on the home front. “At the beginning, when I was putting my team together, there was a lot of resistance when I came up with all these crazy ideas. ‘We’re going to go bankrupt, how are we going to do this, is it ever going to sell?’ [Those concerns] mirrored my fears, but I never told [my team] that. Today, I hardly have any objection when I come up with a crazy idea. It’s now, ‘Oh, how are we going to make this happen?’ Being creative is about not being scared about being wrong.”
It was this philosophy that emboldened Büsser to push through with his radical ideas, such as the MusicMachine 1, a futuristic music box that resembles a Star Wars cruiser; the Starfleet Machine, a sculptural table clock that approximates an orbiting space station; and this year’s Melchior, a robot-shaped table clock that tells the time via two discs on its torso, created to celebrate the brand’s 10th anniversary. In allowing himself complete freedom of expression, Büsser struck a chord with collectors who had tired of the typical and were in search of the avantgarde. A new genre of high-end mechanical boys’ toys, if you will.
Original thought
It is a similar story at De Bethune, which has in the past produced watches as imaginative and stirring as those based on Chinese zodiac animals and the Mayan calendar. This year’s novelty, the Quetzalcoatl, pays tribute to a Meso-American divinity, Quetzalcoatl — the plumed serpent god of the Toltec and Aztec civilisations. Its dial, hand-carved from solid gold, features a serpentine motif whose head indicates the hours and tail marks the minutes. The numerals resemble an aerial view of Aztec temple ruins — surely a treat for armchair adventurers.
Zanetta, while not a watchmaker or brand guru, has the privilege of being the son of De Bethune co-founder David Zanetta. Like Baumgartner, the 35-year-old grew up playing with clocks and pocket watches, influenced by his father, who was an adviser, collector and dealer of timepieces. But unlike Baumgartner, Zanetta’s passion for horology did not set in until much later.
“I was not deeply into it,” he admits. “I was enjoying life and working at the same time. You know how when you’re in your 20s, you just want to see the world and have fun? It was tough when I first joined the company because I was stuck in the mountains between cows and watchmakers!” he says with a laugh. Zanetta became involved with De Bethune in 2008, after working a year and a half for auction house Antiquorum as a junior watch expert.
The brand was started in 2002 by the elder Zanetta and fourth-generation watchmaker Denis Flageollet, who is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost horologists. Today, the company boasts a 60-strong headcount that produces about 400 watches a year. By comparison, MB&F has a 20-member team producing around 260 timepieces annually, while Urwerk is the leanest of the lot, comprising just 15 staff who manufacture 150 watches per annum.
So, the big question is, would any of them sell their companies if the right offer came along? Having come this far despite having the odds stacked against them, the answers point to an emphatic “no”. “I created MB&F specifically with no exit strategy. I’m writing an autobiography; these are the chapters. You don’t sell your life out. Nobody has ever approached us, which always amazes people! I think we scare the hell out of them!” quips Büsser.
“I’ve put 18 years of my life into this,” says Baumgartner. “You cannot sell yourself. Three or four months ago, a group approached me with the idea of how we could work together, but in the end, I looked at the group director in the eye and asked him if he would do it were he in my shoes. And he said no.”
For De Bethune, there remains a lot of interest in how the brand has managed to create 15 in-house calibres and registered nine patents in its 13-year history. “Many big brands and companies [visit us] to see how we do the things we do,” explains Zanetta. “We had some offers that we refused, and others passed by without any offers. At this moment in time, we don’t want to sell the company.” “We’re all wild animals,” remarks Büsser. “You can’t put any of us in a cage.”
Aaron De Silva enjoys experiencing the world and relishes writing about it afterwards.
This article appeared in the Options of Issue 692 (Aug 31) of The Edge Singapore.