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Follow the hosts on Instagram @alonbenjoseph, @scarlintheshire, @davaucher and @robnudds.
Thanks to @skillymusic for the theme tune.
Hi and hello watch fans and welcome back to the real time show.
With me your friendly neighborhood watchmaker Rob Nudz, I'm joined as usual by the friendly
neighborhood jeweler Alon Ben Joseph himself calling in from Amsterdam and today we are
joined by a guest new to the show Alex Rosenfield from Urban Jürgensen, a brand that has been
on everybody's lips since its relaunch last year and it has already earned itself some
new accolades which I'm sure we'll touch upon but first I'm going to kick it over to the
man in Amsterdam to start us off with a lovely question.
Well I'm super excited to sit down for this episode because Alex Rosenfield is an enigma.
Urban Jürgensen, epic name, epic watch brand, epic watch makers that started it in the 18th
century, modern era urban Jürgensen is linked to Carrie Wootalainen up until the end of last
year co-seal with Alex. Amazing rebrand amazing models, it populates my Instagram feed with beautiful
pictures of watches and actually very cool celebs that rock them. So Alex please let's get rid
of the mystery, who are you? Well thank you for having me, I'm really glad to be here with you,
I don't think I'm such a mystery, I think I'm just a bit of an outsider to the watch world so
I'm really happy to be part of it and to be getting to know so many great people within the
watch world. Well one thing we can now state is very modest so please Alex be a bit more American,
tell us where you are, where you're from, how did you get into the watch world and what is your
relationship to this epic brand urban Jürgensen? Sure so we are American which I think is an
interesting you know enigma within to use your word within the watch world. I grew up outside of
Chicago my family is based now in Chicago and Los Angeles I'm in New York and my father was a
devoted lifelong watch collector it's really been his passion and he has always been interested
in the independence particularly I came to watches more as somebody who loves aesthetics I was in
the fashion world brand marketing cosmetics publishing so from outside of the watch industry but
always grew up around great watches and appreciated them it was very much for me more of an aesthetic
appreciation than it was an understanding of movement architecture and escapements and
that side of things which I think I mean we can get into it in a bit but I think that that's part
of what's defined how we've worked on speaking about our relaunch in our next chapter of urban
Jürgensen so just to tell the story quickly urban Jürgensen was founded in 1773 and Copenhagen
by Jürgens Jürgensen who was urban's father and he was a great journeyman watchmaker and was the
watchmaker to the Danish Royal Court was quite accomplished and he had this son urban and urban
was just an incredible watchmaking prodigy just it came natural to him he was just sort of a brilliant
maker and so he learned everything he could from his father and he wanted to learn more so he went
on this watchmaking quest as we talk about it and he went to France and he studied with Abraham
Louis Breguet and he went to England and studied with John Arnold and he went and studied in
LaLocks, Switzerland and he went back to his home in Copenhagen and he was a committed Danish national
and what did Denmark need from a watchmaker in 1800 they needed somebody who could help within the
the move to a maritime economy who could help make marine chronometers and other tools that would
allow Denmark to compete with England and France and the other seafaring powers and he did that he
made these incredible marine chronometers he made thermometers that worked below mercury he made
all sorts of tools for the Danish navy at the same time he had just an incredible aesthetic
so he was simultaneously the watchmaker to the Danish royal court and an inventor for the Danish navy
so there was this kind of merging of science and beauty and aesthetics and that really
defined the company at that time and I think it's we go back to it as a defining value of the company
but he defined who he was he became a member of the Danish royal academy of science which you know
is a rather rare and incredible accomplishment for a watchmaker there weren't watchmakers who were
considered great scientists so he was really doing more than you would expect and more than
than I think people even knew about and the company stayed in family hands he had a son
Jules Jurgensen who was a great watchmaker and for about another hundred years the company stayed
in the Jurgensen family and there was the pivot to wristwatches in about 1900 and some
economic changes but most importantly there were no more watchmakers in the Jurgensen family
so they sold it and it moved hands a couple of times the company has been
continuously existed it's always had the ability to service watches there have always been urban
Jurgensen watches since 1773 to today but it had sort of fallen into a period where it was little
known and you know not one of the great watchmaking houses anymore and less appreciated and there's
just sort of a very charming story this guy Peter Bomberger who was a Swiss watch collector and
business person in 1979 was in Copenhagen visiting friends and he walked into a little watch shop
and he saw a display of urban Jurgensen pocket watches and he wanted to buy them and the guy who
owned the store kept saying these aren't for sale this is a display honoring the 200th anniversary
of the founding of this company and we aren't selling these and he kept saying but I want this one
or what about this and how do I get one and finally they said well here's who owns the company
why don't you get in touch and Peter did and he bought the company he didn't buy the wristwatches
the pocket watches he bought the company eventually acquired the pocket watches but he brought in
Derek Pratt the great British watchmaker and they said about reviving urban Jurgensen and from
1979 until about 2000 or you know sometime in the 90s it was really Peter and Derek's vision
of what urban Jurgensen was and I think we think of that as sort of a second golden age for the
company where it really became again about incredible craftsmanship innovative and interesting
movement design elegant classical watchmaking you know in the midst of the court court's crisis
when a lot of these techniques the geoshay the engine turning a lot of these decorative techniques
were sort of out of vogue or not being not being maintained as practices really even within
high watchmaking in Switzerland and that's what they really cared about what they really invested
in for the company so they made some rather incredible pocket watches and some really wonderful
watches and held the company worked on it Derek and Peter both both died and the company
moved to Dr. Pratt who also loved and cared about the company took great care about care of it
but I think you saw the consolidation of brands and you know changing markets and I think he
recognized that the company needed a big cash infusion and needed owners who were willing to
invest more and so it was sold to a group of Danish private equity folks who were really wonderful
guys but they had a vision for the company that I think it was to be a bit more mass and to produce
more watches but at the same time to do it in a way that was more complicated so to invest heavily
in these detent statements but to do them cheap which is just a you know in our opinion a balance
that's almost impossible to strike detents work very rarely in wristwatches only when you know
there are a lot of additional parts and things that create expense so doing less expensive
detents was just a challenging business pivot for them and by 2020 we found out through friends
in the industry that those owners were ready to make a change and my father had bought his first
urban jirkinson in the early 90s and loved them and it had always been one of those watches he
wore that I just thought was incredible they're so beautiful I believe he had a he had a ref nine
and a ref one and they're just such wonderful classical beautiful wristwatches and we thought
this is one of the great horological houses this is one of the great names in watchmaking and we
had never had any intention of owning a watch company you know we were all in other businesses
but we thought this company needs to be in the hands of somebody who will love and care about it
and focus on what was really exceptional about the company at its highest moments and bring it back
to relevance so in 2020 we to 2021 we purchased the company we asked Kari to join us in
reviving the brand he designed the first three watches that we launched in June and you know
that's sort of the story of how we got here sorry to go on for so long no it's incredible it's
incredible to have that kind of insight into the history of urban jirkinson and how you came
to be involved in it so you said that you got Kari on board soon after you acquired the company
and he was responsible for designing those first three pieces which were greeted with much acclaim
tell us about how they were received immediately in the market well I think that
uh Kari has a wonderful history with urban jirkinson he joined uh he worked for Peter
Bamberger sort of at the very beginning of his journey with Derek Pratt so Kari was a very young
upstart watchmaker this was really his first job and he was working for Derek and working for
Peter designing watches for urban jirkinson working on these movements um there's a well-known watch
sorry my dog is growling there's a well-known watch within the urban jirkinson world called the
Pratt the urban jirkinson Pratt oval pocket watch that sold at auction a few years for a
rather record amount of money for a time only watch uh pocket watch and Kari was the one when
Derek had worked on that watch for over 20 years designing the movement making the parts
figuring out these sort of complex problems involving constant force and the use of a relo
triangle on the remantar to um the terbian to to create constant force and he had envisioned this
watch but he became ill rather quickly and wasn't able to finish it so Peter took what was really
like a shoe box of parts to Kari and said can you make this into a uh into a watch into a working
watch so Kari assembled and finished that watch um so his history with urban jirkinson was deep
and our relationship with Kari has existed for a long time my father was a collector of his for many
years they've been friends um and so we approached Kari and said you know we've bought this company
would you like to come on and be part of this next chapter and i think that he was very excited
to do that i think urban jirkinson both because of his history there because of the shared
Scandinavian roots they are they're sort of a similar design language i think a lot of the urban
jirkinson design language became um part of what is the voodaline and design language and um so
there's there's just sort of natural synergies so we asked Kari if he would join us he really accepted
immediately and um set off on deciding you know what would be the first few watches and he and Andy
who's my father um really began working on what those would be and the first thing that they wanted
to challenge themselves with was uh turning the oval pocket watch into a wristwatch so that's
what became the uj one and it was a real challenge for Kari but a real challenge for watch making
generally i think it's something that people had looked at and didn't know who'd be possible to
to miniaturize it to make it stem wound instead of key wound to keep the flying barrel um to keep the
architecture of this watch and turn it into a wristwatch so that was the first watch that Kari
designed and then we wanted and that he made in a limited edition of 75 there's three versions
of it each of them uh 25 to celebrate the 250th anniversary you can see that it took some time
because we're a few years past the 250th anniversary by the time we launched but that's what that
watch was done to honor and we think it's really sort of a bridge between the companies origins
and its history and where we're going which is really beautiful um handmade complex watch making
but within the context of more of a brand or a company that seeks to communicate with people
differently um in a way that's a little bit larger than what you typically expect from
independence the next two watches he designed were meant to be what would be our core collection so
we see we see it as important for us that there will be watches that exist across time um you
know i think you see that within the great the greatest watchmaking houses that have gotten sort of
larger you see these watches that exist um perpetually whether there's dial or case chain you know
small changes but the uj2 and the uj3 are those watches for us so the uj2 is a time only um
double balance natural escapement wristwatch again it has a lot of the same design language it has
the same level of finishing that you expect from kari within his own watches at voodalinen um but
again within this different context and then for the uj3 which is a perpetual calendar uh with the
double balance natural escapement kari collaborated with andreas streller so it has the streller
precise moon phase which is accurate to one day within fourteen thousand years and um is
instantaneous and we felt that those were really the the core of what the dna of urban jirgansin
would be in the values of urban jirgansin would be going forward where do you take the brand from
here i love the revamp even the website is scrumptious i love how you guys pay tribute to the
tier drop shaped lugs that are very contemporary but pay tribute let's not forget the hands also
the the signature hands and then with with the with the o's or the circles which i love and the
the off center sub dials or minitrax let's say can we pause for a moment maybe to talk about
the zero on the twelve o'clock position we know that russians always start their time at zero
not twelve what's the philosophy for urban jirgansin might that well i think that there's sort of a
there's two there's a philosophy to it that we think is very true to urban jirgansin's heritage
which is urban jirgansin is was a dane and comes from this scandinavian culture where i think
there's a real philosophy around time and around spending time uh you know you live in these
climates where there's days with so little sunlight the days are so short there's a real appreciation
of knowing that time has to be spent and the time is a precious resource we often go back to this
phrase um this dane is saying he who saves it for the night saves it for the cat because if you
don't use your time you're going to lose it and so i think we have this philosophy of you know what
does our slogan art is a time kept and spent beautifully because time kept well matters but
even for those of us who really really love our watches your watch is not the center of your
universe it's not um what your day is about it's on your wrist it's that companion that goes along
with you while you do all the things you do but how you spend your time is what gives you meaning so
i think we liked this idea of the day starting at zero and progressing and being full of all of the
things that life includes and i think that it was a way of touching on that sort of scandinavian
heritage from a more literal perspective it's something that appeared on a lot of the urban
jirgansin or on some of the urban jirgansin uh uh pocket watches or instruments he made for the
Danish navy where uh like the main dial would actually not be the time but it would be a measure
of something else so there would be a zero at the 12 o'clock and i think carry just thought that
that was an interesting evocative signature to add to what he was working on and and to sort of
speak a little philosophically to what the company means and what time means. Danish roots today
could we conclude it's fully swiss made run from the u.s. so the watches are fully swiss made
that watchmaking operations are on switzerland the rest of the companies executives are in the
united states we like to think that it's uh Danish spirit with swiss precision and swiss making
and an american philosophy and we think that that's important to doing things in our own way and
to having the freedom to do things in our own way i think it's also true to the company because
urban himself as i've said took this long journey and studied all of these places he was born in
Denmark he ended up moving to switzerland he married a swiss woman he raised his children there
but i think Denmark was always really his home and i think that there is this sort of polygon
nature to urban jirgansin it's always been true of it in the peter area you had a swiss business man
you had a english watchmaker and then you had carry who's a fin so you have always had all of
these cultures coming together so we certainly respect the swiss making of the watches and the the
care that goes into that and the legacy of that within switzerland but i think we think that there's
something nice about bringing in just sort of a lot of cultures and a lot of different perspectives
and then i think to leave the watchmaking for a second and think about the way we communicate with
people and what our goals are for the company and how we want to interact with clients how we want
to interact with social media with with with explaining what we're doing and introducing it to people
i think that we really bring an american sensibility to that or at least an outsider's sensibility to
that so i think that that's been fun for us and we loved it the companies in family hands so we
have the freedom to do that amazing i asked because i got thrown off because the dials bear Copenhagen so
they do always said Copenhagen and it's something we went back and forth on but we thought it was
important to honor where the company started and something that makes it somewhat unique but the
watches are completely swiss made amazing how big is the team for the brand urban urganset
we're about 30 or 40 people now growing pretty quickly but we are growing
our focus is always that the quality of the watchmaking never changed that they're
there never we will never allow any growth that leads to a diminishment in the quality of what
we're doing so it's the quality of the finishing the hand making every watch really is handmade start
to finish by a single watchmaker and decorator working hand-in-hand in the same way that you would have
with a carry or rexhab or any of these really great independent watchmakers so we're doing that
in a way that we hope we will grow in scale to make more watches per year than those those watchmakers
make and i you know they do that on purpose and we respect it tremendously but we think that
this is a different sort of company but we will grow only to the extent that we can do so while
maintaining that quality how much of the watch production is done in your own at the liaison
what's that most of it you know we have dial suppliers in case suppliers that's not done in
house as it isn't at most companies but the watchmaking is really done in house and carry's role
today is what yeah so carry is a strategic advisor to the board and on the board and is involved
really in everything we do i his role changed in uh December or January from being co-CEO
to this new role but i'd say his his contribution has not really changed he um i always say
is it why would any company want carry voodoo lane and to spend his time on it infrastructure and
making sure payroll goes out so those sort of operational responsibilities are no longer things
he's working on but overseeing watchmaking making sure our quality is where it's supposed to be
working with us on thinking about what the next set of watches is you know which i think some of
which he'll design some of which other people will design but uh he's really still very much
around we speak to him regularly he still comes to be where our factory is he's still involved
it's just um you know i i think as i say it infrastructure is not the right use of carry's time
and i think he did the same thing at voodoo lane and which is he has a CEO now because he wants to be
at the bench he wants to be making and designing watches and he is said to me in the past that
watchmaking is his joy and emails or his obligation and so i think anything that gets more watchmaking
and fewer emails is a is a good improvement for everybody don't we all talking of emails i assume
the moment it became clear that the Rosenfields got into watchmaking and this is an assumption
you got flooded by emails asking to buy more brands do you guys have more watch brands and if not
do you have the ambition to buy more brands we actually have got no emails like that so if somebody
wants to email us and they have a great company they should but it's not our intention to
know more watch brands it was never our intention to own a watch brand um i think you know 10-20
years where this goes i have no idea but um our focus right now is really making urban jerginson
a very special company a company that takes the best of handmade independent watchmaking
and brings it to a broader um more inclusive audience what have you noticed are the main differences
between the fashion industry as you had previous experience in and watchmaking and how does your
past experience help you in your current role uh so i think in what we've noticed i mean i
not to speak about watchmaking but about sort of the watch business um i think that they're
it tends to be the watch industry has felt to me a bit insular and a bit
conservative so i think that there's a tendency to do things the same way i think that fashion is
is always largely focused on building a broader audience and communicating more so i think what we've
tried to what i've tried to take from my fashion background is i was somebody and this is why
i mentioned my personal story before i was somebody who was introduced to really great
high watchmaking and welcomed into the community and aware of it even though i wasn't a movement geek
even though i was more of a design person and i think that my take and tell me if you think
this is wrong is that very often in watchmaking the people who are doing the communicating are also the
people who are making the watches and are at their hearts engineers and most interested in one aspect
of the watchmaking so i think that a beautiful handmade watch and urban jergans and watch
there are things to love whether it is the movement it's the handwork that goes into the dial
making or the case it's the human element of the assembly it's the history of the house and i
think that there are all of these things that you can love things that are aesthetic things that are
mechanical things that are emotional and i think that the watchmaking world has done a very good
job of communicating precision and and rigor but not necessarily as good a job in as many cases in
communicating emotion and beauty so i think that we want to really celebrate that side of the watchmaking
in addition to the complex movements and you know we our watches have within a brand context some
of the most complicated movements of any company but and we celebrate that and we say that we want
to speak to traditional watch collectors and connoisseurs but i think we want to also have a
language that speaks to people who love other things people who love fine art people who love
decorative arts people who love fashion so i think that what i've borrowed from my fashion
background is this idea of how do we speak to a bigger audience without diluting what we do in our
watchmaking but just opening it up to more people and making more people feel welcome as clients
as appreciators of what we're doing whether it's the movement that you come to it from loving or
whether it's another aspect i think that i uniquely had this access because of my father to this
world i wasn't gate kept out of it but i think gatekeeping somebody who really sees the watch
as a beautiful object because they don't understand the escapement is a mistake because i think that
however you come to it you come to appreciate many aspects of it and there's a lot to love i love
the way you linked everything i love the new website it really oozes a vibe i love the stories
but there's one thing annoying me Alex i can't find where i can find the watches
well have you emailed us because we respond to every single email and we are on the road
making sure that people see the watches we know that this is is the real block right now is
a watch is great in a picture any watch but ready great watch is great in a picture but
you need it on your wrist and you need to see it in person we want to be direct to clients because
we want that direct one-on-one relationship with our collectors but our goal for this year
we relaunched in june we spent you know a few months really getting things up and running building
the team building our operations but what we're really focused on right now is getting out into the
wild and making sure people can touch and feel and see the watches in person our teams headed to
doha tomorrow to be at our bozzled guitar will be really all over the world in the next six months
to a year and our goal is to create opportunities for people to see the watches but we have a
an office showroom in new york we're opening one in juneva they won't be stores but they'll be
places that by appointment people can see the watches and we hope people contact us and then
you know we are all over the world and we're traveling a lot so whenever somebody reaches us and
says you know i'd love to see the watches and i live in this city we track all of that and the minute
we have a plan to go to that city we will let people know and we've been in touch with watch
collectors clubs in different groups around the united states and around the world to figure out
how do we reach people who will love this how do we show them to people and in a way that might
seem silly as a business matter but it's important to me how do we create opportunities for people
even if they will never be a buyer of our watches to try them on and feel the sort of beauty and
magic that a handmade watch has because i mean you guys have warned them i'm sure but
there is something deeply human and emotional and resonant about a watch that was made by someone's
hand where the accuracy and the precision is there but there's still something different about
each one human about each one there's a sort of magic to that and i personally think that you
feel that when you put it on and i've heard that from other people so our goal is for collectors
who are interested in buying but also for people who just appreciate what we're doing
to get these out there we're going to be a little bit on the art world traveling schedule
be a bit on the watch world traveling schedule but we're also going to just be traveling a lot to
make sure people can see the watches and try them on you've been seeing on the wrists of plenty of
celebrities in recent months which is quite an incredible way to start your
rebirth into the market as it were how did those partnerships come about were you already connected
to a lot of the people that have rips the brand through your fashion involvement
so that's a bunch of sort of different organic relationships um we decided that
we really wanted uh an effort to speak to different audiences to speak to people of different
ages people of different genders people of different races and geographic locations and to really
do something that was very inclusive because i think that very often watches are are sold or
communicated as items built for men for a group of men who are collectors women are allowed to
wear them but there's sort of isn't this permission structure of welcoming people in the same
with i think it can tend to be very old focused on you know a much older audience whereas we think
there are collectors who are young and people who love beautiful things who are young who will be
interested so we uh before we even launched sort of thought about this idea how do we without
having like brand ambassadors in the way that some of these big companies with huge budgets and
huge reach do like a Rolex how do we find people who represent the values of what we're doing
and speak to different communities so we created this uh this series time well spent which is
comes out every few months and it's a different person within a creative field who we feel um
represents some aspect of what we're working on some of the values of what we care about creativity
innovation artistry and we um we want those to be very different people so the first one was James
Tarell the great light sculptor the um second one was a guy who's the principal dancer for the American
ballet theater and the third one was a 19 year old singer from England who um we think is is going
to be a huge star she's just an incredible songwriting and singing talent so we looked to those
to the to those is an opportunity to open up what we're doing to different people some of them are
people we knew and had relationships with some are people who friends have introduced us to we were
very excited a couple of months ago we got to know James Tarell quite well and he we're very very
lucky that he has sort of loved what we're doing the philosophy of it the watches he's a pocket watch
collector so new urban jirkinson and jewels jirkinson and owns urban jirkinson and jewels
jirkinson pocket watches from the 19th century and he um he's really become a part of the family of
what we're doing and and we see it as a family in that way we see it as a community um he sort
he said to us uh you know my friend ed really should be part of this i want him to do it we said who
do you know what do you have in mind he said well do you know ed rushe we said well you know we
certainly know who ed rushe is we don't know ed rushe but you know we called him up and said
you should do this you should meet these guys and we went over to his studio and showed him what
we were working on and i think that there's a deep passion within us for what we're doing there's
a desire to share it with people and i think that we felt very lucky that a lot of these celebrities
are people with some notoriety have shared that passion and liked the vision and liked the watches
and so it's really happened very organically circling back to how you
get the watches and wrists it doesn't sound like retail to point though not even three point though
it's full circle four point though you're going back to the old methods you've uh highlighted that
your opening showrooms does that mean you are and let me call it in a non elegant way direct to
consumer brand and if so is that the strategy for the common years or do you see yourself working
with retailers yeah so we're opening i i think showrooms is probably the wrong word for it i don't
know what a better word it is it's the word i used but um they're really offices where we will
be working but where we'll also be meeting with people by appointment so um you know they won't
be sort of boutique showrooms but yeah we are direct to consumer company we feel um really for
two reasons which one is that um we want to have that direct immediate relationship with our clients
to know them to have their feedback to see what they love to explain what we're doing to them
but the other part um you know just to be very frank is these watches are incredibly expensive to make
so our our prices are are quite high we think they're ethically high because the price is a direct
reflection of the number of person hours by skilled crafts people paid fairer and good wages
so it is expensive to make these watches it is expensive then for clients in order to have a
margin that would allow for a retailer the watches would become prohibitively expensive to clients so
the the margin is not huge it's not like we're capturing both a wholesaler and a retailer margin
ourselves we've really cut out that part of the margin and it's the only way we're able to offer
the watches it would it's still a high price but it's an ethical price I think that if we tried to
have retailers at these prices it would be nearly impossible what kind of models do you have
in mind for the future because you've got off to such a flying star and impressed everybody we've
not just the aesthetics but obviously the technical prowess of everything you do it's so hard
to follow it is a hard act to follow but I think that we built these three watches and we built all
we've done so far you know of course realizing it's only been a few months that's been out there
in the world but we did it by making things that we loved and believed in things that we wanted to
wear things that we thought were exceptional so we will keep working with Kari Kari is working
on designing some new watches we're also working with some other real luminaries from the independent
watchmaking world nothing to announce yet but there will be the I our philosophy is that urban
jurgensen as a company has been at its best when urban was at the helm again when Derek and
Peter were at the helm where great watchmakers who put their names on what they were working on
and built things that were at the that were classical but were really at the edge of what the
technology was at the moment and were the very best that they could do and that a person signed
and took took ownership and pride in so I think that we think we will make other watches that we
hope will delight people and that they will love and that we will love by following that same
philosophy known watchmakers whose reputations and visions and ideas you can love and respect
making the things that they want to reach a somewhat broader audience I assume you will be present
during watches and wonders or Geneva watch week but where will you be specifically and what should
people expect from you if you've got anything exciting planned yeah so we are actually I will not
be there most of our team won't be there our chief commercial officer will be there to meet with
some clients as I said we have been getting a lot of emails and requests to meet and
there have been some people who we haven't been able to see in person so he's going to go to
Geneva to be there to take appointments with people who just want to see the watches and we're happy
to meet anybody who'd like to see the watches while we're there but we have nothing to announce
this watches and wonders we just came out with three models a number of variations of each we think
that for this year we've said as much as we have to say we've introduced as much as we think there
is to introduce at the moment we want to wait until we have something to announce something new
to ask for people's attention in that way again I think that watches and wonders is fantastic but is
so dominated by mostly very large companies and companies that work on this schedule of regular
releases for watches and wonders or Dubai watch week or Geneva watch day is this kind of
roving watch calendar we're a little bit off of that because we launched in June and it's too early
we think for a novelty or for a new watch so we are going to stay quiet during watches and wonders
I unfortunately have other meetings so I won't be able to be there but I think that in a year from
this watches and wonders we'll have some things to communicate about and to meet with people about
and we really we want to ask for people's attention when we have something to say
and we want for now to be really focused on showing more clients and users lovers of watchmaking
what we've made so that's what we'll be doing this year during watches and wonders
youth worked with on still work with one of the greats in modern watchmaking in kari
and you are the custodian of one of the great names in watchmaking who else outside of urban
jugginson family do you look at an admire from the past and also from the present day
watchmakers in my well um breccep is an old friend of my father's and of our families and
you know we truly love what he does I think that he's you know just a genius person and so wonderfully
charismatic um you know I think there's other great watchmaking coming out of a number of houses right
now you know smaller smaller brands um from the past uh I think that you know we love the urban
jurginson past I think brigade has you know really an incredible old history and then really looking
at the distant past so I think it's a constellation of people but it's people who share the same values
which are what does it mean to innovate in watchmaking what does it mean to do things at the
highest level slowly with care with precision but also with the kind of love and I think it's
that love and that care that gives a handmade watch its magic I think they're fantastic um industrialized
watches that I wear and I love and they're great but really there's something different about a
watch that's made by someone's hand so I think that watchmakers over time who shared that
philosophy are really who um you know mean the most to us and inspire us I'm very curious to know
which watch is on your wrist we don't often make a big deal out of wrist checks but oftentimes
new brand leaders are the last person to get a watch because the demand I strip supply and you
you know magnanimously step back and say okay well you know for the customer first but do you have
an urban jugginson on your wrist and if so what is it now you're making me feel like I should
be more magnanimous but I am in fact not and I am wearing a uh uh uh uj2 in platinum and blue
today um it kind of goes back to what we're saying which is we need people to see these watches so
I wear them every day um Andy wears one every day curry wears one quite regularly and it's really
allowed us to just show them to people as we go about our lives as we bump into people um
it's sort of one of our best tools to make sure they exist in the world where we are now we now
have deliveries going out to clients and um having watches on clients has been probably the number one
driver of sales and of interest for us so um Andy Carton I were kind of the the first uh testers
of those and then being outside of Switzerland this is funny to me it probably isn't funny to anybody
else but I um curry had designed this new case we loved it we'd seen it in person but we hadn't really
like kicked it around and worn it and we were sort of getting to the point where we were locking
in designs and Andy said and I said to him um we really need to see this so he sent us um an
unfinished a stainless steel prototype of the uj2 with an unfinished movement um to just kick
around so for we launched relaunched in June but since last January I've been wearing that watch
and um that's really the watch I wear the most the problem is the movement isn't finished so
when you explain to people the beauty of the movement you can't show it to them with that watch but
it's still pretty cool to have the unfinished one but but I think wearing them and experiencing them
and showing them to people has just been something we've tried to do through ourselves
well listening to you Alex I'm sitting and thinking that obviously a glass can be seen half four
half empty a lot of people are negative by nature so they'll see it as a disadvantage that you are
stateside in the US not in Europe not even near to Switzerland me myself luckily I'm an optimist
and positive by nature I see the glass always awful so I'm not even going to ask your rhetorical
question I'm going to put an hypothesis out there the hypothesis is coming from the spedigree
with your dad and you being true collectors long time collectors deep deeply rooted
with urban news and ass collectors you are custodians as Rob said what benefits does it give you
being on the outside running such an epic brand together with as Rob said one of the best watchmakers
alive today yeah so I guess I would start by saying we feel very confident about what's happening
in Switzerland the watchmaking the process the oversight of what's going on the quality because
we both have Kari in a really fantastic team of Swiss-based people who we interact with every day
and who we just really trust and rely on to make sure that part of the business is functioning as
it should but I think that to me it feels like a tremendous advantage to be in the United States it
could be the same to be in Europe or Asia or the Middle East but I think that watchmaking tends to be
a very centralized business I think that you get a lot of group think I think you get a lot of
of common common understanding and I think sometimes with these companies I never want to say
anything bad about them but I think sometimes there's at the very core at the center at the decision
making process not people who are seeing who are interacting that much with people who are not
part of the watch world so a lot of our focus we really want to communicate with devoted watch
collectors but we also want to communicate and show what we're doing and bring what we're doing
to people who are not traditional watch collectors as I've said to people who love fine art decorative
arts antiques fashion vintage cars people who appreciate things that are finally made and beautiful
and you know remarkable but or who love technology and engineering you know all these different
pathways but I think that within the Swiss watch world there's such a the watchmaking world is so
central there that I think sometimes people forget how big the universe of people who don't
know what we're doing is and I think that we kind of have a little bit of distance from that
that gives us a little bit more freedom to think about what we want to do we also you know we often
say that we aren't like a big company that has a design board and has a giant marketing department
and has you know huge divisions where a decision has to go through 18 layers of review and somebody
who's running that business is too afraid of making a misstep so they don't want to take a risk
you know because one quarter of sales being off because you did a marketing campaign that
wasn't like the marketing campaign you'd done before and it turns out the market didn't like that
and suddenly you're not going to work in the Swiss watch industry again because you know you're
the person who greenlit that we're a small family company so if we love an idea if we think
there's something interesting if we think there's somebody interesting to work with these are
decisions that get made between two or three people in 30 minutes instead of between 100 people
in divisions over the course of weeks and months and I think that that and the physical distance
from the watch world has just given us a lot of freedom to do things our own way to communicate
visually in our own way to create this brand universe that is very purposeful I appreciate that you
said that we've appeared on your Instagram feed and that you like the website all of that is done
with real thoughts so I think it looks different than what people are often used to seeing in the
watch world but that's done with a real thoughtfulness to what makes our watches special what makes
them special to us is the hand making the human aspect of them the incredible attention to detail
the idea that we're pursuing perfection not because it's necessary or really even makes the watches
better as mechanical objects but because there's pleasure in doing that and in the pursuit of it
and so everything we communicate visually is meant to have this feeling of hand making hand writing
paint splatters collaged paper we have these sort of whimsical company icons there's the Danish
royal herring who has a crown there's the dog lug who is a great day new wears an urban jerk and
sin around his neck and these are all meant to bring fun and joy because I think that we can take
the watchmaking seriously but we don't have to take ourselves too seriously and so I think to give
you a very long answer to your question I think that the distance and the outside earnest of what
we're doing has allowed us to think a little bit more freely about those things
it's starting to round into shaping in my head exactly how you approach the brand and how
you're able to know when you first said you have 30 to 40 people working for urban yoghonson now
I was dobsmacked because that's quite a lot that's quite a big operation many many brands are
extremely well known and deeply rooted in the industry operate on a skeleton stuff so you've
got some serious power there behind you but you're approaching this with an extreme sense of calm
it feels like there is no desperate decision made here everything is curated everything is
well thought through thoughtful is the great way to describe how everything comes across
is that because for you this is really a passion first and business second or do you need the
brand to be a stunning financial success I think that we certainly approach it as a business
but we approach it as the company is over 250 years old it's in our family now and our goals
for it to stay in our family and grow for another 250 years so when we make decisions it's not about
what happens in the next quarter it's about what happens in the next quarter century I mean it's
really really long term thinking and it's it's meant to be purposeful so I mentioned we bought the
company in between 2020 and 2021 we didn't launch our first new watches until 2025 and that could
have been six or seven we didn't set a date on when we needed to launch we were going to launch
relaunch when the watches were ready when we felt that we had something that we loved and we were
ready to show to people and we thought really communicated what we wanted to do and what we were
trying to do so I think that some of the calm you're feeling is sort of a mantra that we have within
our team which is slow down we don't need to get things done overnight the goal is not
new new new constantly it's things that are exceptional and it's down the test of time and I think
that takes time it's a little bit the reason we're not going to watch as amunders this year which is
it's not about maximizing what we do each day or each month it's how do we build this for the long
term how wouldn't we ask for people's attention do we feel that we're asking for it because we really
have something to show them how when we introduce a watch is it not something we just think is okay but
something we absolutely love and feel good standing behind and putting this amount of love and
effort into communicating to people so we we do approach it as a business there's certainly a
business philosophy to it it's not it's not a whim it's not a vanity project but it's really
done intentionally to take time and and stand the test of time I'm 100% sure you've gotten
requests for bespoke pieces customized pieces PS unique says they say in the French do you guys make that
we don't and we think that this is one of the things that's different about us from independent
other independence I think that we sit we see ourselves as sitting eventually within a space that
brings the best of independent watchmaking to a much more brand-like context so how we communicate
with people how we interact with people one of the things that's wonderful about what Kari does is
any client who comes to him and wants to change something wants a unique dial wants to change
the numerals he's open to doing that but it is extremely costly and extremely time consuming we
want to bring watches that we absolutely love the represent what we're doing that we stand behind
and offer those as they are to the collecting world and to the broader world and in order to do
that and and keep producing at a at a pace that makes sense at a price that makes sense and to stay
focused on our growth we are not doing unique pieces at the moment we will over time do some
things that are limited so we may do a series of 10 of something or we may do a couple of you know
very some very limited versions or series of things but not unique pieces to clients Alex I love
it when an interview goes this well and I really have very little work to do in the editing suite
so thank you very much for being a very polished and personal guest I'm sure our audience will
enjoy this episode as much as Alan and I have enjoyed listening to you talk for last hour if you
would like to ask Alex any questions and you know how to get in touch with us you can do so
via our Instagram handle at the realtime.show or via the official website at www.therealtime.show we
will be back soon with more top quality watch content and interviews with the industry's finest
until then stay safe and keep on ticking

The Real Time Show

The Real Time Show

The Real Time Show