Urban Jurgensen's Alex Rosenfield Is Spearheading The Revival Of A Legendary brand

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