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- [00:00]
Henrik Rye
Foreign.
- [00:08]
Rob
Welcome back to the glass igloo outside of the Geneva Watch Days 2025 pavilion. I'm joined by my friend Henrik Rye from Micro Millspec, which is based all the way up in Norway somewhere. I like to spend a great deal of time, as you probably know, Henrik, you're the first man that's dared wear a jacket in the igloo today.
- [00:25]
Henrik Rye
So let's just establish facts. Was this your idea, Rob, doing a hot iglo?
- [00:33]
Rob
Was it my idea? Look, you know, we first created, well, came to the concept through our partnership with Time to Watches in April and they were the ones that provided us with what has now become the iconic glass igloo, or glass onion, as we say interchangeably, however we feel. And we were warm in April, but we had a little bit more shade, I think, from the trees, to be fair. There's nothing we can do with the placement of it because the sun's going to get us wherever we are. You know, of course, that's why close.
- [01:02]
Henrik Rye
It completely off because of the.
- [01:04]
Rob
Yeah, so we, you know, we've draped everything over here and we've closed the doors to try and deaden the sound outside. You know, we're making notes of how we can get better and improve everything, the quality, the safety of our guests. But no, I mean, we're very grateful for Geneva Watch Days providing us with this and for partnering with us officially for this event. And it's great that all of the guests have braved the extremely high temperatures. We don't know how hot it is in here, but it's well over 40 degrees, isn't it?
- [01:28]
Henrik Rye
It's quite nice. If you like it, if you like.
- [01:30]
Rob
It warm, it's very nice. Now. You are an incredible person. Yeah. What a way to start. Now, you're a great guy who's done a lot in a short space of time. You make things happen. You had a career before watchmaking and you did very well. And you came to watchmaking with this desire to start something very novel in a part of the world that although now is getting a bit of a reputation for very cool, tough, well built watches, was not really thought of in the first thought.
- [02:00]
Henrik Rye
When people say, talking about Norway.
- [02:01]
Rob
I'm talking about Norway. Yeah, I'm talking about Norway, Yeah. So the Scandinavian game is really growing. There's a lot of cool stuff in Norway, Sweden, Denmark coming up and it's wonderful to see. But your personal journey is really interesting. We were here together and as you reminded me yesterday, shockingly, for the last time, we actually Saw each other in person five years ago on the night that Geneva Watch Days kicked off for the very first time. Back then, you were here to gather information, to meet people, to get a feel for the watchmaking industry, the lay of the land. And since then, you have started Micro Mil Spec and it has exploded, really. It's a hugely popular brand amongst watch enthusiasts. You make peerless tool watches at preposterously competitive prices. Um, we'll talk about that specifically when we talk about certain models. But you've now been here for two years as a exhibitor. This is your second year at Geneva Watch Days. I'm going to shut up. That's the longest, most fawning intro I've given so far. I'm obviously awake for once, which is great, despite two hours of sleep. Why don't you tell us about that journey? Start in 2020. Your impressions of the first fair and how it's changed now as you're a part of it.
- [03:12]
Henrik Rye
Thank you. And thank you for the intro. You know, to me, it's like a baby, so I can just talk and talk and talk. So I'm happy that you can put some keywords out there. No, you're absolutely right. I was here in 2020, I believe. They kicked it off. It was, as a lot of people mentioned, due to Covid restrictions. But, you know, watch people really want to meet. They like the touch and feel of coming together and seeing new novelties. And I honestly, I couldn't even dream of having a watch being released at Geneva Watch Days. But obviously when I saw all the brands on the wall and the logos, a dream to at some point maybe get your name off there.
- [04:00]
Rob
Well, it's up there now.
- [04:01]
Henrik Rye
It's up there now. So, you know, since then, 2020, we've done almost 40 custom military projects. And really what we released last year is a combination of all of them, like the best treats, the best specs, the feedback they received from the field. And that became the Millgraph and which has been. Yeah, it's basically become Micromill Spec, the Milligraph. So we meet people that know the Mill graph, but have never heard of Micromill specific. So I guess that's a good. A good thing.
- [04:38]
Rob
It's quite an indication of a watch's popularity and how a single release can kind of reframe a brand in the mind of collectors and consumers. Because funnily enough, before you, we had Chavier from Chapek.
- [04:51]
Henrik Rye
Yes, the studio. Lovely guy.
- [04:53]
Rob
And Chapek went through a kind of similar Eureka release, shall we say It's a good term. I never used that before with the Antarctica where they've been plugging away, working really hard, doing loads of great work behind the scenes and. Well, in front of the scenes, but not in front of the scene for many years. And then the Antarctic put them on the map. They became the IT brand. They were the most talked about, most like exciting brand in the market in those years. Right around the start, Geneva watch days actually. And the Milgraph for you has done exactly that. It is a beacon. It attracts people to micro mil spec. And I have to say I was present during the development of it. You know, I, I knew the images of the dials when I first sketched off and what was coming and I, I remember thinking, this is, this is going to be pretty good. If I get the execution of this right, it's going to be top draw. And I saw it in hand for the first time in November last year at Watch Pro in London and I was talking to Alex and he said, how much do you think it is? Yeah, I was turning it over in my hands and this is a, this is a blasted titanium, beautiful function, Lejoux beret powered chronograph. Great quality rubber strap, brilliant buckle. And I said, I reckon about 7,000 roughly. And I'm not normally that far wrong.
- [06:11]
Henrik Rye
This time.
- [06:12]
Rob
Yeah, this time, this time I messed up. It's half the price. That's a preposterous. And said that the top preposterous is the wood. It's so competitive. And what I mean by that is it's tough for your competition. Like it's not competitive. Your Milgraph has won the race. It's competitive because it throws a marker down, it throws a gauntlet down to all of the people making chronographs out of titanium powered by Le Joux Perret. At that price point, people are up in arms, what can they do? And you've also managed to establish some potential for retail. So talk to us about the development of a Milgraph. How long did it take? How tiring and much of a headache was it?
- [06:51]
Henrik Rye
Yeah, no, I walk out around with a constant headache. So it's never really gotten off my back. But no. So I think one of the, a big part of the development and also the release of the mill graph is that obviously we're named micromospec, which represents in a way our customers. Then the company is not named Henrik Rye. And I'm not the one that's going to do an evolution or revolution of a design. I don't have those ambitions whatsoever. What we really want to do is represent the people that we speak with every day, listen to their feedback and bring that to the market. And a lot of the people that we work with and our customers, they are serving in the military. So obviously whatever we release needs to be obtainable for our core customers. So we didn't really look at any pricing. We didn't see how many margins we can put into this. We didn't compare it to what else was out there. We spoke to our customers, do you want? And obviously they came up with the majority of the spec. We worked a lot with the special forces. That's why we did the, the destro crown position so that, you know, they love push ups. So they're gonna get a push up.
- [08:20]
Rob
Crown, a push up push in. Wow, that's nice.
- [08:24]
Henrik Rye
Yeah. And they, you know, just small, small hints and nudges to the military. They, for example, they operate often their watch with a glove or equipment. So when you use a glow, you would have to have pretty deep indents in the vessel to be able to grip it. So that's why we have this big indents into the vessel. And they hate instructions. Manuals, they just, you know, hit the road running. So that's why we put on the dial. It says hours, minutes, seconds next to each of the chrono eyes. And they love titanium. Like that's their. Yeah, yeah, that's their thing. So. Yeah. I'm honored to be able to sort of release this. And most of all that it's. People like it. It's just beyond what I could ever hope for. Yeah.
- [09:13]
Rob
Production wise, it's. It's not. Well, there are limited edition versions of it. Recently you launched one with my friend and colleague James Thompson. Black Badger.
- [09:22]
Henrik Rye
Mr. James.
- [09:23]
Rob
Mr. James. As very successful. Beautiful white dial interpretation with an orange chapter ring. Was it an orange?
- [09:30]
Henrik Rye
Yeah, orange.
- [09:31]
Rob
That's stunning.
- [09:32]
Henrik Rye
Absolutely.
- [09:32]
Rob
Love it. So congrats to you and to him for that release and successful partnership. But the, the core model is limited in production per year. You do like batches. Right. And how many pieces do you make per year?
- [09:46]
Henrik Rye
Last year we did 50.
- [09:47]
Rob
Okay.
- [09:48]
Henrik Rye
This year we did 75. And it sort of depends more on. So obviously if you want to, you can know put a zero behind a production, that there's no real limits to that if you want to put in the cash and whatever you feel investors and so on. But the thing is, we're really small company and all of the mill graphs that we sold this year, they were sold before the release.
- [10:15]
Rob
Okay.
- [10:16]
Henrik Rye
Which means that we've spoken and had a personal interaction with 75 people. And we want to maintain that quality of service and also. But also be available. And that bandwidth is not there whatsoever in the. Within the company. That's why we're keeping our productions limited. But also, you know, it's just so common that you see something that's working. You just want to sort of scale up in the. In the atmosphere. And there's this really unsexy element to this, I think. Yeah, yeah, good enough. And we're happy about that.
- [10:50]
Rob
It's not the watchmaking way, and you got to grips with that because it's a strange culture, watchmaking. It has its own rhythms and its own sensibilities that without being in it, you can't really predict a lot of the things that we do. Maybe unsurprisingly, because the product itself doesn't make sense. They don't make sense. You know, the strategies that you certainly can't apply rationale in the way you would like to. To the industry. It's. It's. There's a lot of touch, a lot of feeling. You know, spreadsheet managers that may have great success in other, um, more consumer products environments don't fare well. Here they come thinking that they can. They go into a company and they go, what the hell? Like, this is crazy.
- [11:28]
Henrik Rye
Like, it makes no sense.
- [11:29]
Rob
Yeah, it makes no sense. They're like, why haven't you made ten times as many watches? You got all these customers and they can do it and they'll blow up. They blow up a brand.
- [11:35]
Henrik Rye
Yeah.
- [11:36]
Rob
And I guess that's what you're trying to do here. You're trying to sort of protect the brand. You're trying to, like, maintain that personal touch. And the price of it also, I guess, comes from the fact that you're running a really lean operation. Absolutely small team that you trust implicitly. Everybody you've got. You've got an incredible team, by the way. Thank you. The skills and the versatility of each member of your team is worth its weight in gold. And I think, like, if we were to aggregate brands by team members and their abilities across the industry, you'd probably be in the. You'd be in the top 10. I think that's absolutely true. You know, you've got Teo, of course, like, on the Theo. How do we say. Because I've been living in Germany too, too long.
- [12:14]
Henrik Rye
Whatever you want.
- [12:15]
Rob
He will answer your call, probably in any language. You choose to mention it to him as well. And I mean, he he had years with iwc.
- [12:21]
Henrik Rye
Yeah.
- [12:21]
Rob
And he was like so visible in the communication side of things. And he's an effervescent character. Yeah, a character is the word.
- [12:28]
Henrik Rye
He is absolutely a character in line with Black Badger.
- [12:31]
Rob
You have a certain type of person, right. You have a certain, certain character profile. How many people are there working for the brand now?
- [12:39]
Henrik Rye
We're six.
- [12:40]
Rob
Six, okay. And is the intention to add any more to that as you look to expand further around the world? Retail?
- [12:46]
Henrik Rye
No. No. So we've come to the conclusion that, and obviously like you're into, like you said there, there's. You can't put that rationale to watchmaking. And the fact is that nobody needs what we're, what we do. Like nobody needs a timepiece these days. And if you're really honest about that fact, then what your biggest job is is actually to entertain people because they love watches. And that's what we try to do here at Watch days is actually to entertain people. Just like people love a good movie, a good song, a good show. And I mean, a lot of the brands here, they do really understand that element of what we're doing. And that's also why we don't really want to add to our team because we got everything we need in house and that's more than enough.
- [13:39]
Rob
And we had the greatest even.
- [13:41]
Henrik Rye
Take off of my watches.
- [13:42]
Rob
Yeah, take off and share some of them with me.
- [13:45]
Henrik Rye
Bring watches, you said. I took all of them. All four. Wow.
- [13:49]
Rob
Pass me the mill graph, would you?
- [13:51]
Henrik Rye
Yes.
- [13:51]
Rob
Have a look at that on the camera. Thank you. So we had the great Patrick Hoffman on earlier and he has a motto, sustainable and scalable. Yeah, that's what he's talking about. And you have, I think with your, your very tight knit team of six, you've mastered the sustainability and you are keeping a firm handle on how much you scale and how quickly scale. Do you intend to grow production across all lines in the future or are you very happy where you are? And is the business making money, you know, putting food on the table, that kind of thing as it is?
- [14:29]
Henrik Rye
Well, that's always a stretch because, you know, when you come into the industry, it's cash flow and sales are not the same.
- [14:40]
Rob
Right.
- [14:42]
Henrik Rye
It's. It's something you have to constantly work on, on improving. And I do think that there is an element of when you scale. So if you want to do, for example, a retail store, that retail store is going to cost you, or if you want to do a brand store, it's going to cost you £100,000 a year, which in my head means I have 100,000 problems every year. And so, so you really want to do things the way they are progressing by itself. And that's also sort of a comfortable way of running a company. And then obviously putting food on the table is a big part of that. But once you met those basic needs and you know, be able to come here and meet you the rest of the people here, it's just such an amazing experience.
- [15:38]
Rob
How is it different in 2025-2020 as you remember it? Because of course, back in the early days there were 15 brands showing. It's almost unfathomable how quickly it's grown. Last year there was around 50, maybe a tick above 50. This year 66.
- [15:52]
Henrik Rye
Yeah.
- [15:53]
Rob
And obviously it's, you know, Geneva Watch Days is trying to be open.
- [15:58]
Henrik Rye
Yes.
- [15:58]
Rob
But also controlled. Yes, I, we've spoken with many people about this, obviously throughout the fair because that's what we're really here to discuss, like its impact on the industry and the role it plays within it and how it's repositioning itself slightly as more of a cultural event with these hands on activities and more tours being organized for people to go to see the manufacturers themselves and distinguishing it from watches and wonders, which took the place of Baselworld really as the preeminent trade fair. And now you're here for the second year in a row and I think that you very much extol the soul of this event. You do things the right way. Is it your preference that it doesn't grow any further or would you like to see it reach 100 brands one day? Or do you foresee problems and a lack of direction if it were to grow so, so much?
- [16:48]
Henrik Rye
It's a, it's a very good question. So you have to have, you know, the right spirit to appreciate this and also meet with the people that actually come here because this is obviously not Watches and Wonders. Like this is like the con film festival for watches. That's very different. It's like informal. People here go out and, you know, shake hands with all of the, the CEOs from the, from the brands and, and they're all available throughout the day or maybe all of them. But you know, you meet quite a few of them and if it expands, I think we will be able to include more companies, more type of brands, I would say. But it's a small place. If you look at the numbers, I think we've grown from 3,000 people the first year and now predicting maybe 15,000 visitors. So we have already, before we come to Geneva, watch days. We have booked in over 100 meetings and touch points with people. So obviously we can't take more of. Our bandwidth is small. So in one way it helps with more brands because you divide the crowd by more contributors, which I think is a good thing also for the people visiting that they can be in a room and it's not packed, for example.
- [18:28]
Rob
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a very good point because, you know, if we had 15 brands to begin with, 66 now, it's increased by fourfold, just about. But from 3,000 visits to 15,000 visitors is a five fold increase. So it's even larger in terms of like the, the mass of people or morass by the end of this session, as we're melting in here, descending on Geneva in one week. My colleague David Vaucher, co host on the Real Time show, arrived last night, first time he'd ever been to Geneva. And he was like, wow, this is like bustling, diverse.
- [19:04]
Henrik Rye
Yes. City is involved with the event. Yeah.
- [19:07]
Rob
But I said to him, this isn't real Geneva. Right. You come outside of Fair Week, like it's much quieter. There's not these like bikes going around. There's not so many people from so many different backgrounds on the street. But it's, it's a huge strain on the infrastructure of a very localized area. You know, we're working mostly between Hotel Dangleter, Hotel Wilson Borage and the Pavilion. And of course you got the guys in the old town, so occasionally you get to hop over the lake and go see them and whatnot. But I think from a journal journalist's perspective, you, you tend to deprioritize that because you want to be here, because this is where the hub is happening. Interesting that you say by having more brands you would split the attention maybe, so you wouldn't have more weight on your small team to have to deal with. However.
- [19:58]
Henrik Rye
Yeah.
- [19:58]
Rob
As a journalist, your aim when you come to these things is to try and see everything.
- [20:02]
Henrik Rye
Yes.
- [20:03]
Rob
She's, you know, I know from experience, it's just not possible.
- [20:06]
Henrik Rye
Yeah.
- [20:07]
Rob
If we had more brands, we'd have to increase the length of the whole thing. Stay.
- [20:11]
Henrik Rye
Yeah. And then you need to get that from your, from your magazine.
- [20:15]
Rob
Exactly.
- [20:15]
Henrik Rye
Is a tough one. No, I, we actually discussed this on the, on the committee because if we're able to increase with members, we need either more days or we need to make sure that journalists are able to stay here for a longer time. But this is a decentralized event, so if That's a problem. Obviously. It's because you have a level of demand and interest in your brand. So a lot of the. The brands, they host events before Geneva, watch days in Geneva. So before we, before we join on the ceremony here on. On the 4th. Where are we?
- [21:03]
Rob
Scarlet's here. Hello, Scarlett.
- [21:07]
Henrik Rye
No, he had. We had an event and we met with, you know, 30 journalists. So in that way, they saw everything before they have, obviously the press release. And. And that was, again, you know, super informal, easy thing, and it didn't put strain on our suite for the rest of the week. So it's. You can manage either way.
- [21:28]
Rob
Yeah, it's a smart move. I mean, if there was like mass coordination between the brands to sort of, you know, half of them go before, half of them go after, you know, extend their stay a couple of days either way, and then specifically work with journalists who are close to those brands. That might be a way to kind of, you know, strike a middle ground, perhaps, where you don't need to expand the fare per se, but you expand the things around it.
- [21:49]
Henrik Rye
Yeah.
- [21:50]
Rob
I honestly need to get you on the show for a full episode in a cool air conditioned environment. We're gonna knock it on the head because, you know, we're both about to liquefy. But before we go, could you pass me the world timer?
- [22:05]
Henrik Rye
Oh, yeah. Yes, please.
- [22:06]
Rob
I just want to show this one on the camera because this is one of the novelties, right.
- [22:09]
Henrik Rye
This is our novelty. This is the.
- [22:11]
Rob
The news. I saw a video of Justin Haast. He was a guest on the show recently, experimenting with the click of the bezel.
- [22:18]
Henrik Rye
Yeah.
- [22:18]
Rob
And Justin's got a great face. Yeah, like expressing the O. Yeah, O. I don't know, he just, he made that sound and I was like, yeah, I know. I know what that feels like.
- [22:26]
Henrik Rye
I think, you know, if you ever met a bad liar, Justin is just honest.
- [22:32]
Rob
He's. No, he's a great. A great guy, great journalist and a big fan of what you're doing. I can see why. Once again, the build quality of micromural specs is second to none. Their price is extremely competitive. You know, it's. It has an exclusivity, which is not something that you really push, push, push, because it's not really the core tenet of the brand, but it's something I think that collectors do appreciate. And that human touch that you're able to bring by being so tight and so lean as a team and so directly in contact with your customers is something that everyone really appreciates. So thank you for being a positive contributor.
- [23:03]
Henrik Rye
Thank you so much.
- [23:04]
Rob
Right, we're going to knock it on the head. We're going to go get some fresh air. We'll be back far too soon for our liking to be honest in. In around 20 minutes with another live stream.
- [23:12]
Henrik Rye
What about the fan, mate? Like sound, mate?
- [23:16]
Rob
You can't know. The microphones don't like it.
- [23:17]
Henrik Rye
No, no.
- [23:18]
Rob
We'll figure it out for next. Next year for sure. Please join us again, like subscribe, comment, follow the real time show. We'll be back with you. Very, very.
- [23:30]
Henrik Rye
Sa.