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- [00:00]
A
Welcome, guys. Hi. And hello, watch fans and welcome back to Geneva watch days 2025. We're here in the glass igloo, melting as always outside the pavilion with the one and only Patrick Hoffman of Fav Lerber. Did I get the pronunciation right this time?
- [00:22]
B
Right, the name as well. Thank you.
- [00:25]
A
So, Patrick, it's a great pleasure to have you here. You're obviously an industry legend. You've been around a long time. You've been. You tried to step away from watchmaking, didn't work for you very well. And you're back in the game now with a revitalization of a classic name. So tell us, how's it going with the brand? What's the reception like at this fair?
- [00:42]
B
Well, I have to go back one year because Geneva Watch Days is very important for us. We relaunched the brand during Geneva Watch Days last year. And there I have to really tell something about the organization. They helped us. I'm always thankful for the Geneva Watch Days organization that they helped us to, gave us that platform, an international platform here in Geneva to launch the brand. So now a year has gone by as it is in the watch industry. Our deliveries were delayed by about two, three months, which is normal. That's pretty good that you said, I'm a legend. I said, I'm old and experienced. I knew this would happen. So we started to deliver the watches in February, March only we are on track in different countries, better in different countries. We are not where we would like to be. But I think that's just the situation of the trade. But what is important for me is we have developed very much our product over the last 12 months. So we showed some great novelties doing watches and wonders, and now again doing Geneva Watch Days. So the journey is on track.
- [01:49]
C
Yeah, it's fantastic. And actually for those watching currently that maybe haven't heard of Favreau Da before, this is actually the second relaunch of the brand, if I'm correct. And so I was hoping you could sort of talk through because this watch, which you're going to show us later on, is very different from what the first sort of iteration of that presented. So what was it about this brand in particular that made you think, okay, this didn't work, that first relaunch because of X, Y and Z reason. And here's why, I think I can do better with that.
- [02:20]
B
I have to correct it. It was four or five, so this doesn't make. It makes it even more questionable, maybe. But you know, we have investors behind the brand and they approached me For a long time to relaunch a brand. And I said, always, let's not do that. It's, let's start a new brand. No, I don't want to do that anymore. I think it's maybe suicidal. And then the name Varvaloba came up and we knew it was in the market, we could buy the brand. And I jumped on it because I knew we can do something. Why? 288 years of history. It was always in business, they were never out of business. And yes, we observed what happened over the last three, four launches after the Quartz crisis. And we analyzed. And for me, it was clear. We just forget about these last 20 years. And what we are going to do is we continue to write history from when the Quartz crisis hit. There were some mistakes, I'm sure. I don't want to talk about the past, but I think what I can say is we look at our watches. The watch is the focus, it's the ambassador. And for me, timepiece has to be wearable. And I think that's what went wrong probably with the last launch, because I think it was more instruments and not timepieces with a great DNA, by the way. The DNA was always there. But of course, at that time, the watches also became smaller. So today, I think even more important than before, the watches have to be wearable. And I think that's one aspect. And the other aspect, this whole sustainability thing which is happening, people look, consumers, young customers, they look what happened in the past. That's one aspect where I think we can make now we are going to be successful. And the third one is this whole move at the moment into new vintage. So what I'm showing here is not neo vintage, but when we relaunch the brand that you will see it next year again. And during the year, we, we will always have some new vintage timepieces which we're going to show because we have to build the evolution of the brand on the history. So I think it's the right time for the relaunch in that price range where we are and with the design which we have.
- [04:39]
C
So one of the things, and I'm looking at this watch, which I desperately want to see because it's one of my favorites from the show. But one of the things I like to do is always ask about some of the business aspects of these projects. And of course, we just described a relaunch takes years to get to. So you have your sort of strategy, you put in the work and then you launch at a time which is actually Relatively turbulent for the world and the watch industry specifically. I'm sure it's talked about a lot here. How do you manage that? What's the game plan when your game plan originally goes out the window?
- [05:11]
B
Well, first of all, there was a little bit of nervous city a year ago. You know, we had the launch, we had 22 SKUs with four different movements to relaunch the brand. So it was not just one piece which we showed. And that was part of the strategy because we wanted to make it clear to the world we are not a niche brand. We are a commercially driven brand. We are going to increase our number of SKUs or reference numbers, and we are going to be in a business model which has distributors, agents, retailers. Yes, there will be B2C direct sales as well. So it's a traditional move. And I said a year ago, we want to be at a point where we're going to produce between 80 and 100,000 watches. This is going to be 10, 12 years from now, but we are already now at a production pace of 8,000 pieces per year.
- [06:02]
A
Wow.
- [06:03]
B
So we are moving really fast. And yes, you say, how do you do it? Yes, you need finances behind it, but you need also the right distribution and you need a few key markets where, you know, you can achieve something.
- [06:16]
C
Okay, so, Rob, can I talk about the watch now?
- [06:19]
A
Yes, you can talk about the watch. Go ahead.
- [06:21]
C
So I'm not going to sleep your thunder, but I will give some preface and say that it's a skeleton watch, which is. It's a specific choice. So hopefully you can tell us about that. And when I said it was one of my favorites, I think skeleton watches tend to be, to borrow an English expression, very Marmite. You either love them or you don't. But this one seems to really tread a fine line between a skeleton watch and doing what that does. But still being a sports watch. So I'm going to stop there. Please tell us more about this particular.
- [06:49]
B
The fun of it is doing watches and wonders. We introduced the very, very first tourbillon in the history of 288 years. They never did a tourbillon, if you think about it. And they never did a skeleton. So the brand Fabo Loewa never had a tourbillon. Never a tourbillon and never a skeleton. So we said, okay, let's look at the skeleton. I said, at the beginning, we are a commercially driven brand as well. So we see what the market wants.
- [07:15]
A
And.
- [07:15]
B
And today there's a certain trend. Now, we didn't want to make it Boring. We took an existing case. We can use this particular movement in other cases as well. And we chose a collaboration with the manufacturer, amt, and we drove them nuts because we go so much into the details. I cannot tell you even how many tries we did with each other. Not only the skeletonizing, but also with the reo, or we call it the Dial. We go really into the details and the outcome is fantastic. And it's not boring. We have seven SKUs. We have different colors. We have green, we have black, of course, blue, which is all omnipresent. We have it with a gold movement. It's a chrome DSC movement in gold and in black. I don't have the black with me. And the resonance is incredible for both because I thought, oh, you know, the gold might be one part of the world and the black might be the other part of the world. No, not at all. I'm surprised. It's just both directions, which are good.
- [08:25]
C
I'm going to go very in the weeds now because you had mentioned looking at market trends. Do you have any benchmark for how skeleton watches are usually received in the market versus how that one has been received? Because to me that my. And I know I'm on. I'm interviewing the CEO of the brand. But it is a very attractive skeleton watch in a. In a way that many are not actually.
- [08:48]
A
Well, yeah, because you're not a skeleton.
- [08:49]
C
Guy traditionally at all.
- [08:51]
A
Me neither. But I see this, I see it on Patrick's wrist and I'm like, oh, my God, that. That makes an impact. Something beautiful about it.
- [08:57]
B
So in my previous life, in my previous company where I spent most of my time, we did a skeleton watch. And I went from Le Locle, where my office was, to the manufacturer in La Jolt Fond. And I talked to that one designer in house movement designer every day. And we went through every bridge and every bridge we reconstructed and we looked at it. So there was a certain vision in there. And for example, the whole mechanical part around the crown I wanted visible but still nice. And I normally don't like that part because it is a bit too complicated and it doesn't really fit into the look of the skeleton. But I still said, we need to see it, we want to show it because it's a technical part of the movement. And then for me, it was important to get somehow the angles of the bridges into with representing the hourglass of the logo of. I always try to integrate that somehow. And when you really look in deep into the shape you can see, you can recognize the Hourglass. And we did the same with the bridge of the escapement. With the escapement bridge. So a lot of details. And then, of course, once you have that, and that's black and white, that's finishing. And with AMT, don't forget, we are in a price range of 3,450 to 3,550 Swiss Franks. You have your limitations. Yeah, and we really stretched it. We really stretched whatever we could do. And one aspect was. And I can say that we said to the to amt, how can we make sure it's going to be clean, you know, with all those limitations? And the answer was make a perlage, because then you don't see unevenness. And I said, perlage, I cannot do. That would be an old fart. It has to be modern, you know, and that put a little bit more stress on the watchmakers who do the finishing. And we decided a cool finishing. You know, I call it 12 to 6 brushing. And then, of course, underneath, different kind of brushings. And another aspect which I don't like about skeleton watches, I don't want people to see the hair when you look through the watch. So I made sure there was not too much visibility through. But when you look into the air, there's enough. And I wanted it automatic. And the skeleton watch very often is not automatic, because then you see the whole part of the breeches. I say, no, it has to be automatic. So that made the brief, as we call it, a little bit more difficult at the beginning.
- [11:46]
A
Yeah.
- [11:46]
C
Because for the viewers, anytime you cut openings into a movement and you have to finish them, you basically have more surface area to finish. It's more expensive. And I think, as you were talking through it, what I like about it is that the openings, the skeletonization, it's not curved like you see on these other watches. I think the modern aspect really comes through because it looks like a piece of machinery now, as opposed to something that was just purely decorative.
- [12:11]
B
Yes. I mean, for me, I don't like the word watch, by the way. For me, it's a timepiece, you know, and you just say it's a machinery, it's a timepiece or an instrument. And I like actually to talk even about the timepiece as an instrument, and that's what it is at the end. And one more aspect, which I have to bring with skeleton watches, is reading the time. You know, designers, they sometimes forget that you also have to read the time. And there. When I was 15 and a half years old, I started in the watch business. I was 18 and I was with my boss at that time, and we were talking about the hands and visibility, and I said, you know, who cares? And that old man at that time, he was probably 40 or 45, he was not old, but he said to me, you know, young guy, you might have the eyesight, but we have the money. I never forgot that. You have to be able to read the time.
- [13:07]
A
There's a couple of things I want to jump in and say here, because talking about the decision of what finishes to go for, to create the correct delivery of message is a very important thing. But you are operating with an extremely tight price point there. It's actually unbelievable. This is a watch under €4,000, three and a half thousand francs. Incredible impact visually. Now, there are easy ways to do things that save money, and then there are harder ways. And you chose the harder way, but you chose it because we talk about smart design decisions all the time on the show. And what we mean by that is like there are deltas between the very lowest level of a finish and the very highest level. So something the best example is maybe polishing. Really good polishing, very difficult to do, really bad polishing, really easy to do. Perlage, great. It can hide a million sins. But blasting the surface, anglage, these sorts of things, you know, they add quality, but they're also a nice middle ground, because like blasting, for example, that's a. The entry point and the exit point of that is much closer together. So you deliver a product that is of exceptional quality for an exceptionally affordable price. And that leads me directly into the point I want to make. You are a guy that understands product, and you know that branding will get the first sale, product will get you the second, third, fourth, fifth. You know, this is the ambassador on the wrist. This is what is going to communicate your message around the world and convince people to come back and buy again and again and again. And we know in watchmaking, because realistically, worldwide is a very small buying community.
- [14:38]
B
Community.
- [14:38]
A
Having repeat purchases, people that believe in your brand is essential. You launched with a full collection of SKUs. Very ambitious. Something very few people could have managed the way that you did. But you have the experience, obviously, you know what you're doing. You want to. You want to come with a fully realized concept, not just like a test the water. And I believe the product is there. I believed it from day one when you showed us the first chronographs. The first time on Divers, everything. Superb. The brand second oldest watchmaker in the world, continuously operating for 288 years, stories for days. But that's the thing that I think is the biggest mountain to climb at this point. When it comes to the product, you've nailed it.
- [15:20]
B
It's.
- [15:20]
A
It's great. How are you going to get the, the value of the brand into people's minds through communication or initiatives, events? What's your plan to give it the exposure and the deference that it deserves?
- [15:35]
B
I think you have to have visibility. That's one thing you know, that's why we are also here at Geneva Watch Days for the second time in a row. That's why we're going to be at Dubai Watch Week. That's why we're going to be in Dusseldorf very soon. And I think the key there is probably the word community, community building. So you have to be attached with the end consumers. I think that it can put into one word, community, community building. That's really what it is. Because if you cannot go out with a lot of money just to make a lot of noise, it will take time. And if you want to talk about history and about product, that it's not going to be boring, is not easy. And even value proposition, the value proposition which we have is incredible. But to communicate that is not easy. I am totally with you and I don't have 100% the solution for it, because I know it is going to be a challenge. But at least it's true, you know, it's not just a story, it is true, it's the truth. And that's why in the long term, it's sustainable. And for me, I always say what I built, it has to be sustainable and scalable. And that's always what I say, sustainable, scalable. We always have to have that in our mind.
- [16:50]
A
Talking of sustainability and scalability, Geneva Watch Days, the event. It's a sixth edition. Your second time here. I imagine you'll be back again in the future. I hope you'll be back again because it's great to have you here. Obviously, like, you've given talks, you're always present at the events. You're a font of knowledge. People love to like, pick your brains about watchmaking, the nuances of founding and running companies. How do you feel the event has evolved? Where do you think it should go next?
- [17:15]
B
I think they're doing a great job. As I said at the beginning, I'm always ever thankful how they took us on, took us on board. I think what has to happen is they have to make sure that people will come more from all over the world. I think there's a bit of a limitation now from the geography where the people come. I think it has to be communicated a bit differently to get also or attract people again from, for example, the United States, from Germany. I have the feeling that certain countries are missing and they have to get them back. And I think the noise which is being done today is good. I don't know how it's promoted in those countries. I would like to see it a bit more global again.
- [18:02]
A
Very good. Well, look, we are going to wrap up the show. It was a pleasure to have you as always. Always great to talk to you, to hear your thoughts and feelings. In fact, before we go, David, pass me the watch, would you, for a second. I want to show it on the camera because this is absolutely top notch stuff. Look at this, look at that.
- [18:22]
C
It really is very well done if you have a chance to go see it in person. It's an excellent just watch and a very well done skeleton watch.
- [18:30]
B
The problem with the cushion shape is the picture never does it. The credit. You have to put it on your wrist.
- [18:38]
A
You really do. So you need to get down to Geneva or go along to one of the events coming up in the future and see Patrick and the team and get these watches on your own wrists. Thank you for joining us. We will be back obviously in a few moments with more content from Geneva Watch Days 2025. Thanks for joining us.
- [18:55]
B
Thank you guys.
- [18:56]
A
Thank you so much.
- [19:11]
B
Sam.