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Max Büsser Brings Philosophy, Passion, And Principles To The Real Time Show
00:56:42
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- [00:00]
Max Busser
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Rob Knudds
Welcome to another edition of the Real Time show. With me, your friendly neighborhood watchmaker, Rob Knudds, the friendly neighborhood jeweler, Alain Ben Joseph. And a very special guest, a man who we have been chasing for quite some time. In fact, ever since we started the Real Time show, we had one name that we wanted to have on this show. It is of course Maximilian or Max, but Busser of MB and F. Welcome to the studio at long last, Max.
- [00:30]
Max Busser
Thank you, gentlemen. And I'm the friendly, I don't know.
- [00:33]
Alain Ben Joseph
What, the friendly child that never wanted to grow up.
- [00:36]
Max Busser
There you go.
- [00:37]
Alain Ben Joseph
And it's a child that is angry with us that we invited Harris on the show before we did you. That's the reason why, Max, you kept us hanging.
- [00:46]
Max Busser
On the contrary, more people should invite Harris. He's got such amazing stories to tell. And. And yeah, I'm sure people are getting so tired of listening to me every time I'm telling myself, so what new angle story can I come up with? And I just can't. So I say the same things and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, nobody's going to be listening anymore.
- [01:09]
Rob Knudds
You know, we had a conversation about this ourselves offline and we were saying, you know, Max has been put through this process so many times, you forget what you've said yourself sometimes or you go into autopilot and you just regurgitate the same backstory. We thought we don't want to do that to him. We don't to make this another trial or boring. We want it to be exciting and forward facing, I think is where we came down on a strategy. You're always asked about the origins in the past and you know what MB and F has done and maybe you're asked about what MB&F will do, but let's just take it to a really macro level and go back to the mindset that you had when you started the company all those years ago and you looked at an industry and saw that it needed something that you were able to provide. You and all your friends now, 20 years down the line, standing in a very different position within that industry. Looking at it now, as someone who has contributed a huge amount to the watchmaking game, what do you see that the industry now would benefit from in the same way that it benefited from the MB and F concept when you first launched it?
- [02:16]
Max Busser
Wow. Okay. That's a powerful question. Thanks, Rob. Well, first, maybe I'll just have to say that When I launched MB&F, it was not about changing the industry. It was very much a Personal quest. And it was all about me. I'm sorry, I was a very angry man. Angry with myself, angry maybe with my industry and I needed to do something about it, but it was not to change the industry. Now, 20 years later, there are things I'm incredibly happy with and others where I'm a little bit puzzled. What I'm happy with is that we're a whole generation of creators which started between, I'm going to say 2000 and 2005, from the effigyons and the Carys and the Urwerk just a few years before, and ourselves, etc. And we're not getting any younger. And there was a long time where a good decade where virtually no young creator was coming onto the scene. It was a bit scary. Now, of course, the barriers to entry were so high that. I get it. I mean, it was so rough when we started and actually was so rough till 2020 for all of us. All of us. There was never supposed to be light at the end of the tunnel. It was supposed to just be in the tunnel and grinding. And that was the price to pay to be free. And when suddenly 20, 20, 21, suddenly hundreds, thousands of people came to us and said, we love what you do. How can I get one of your pieces? We were like, what is happening? Is this candid Camera? This is not supposed to happen. And so don't get me wrong, I'm incredibly grateful about it. But in the middle of all that, there was, except for Recep, who also had to go through some incredibly rough years, there was nobody actually appearing on the horizon. And now we've got a whole new generation of creators and that's fantastic as much in high end and in micro brands. And that sort of gives me a lot of hope because there was a moment where I was a bit skeptical of what what was going to come, if anybody was going to come.
- [04:38]
Alain Ben Joseph
Talking of giving credit to the newcomers shows what a gentleman you are. I know you obviously embedded the F for friends in everything you do and you were visionary to do so. But two decades down the line, and congratulations on your 20th anniversary, you keep on doing that and I know so from all our mutual friends in industry, you do a lot behind the scenes. You never want the credit for that. You connect the dots on production side, retail side, media side of things. Now what I was wondering to push the envelope, to ask you new questions because I, as a fan of both MB and F and what you've done from day one, because you came on my radar with the Opus series, you've created for Harry Winston. And if I rack my brain and think correctly, that was maybe the foundation of the first collaborative projects in the watch industry. But correct me if I'm wrong, it.
- [05:41]
Max Busser
Was one of it was. And again, what's interesting is Opus was not created to change the industry. It was created to help a friend who was Francois Paul Jones in those days, who was just launching his brand. And I thought, wow, we should do something together. And then it sort of snowballed into something way, way bigger than I'd ever imagined. And coming back to what I do, why I credit or people I help and don't mention, it's just simple. Just treat people the way you want to be treated. And. And that's something my mom always used to tell me when I was a kid, which is very different from do not do to others what you don't want others to do to you. Do not do to others is don't be mean. I've got other words coming in my mind, but I'm on a podcast, so don't be a. And you can fill in whatever. Treat people the way you want to be treated is actually be kind, be caring. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't do that with everybody. I do that when I find people who I admire, who are fantastic, who've got talent, who are kind, who are nice human beings. And of course, it's so great to help those people and I'm happy to do so.
- [07:10]
Alain Ben Joseph
So you basically refer to maybe the dark side and the white side of things. Now, Emilia resonated very much with me and that also gives away my age because I came up also with sci fi, Trekkie, Star wars, manga, steampunk, even thinking of Yanni Halter. Now, that inspired you to push the envelope future forward and looking at raising children because the motto you've just raised, taught to you by your mom and I was taught by my parents and I'm teaching my kids and I know you teach your daughters. Our children. Dear Max, what do you think inspires them today and what products, if they become designers in the future, will end up with? Because I'm sometimes scared that with these algorithms, the algos and everything becomes so unified, are they being inspired in the correct way to become creative? And what output will you think these future designers and creators will make?
- [08:22]
Max Busser
Quite a vast question that also. Thank you. Well, the first consideration is that. So I've got two daughters, they're 8 and 12. And the conversations I have with my 12 year old are mind boggling for Me, because she is so much more aware, geared in, has so many more such a greater vision of the world than I ever had at 12. And I sort of have a conversation with a 12 year old where I'm thinking probably I may have been able to sustain that when I was 17. And that is because they have got so much more information and data than we had from that generation. So I was brought up in a generation where there were three television channels and I was the remote control max go and change the channel. And so we would look at television, which was usually things which I was really not really interested in and you couldn't choose. And if I had a question I would have to go to the library, which I wouldn't. And therefore it took me so many more years to accumulate the knowledge and the understanding that my 12 year old has today. So that's the first thing which is very interesting because they mature so much faster. That's the positive. And then we have a ChatGPT generation, which in one way is fantastic because you can go and ask a question and get immediately not too bad answers. But then the other day I was walking into her room and I'm the maths guy because I'm the engineer, so I'm the one in charge of maths and I see on her iPad some maths and I'm like, what is that? She said, oh, I didn't know how to solve that thing. So I asked ChatGPT and I was like okay, wait a minute, so did you understand? Thanks to ChatGPT. And it wasn't really she understood, she just copied what came out. So the whole point of trying to understand and trying to discover and creation, creativity is about self discovery. If you're consistently asking a machine to tell you what is right, then how do you make your own opinion? And creativity is about having an opinion, it's about having a point of view. So that's already a little bit scary. And the other day a friend was telling me that he was launching a brand where the products were were created by AI, the visuals were created by AI, and even more or less the construction of the product was created by AI. So basically he said what sales, what product should I do? And he was showing me the result. I was blown away. I was like, it wasn't watches, but like what? And we're at the infancy of AI, which is really toddler stage. And that raises a lot of questions. So of course I used to up till very recently tell you I'm not too scared because AI cannot bring Disruption, because AI takes everything which exists and basically regurgitates it. So you can't really innovate with. With AI. But I'm seeing more and more these machines learning and going. It's pretty interesting. And a client of ours who's a friend of mine sent me three months ago or two months ago, I think it's deep seek the Chinese AI. And he asked deepseek, what should MB and F come out with for their 20th anniversary? And he sent me the result. And I had melt down because there were. There were products and ideas which we're coming out with or we have come out with. And I was like, oh, my gosh, that is super scary. And so I haven't really answered your question, but how is creativity going to be an actual asset if these damn softwares are actually doing it for us? And what drives me then to another question is like, technology was supposed to make our lives easier and better, but what it's doing now, it's replacing our brains. But all the tough work, the rough work, the moving or, I don't know, taking stuff out of the back of a lorry, that's still done by human beings, but the thinking which should be where we should all try and go, is actually being given to computers. So what are 10 billion or 9 billion people going to do? Sorry, I don't have a definitive answer for you, but I'm just in the middle of this whole thinking process, and maybe when you listen to this, in five or 10 years, you'll have a big laugh because God knows what will have happened. But it's, it's really, it's. It's scary.
- [14:03]
Rob Knudds
You raise several good points, and, I mean, we should probably save this for the philosophy podcast that we're going to launch at some point in the future, but it's too interesting to not spend a bit more time discussing it. I think the first thing that popped into my head as you were talking about the. Your daughter and the kind of knowledge that she has and the way that she's able to interact with the digital world to accrue all of this awareness that took us all years to build up through a more analog life, talking of that accelerated maturity in the youth, especially the pocket generation of which your daughter's a member, do you think that the more, how should we say it, rustic foundational experiences that we had growing up will somehow be lost, and that will have a negative impact on true creativity? Because you obviously make a good point about the AI being able to only reference what's gone before it doesn't innovate, it assimilates, I suppose it collates. It pulls together things and makes shockingly accurate guesses sometimes of what would come next. But what will happen to the true creativity, that spark of inspiration, that vision that you only have through having toolified the world to your need because your needs were not met immediately by technology.
- [15:23]
Max Busser
I think we, we have to go back to the incentives. Too many brands are created by people whose incentive is to create a business and to make money, and they're very rarely very innovative. And where does innovation. And now I'm talking of watchmaking here only, I'm talking generally, where does innovation come from? Usually from an individual who is on a quest for pride, who is on a quest for something which he or she can look up to and say, I am proud of that. And maybe it won't sell, maybe nobody's going to get it, but that's something I needed to try in all different domains, by the way. So if we keep on bringing the incentive of our new generation to you need to make money, it's even more dangerous than AI in itself. If it's about try and be happy, try and be proud, try and do something which when you look back to 5, 10, 20, 50 years back, you'll say, I tried to do something which had some impact, which had some purpose. And I'm proud of. We may be creating a generation of creators, but if everybody's all the time. And again, it's easy when you've had some success to speak that way, but if everybody's just thinking of how am I going to make that extra buck? I'm not sure we are going to have a generation of creators. But if you look at all of us in the watch industry, US independence, those who've made a mark are all creators who put their money on the line, their life on the line, who had horribly difficult years, never expected it to be easier, and have written a chapter in this industry. And those who got some shareholders and hired a CEO, most of them have disappeared. So, yeah, it's more about the incentives.
- [17:33]
Rob Knudds
So we've talked about your generation and the success that you've already had, and we've talked about the youth who haven't even had a chance yet to make an impact on the industry. But of course, there's a middle generation, or a couple of them, in fact, between those two camps that are now coming out with perhaps more micro brands and small independents than we've ever seen before. And it's a lot easier now to start A brand than it would have been 20 years ago because of access and the Internet connecting us all over the world very simply. And it's more possible to find a manufacturer in Hong Kong than it would have been before the Internet existed, of course. Do you think this middle generation here, who are I think, quite clearly inspired by your generation's work, are going to be the inspiration for the younger generation themselves to come and have a go? Because I think one advantage of this more open and transparent industry in which we're operating is that it isn't so prohibitive for a young person to come in and have a go. Now, we may have far too many brands, there may be far too many things and far too much noise for everyone to understand what everyone's trying to say to them. But the advantage of that is that there should theoretically be a much higher volume of individuals entering the industry. Do you see that as a good thing or a bad thing?
- [18:58]
Max Busser
Of course, there's a much higher volume in lower price point micro brands with things made in Asia, because as you said, it's much easier to find the people who can actually make the product. You go DTC direct to customer, which was unheard of for us 20 years ago, and you've immediately got social media, which gives you this insane resonance platform that we didn't have. And all of us had to go and travel around the world and meet print media and tell our story one hour after the other. And with a bit of luck they would have published a little piece on us that people would have read or not. So clearly it's much easier and that will, I hope, make for much more creativity. Because there's a moment where if all your choice is about all the time the same thing, well, you're just not going to come back to it. And I'm seeing what's interesting is for the moment you see creativity, which is very much going to reinterpret older generation watchmaking. Now we've got also now it's fun because we have the 70s coming back and I've always been an enormous fan of the 70s. So you've got the 70s coming back, but you've still got also all the vintage looking the 50s and the 60s or the 40s looking watches coming out at an incredibly great. I mean when you look at those, I mean, you take a Ferlan Marie. I think Andrea is insanely talented and he gives incredible bang for the buck and the product is really, really well done. But it's always a retro way of seeing the world or the Team, which is resuscitating Amida. Amida was revolutionary in 1976 when it came out with the Digitrend, which basically bankrupted. A year later, it went bankrupt. And they're relaunching the Digitrend. So that's fantastic. But it's going back to the older pieces and relaunching them. What I'm interested is people like Ming, where Ming has created his own ecosystem, design, language, way of seeing, watchmaking. And again, I'm not saying that the other's not great. I'm a fan of all of them. But it would be so great if there were more who say, okay, well, that was done. Let me go and experiment and do something which nobody's ever seen before, which is my thing. Not only it's never been done before, because I'm not a contrarian. I will not go left if everybody goes right. Just find your true north, find your language, find your thing. And look at the end of the day. And I think Coco Chanel said that. I tried to search it. This phrase is he or she who insists on their creativity has no memory. So whatever I have created in the last 20 years has been inspired by all sorts of other things I have seen, heard and felt. So I didn't wake up one morning and do something which was completely different if I had been isolated in a box for all these years. It's all of that which seeps in, and then you rework it and come up with something new. But yeah, I'm looking forward to a whole generation of creators, because now, at least in micro brands, it is so much easier to come out with something interesting.
- [22:44]
Alain Ben Joseph
You fired up all my gray cells in my mind and created nuclear fusion. I will park because I'm at a crossroad. I'll park the question about consciousness within AI and the machines and AGI. And I'll park that for our philosophy show. We might start Rob and I on the Real Time Show Network. And Max, we hope you'll be the first guest. The other, the other road I wanted to travel. You almost answered it 80%, because I wanted to ask you what your definition of creativity is. You basically almost said, if I summarize it correctly, it's the power of association. It influenced everything that you see around you. And you mix it up, maybe as a dj, and it's stuff that hasn't been done yet. So the newness of things. It's beautiful that you said you're not a contrarian. It begs the question, do you, Max, think that AI, these machines these LLMs fueled the general purpose. Transformers are creative.
- [23:55]
Max Busser
Well, the definition of creating is to churn out stuff. Yes, they're very creative. If your definition of creativity is to come up with something which at least for 50 to 70% has never been done before in that industry, for the moment, not. But maybe it's going to be there in five years, maybe it's going to be there in six months. I mean, at the speed it goes. Think music Again, we were talking about incentives before. Think music. Think of the groups, the musicians, which made a difference over the last 60 years. And they all had a sound. It was their sound. If you listen to them 50 years later, of course it's them from everything from. Of course you've got rock and roll, but you've got soul, you've got funk, you've got disco, you've got. And of course then it became a whole group of people who were doing more or less the same thing. But there was one person who started and today, if you look at U2, there is one U2 and it's been. They've been going on for what, 35 years and nobody has done another U2. They've got their sound and that's what we need as creativity. You need to create your sound. Now, of course, if you're only interested in selling as many records as possible, you will have a lot of the music we are served today on all the different channels, which is very much created by CMOs and CFOs and a whole new sound. You need a product creator, you need a product person to have the courage to create a new sound. That's what we need.
- [25:45]
Alain Ben Joseph
Talking of sounds, I wasn't scared by what's shown by AI. What fascinated me and got me scared is the moment the machine started hallucinating. But that was my answer, that they actually started creating stuff. So if everything is fed by an LLM and they gather data, it's binary 0 and 1. So that was interesting. So, talking of hallucination, dear Max, I was wondering for you and your team and all of you together as a collective, what's more difficult? Create from scratch a blank sheet. The amazing HMS lms and of course the new SP that was launched this week. Congratulations on the SP one, the special projects one, is it more difficult to keep hallucinating as you've guys done for the last two decades, or is it more difficult what you guys have done with the MAD series? Chapter one. Recently we saw chapter two. We met you and Eric Girau in your beautiful MAD gallery. In Geneva. Geneva. Is it more difficult to be put in that box and be constrained by budget? You, you guys obviously wanted to respect the passion for MB and F and award the community by going in a lower price bracket. Whereas in your regular MBNF scheme of things, sky literally is the limit. Ideas, but therefore also budgets. Which of the two is more difficult for you guys?
- [27:21]
Max Busser
Great question. The difficulty is very different. So in MB and F, having ideas amazingly doesn't seem to be an issue with me, which never ceases to amaze. Knowing that I created the brand with only HM1 on a piece of paper and I had no idea that everything you've seen in the last 20 years, I had no inkling of the beginning of a thought of what has come out since. So that's just happened as it went and we've got tons of projects in the pipeline and just not enough engineers to bring them to life. So the difficulty is not the ideas, the difficulty is the engineering mostly is it's anything between three and five years to come from that wouldn't that incredibly cool idea. How do I make it come to life? Finding the engineering, finding the technical solutions and of course finding the human beings who can transform that which is on a plant, somewhere, on a software, on solidworks into actually a beautiful reality. But price is not a constraint. So it's true that at the end of the day, when I look at my HM11, I was given more or less the cost price. I think like three weeks before we launched, it was a five year project and I was like, oh shoot, okay, it's going to have to be around 200,000 francs. So we never start saying we should create a watch which is at 50,000 or 200,000, 100,000. That's not it. Let's create the most incredible piece we can create and then we see the cost price and then we have to put a retail trade on MAD Edition. It's completely different is. And so this is, as you may or may not know, but MAD Edition was never supposed to be a brand. And I just early this year for the first time told my team, I think we have to accept that actually, even though we didn't want it to be, we have actually created a brand new because we definitely didn't want to create a brand. And for four years we were doing everything, shuffling around so that it wouldn't become a second brand. Now when I started creating MAD Editions after the MAD one, I remember going to my team like oh, wouldn't it be cool if. And they would look at me and say, Max, just the sapphire gloss you've drawn there, that's going to be at least 2,900 francs cost. And you want the watch to be at 2,900 francs retail. And we're just talking of the gloss. So it's a very, very different animal, but it's a very interesting creative process because creating in constraints has to make you smarter in a different way. And so there are dozens of ideas which have been shelved because they're just too expensive. And others we've found ways to make them come to life. And also, and we're lucky on MAD Edition is that typically a MAD2, the cost price is way higher than a MAD1 because I mean the original MAD1 because it's a La Joupere based movement. And then you've got. The module was engineered in house, it's all manufactured in Switzerland, assembled in Switzerland, et cetera, et cetera. But we decided to keep it at 2,900 francs and it's okay because MB and F supports that and we're not living only on MAD editions. But it is an incredibly interesting creative process when you've got price boundaries and it's incredibly frustrating. So our frustration in MB and F is when we can't manage to get that idea into reality, whatever the costs. Our frustration in MAD Edition is that a lot of ideas have to be shelved because there's no way we can come out in that cost price. And also because I've taken an executive decision that all MAD Editions should be at 2,900 francs. And if we do a collab they can go to 3200. And my team keeps on looking at me like, why? I said, I don't know, because I think it's cool, let's try and do that. And they're like, yeah, but. And even MAD3, which the cost price is higher than MAD2, they're like, now we're going to increase the retail price, right? Like, no, but I've just decided that. But. So there you go. It's very different. And how do you construct yourself in life is through difficulty if your life. Nobody has a super easy life their whole lives, whoever they are. But it's through your difficulties that you build yourself.
- [32:07]
Alain Ben Joseph
It's a thank you to the Watch collecting community and it's perceived that way. I'm a proud owner of MAD1 and MAD2 is coming. I won a lottery ticket. So thank you Max and team. I am lucky and I feel that way. I have the green MAD one, but not the lucky clover, which was very sympathique, as they say in French and Dutch. Now you used the word frustration. I now suddenly, vividly have a memory pop into my mind when we met up in the tent at Basel World, which ironically was called the Palace.
- [32:39]
Max Busser
Yes.
- [32:40]
Alain Ben Joseph
And you launched Legacy Machine 1. And I remember you telling me the frustration that you didn't want to make, in brackets, a classical watch. But it had to come out, that creativity, that idea, and that always stuck with me. So when this early April, end of March, actually, you guys showed us on the embargo, the SP1, I literally fell off my chair. Rob and I were there with Carl Bachand from Barrel Hand and we were vibing there with Charis. And I would love to hear, were you frustrated launching a third collection, a third vertical within the MF brand? Because you always planned on making horological machines, the H M chapters, I call them chapters, because once out, they'll never come back again. So would you mind walking us through why AMB created a third vertical or collection?
- [33:43]
Max Busser
So when you. When you start creating for yourself instead of creating for the market, we are very multiple human beings. I mean, I don't know if I've got multiple, what you call it personality disorder, but look, I love classic, I love crazy in all sorts of different worlds. And so, yes, horological machines was the fundamental of why MB&F was created. At some point, HM5, which I was knocking my head against the walls because I couldn't come out with what I wanted, morphed into Legacy 1. And that story, actually, I haven't told it much, but it was supposed to be a completely different watch, an HM where I wanted to show the balance wheel. And whatever I designed with my good friend Eric Giroud was either incredibly ugly, unwearable, or looked like a Vianne halter. And so I'd really pushed it further, further, further into a product which we still have the designs. It's really cool. But at the end, it really still looked too much like a Via Haalstur. In the middle of a meeting, I told Erika, like, I'm sorry, but I'm going to shelve this project. We just can't do this. It looks too much like Vienna's World. And he was pretty upset because he spent hundreds of hours on that one. And I did a sketch. I was like, well, why don't we just do something nobody expects and do an homage to pocket watches? And I sketched what's going to become LM1. Then LM became a line and I have to thank Michael Tay. Michael Tay was the owner of the Hourglass in the whole of Southeast Asia and Japan, Hong Kong, etc. As a watch retailer who has accompanied me over the last now 27 years in watchmaking and who sat me down in 2018 at a meeting in Singapore. I'll always vividly remember that and told me, you're becoming predictable. I was like, what? Yeah, you're becoming predictable. I'm like, look, look at everything we're coming out with. He said, yeah, but it's always a bit the same thing. And HMs are always about your childhood. And there's one alm, then one hm. One alm, one hm. And now you've done X many clocks and every year you have a new clock and yeah, you're becoming predictable. It didn't mean it in a mean way, but it's like, okay. And that was a big wake up call. And actually I had been designing or creating all sorts of other ideas, concept watches, not watches over all these years. And I'd put them in, I put in as in a draw, because they weren't hms, they weren't lms. And it was already so difficult to survive from one year to the other as MB and F to develop all these incredibly complicated movements and more importantly at the end to try and explain the brand. Because in those days I was traveling like a madman all around the world all the time to try and meet potential customers and trying to explain to them what we were trying to do. So we already had hms, LMS and co creations and performance art and mad galleries where we're curating artists and there's no elevator pitch to that. People were to like, I could see that their eyes were glazing over after 10, 20 seconds. And I'm like, I can't come up with yet another product which I can't even put in one of those boxes. But then 2020 happened and demand started skyrocketing. And then I thought, wow, that's maybe an opportunity to open that drawer with all those other ideas which were not in the boxes. And we chose that one which had been. I'd drawn it the famous horrible sketch you saw on Instagram, which I'd drawn in 2018. And I told the team, let's try and do this. And by creating SP1 Special Projects 1, I have given myself the most beautiful 20th anniversary gift a creator could help. Really hopeful. I have now broken down every single boundary because SP2 doesn't look at all like SP1 and SP3 is yet completely different. And Special Projects just basically says, no more boundaries. Do whatever you want. Which doesn't mean we're stopping hmlm. I don't know how many HMS in the pipeline and LMS in the pipeline and other things, but Special Projects is my most beautiful gift to myself for my 20th anniversary.
- [38:50]
Rob Knudds
Yeah, it's a wonderful gift and a great opportunity, a brilliant platform, Very cleverly done, by the way, and it feels natural, as I'm sure the creative process was. We asked our community if they had any questions for you. We actually got a few good ones, and one of them popped into my mind here, because now you've taken the gloves off effectively and giving yourself a chance to do exactly what you want. Lawrence from the TRTS network asks us, if you could totally redesign an iconic watch for yourself, what would you do? So you can take anything you want and you can put your max spin on it.
- [39:29]
Max Busser
Amazingly, I wouldn't. The iconic watches have become icons because they were trailblazers, they were ideas, designs which broke with tradition, broke with the artistic movement, which was before. We have to respect them, and it's not me to go and change that now. Having said that, when Fabrizio Buonamassa calls me up and says, do you want to do a Serpenti with us at Bulgari? I'm like, whoa, hold my beer. Because that was different. It was not like, just do your interpretation. It was okay. Serpenti has always been a lady's watch, a piece of jewelry watch. Would you like, with us to create the first Serpenti for men? And I was like, wow. But I did it because there was Fabrizio. Not only because I love him dearly, he's a fantastic human being. He's an insanely talented designer, and I wouldn't have dared go down that road if the Bulgari head of design wasn't with me to accompany me and say, this, we can do this. We can't do this. Is Bulgari. No. He has to put the boundaries, because you cannot disrespect an icon. Who are we? Whoever we are, who are we to change something which has been defined as an object of legend? So it's interesting because I actually have never. God knows that I create all the time, but I've never actually looked at a royal oak and said, oh, I would do it this way, or looked at a reverse and going, I would do it that way. It doesn't even enter my mind. I'll tell you what I would. There is one. One of my dreams. I really would like to redesign an Atmos clock. Oh, wow. But because the Atmos clock, it's the movement which is legendary, and there's been 500, a thousand different boxes, cases in which it was presented. So give me the Atmos clock movement and let me design. Wow. An MB&F inspired Atmos. That would be super cool, but I wouldn't dare ever touch a tank, an oyster, or anything like that.
- [42:01]
Rob Knudds
No, I mean, that's a brilliant answer. I didn't see that coming, and I'm sure Lawrence didn't either. And I'm glad the Atmos clock dropped into your mind at the end there, because that would be an incredible thing to see. So we could make that happen, couldn't we? Surely.
- [42:14]
Max Busser
Someone please petition Jerome Lambert. Can you. Can you all send a message to Jerome saying, oh, it would be a good idea.
- [42:24]
Alain Ben Joseph
And you're in Jaeger LeCoultre alumnus, so it is a must. And we will send Jerome this episode. Don't worry. We want daclo.
- [42:34]
Rob Knudds
You know, there's another question that came in from one of our most active community members, Ed Black. And I think I. I heard a little bit of what I imagine the answer is in your previous response to Lawrence's question. But he asks, how and where did you learn your HR skills? And by that, Ed means how do you manage to convince so many individual experts to come together, managing the egos and opinions and yet managing to get the job done without either the product or your business suffering? I think the first word is probably respect. That comes out of my mind because that's what we heard you refusing from Lawrence's question. But tell us yourself, what's it like working with, Well, a series of greats.
- [43:16]
Max Busser
It's interesting because you can notice that you guys haven't sent me the questions beforehand because I really have to think these ones through. It's interesting because as a youngster, as a young adult, and I've sold that many times, I was a very lonely, lonesome, awkward, very insecure dude. And I didn't know. I mean, I was clearly not the guy you would hang out with. And as I grew in watchmaking, I realized over the years, seven years at Jaeger and seven years at Winston, mostly at Harry Winston, is that I probably had two talents, if that. The first is I have weird ideas. I have ideas. I'm going to say weird just because most people don't have them. And when I come up with them, most people frown and go, what's he talking about? So that used to be probably my biggest issue as a youngster. I was the weird one, and nobody wants to hang out with the weird one. But as an adult, it became an incredible asset. The second thing is I discovered that I don't know how this happened is I naturally manage to surround myself with extraordinary people. And maybe it was the whatever psychological scars of being lonesome. When I was a kid, I managed to. To bring together teams of people who seem to enjoy working with me and with each other. And I think that's because. And it comes to that whole unfriends part of the brand, which I really didn't understand what I was doing when I called the brand that 20 years ago. It's when you bring people who have got the same sort of human values, people who think we instead of me, but even once. And then, of course, success makes you sexy. So that's a whole other thing. It's like when MB and F starts, starts becoming stronger. Even people who think me suddenly want to join the we. But that wasn't at the beginning. And so it's been about also because the whole why of what we do has always been about being proud. And honestly, you bring such incredible people together when the goal is for all of us to be proud rather than all of us making money again. You will assemble a lot of people when you want to make money, but you'll assemble sort of people who are interested in money. And those are probably people who think even more me than we. And so I think that's, looking back, that's what I've understood that I've managed to do. And in our team, internally also, it's something that we pay very much attention. I had a, you know, I had a beautiful compliment the other day. Our receptionist was on holiday and we hired a temp, a lady who'd been doing this for 10, 15 years as a temp receptionist. And after the six weeks I saw just before she left, and I said, well, how was it? How was the six weeks? And she said, you know what? I've never been in a company where there's so many nice people. I've never been in a company where people are so nice to me. She says, I mean, I've done this for 15 years. Usually nobody looks at me like, go and do this, please. If they say please. And it's unique what you've brought together. And today I realize as a legacy, that is probably one of the things I should be the most proud of, is having brought all these amazing people together. Initially it was to create a product. Now it's to help other people. Find their true north.
- [47:16]
Alain Ben Joseph
Amen to the true north not being monetary values. And your vibe attracts your tribe.
- [47:22]
Max Busser
Yeah.
- [47:23]
Alain Ben Joseph
Talking of tribes, you have three performances that are in my top three. Number three is with our co host, the Real Time show co host, Scarlett Baker, done for Caliber, which is a podcast by the Watch assistant group. If you haven't heard that, I highly recommend you listening to Scarlett doing her thing not on trts. Second one was the 60 minutes with Patrick Bruneau, the president of the Soul Wine group, owners of Girard Perregaux. And you listened to. That was innovative. I would love to see more of these jamming sessions between two creative minds and watch industry leaders.
- [48:11]
Max Busser
That was also very cool. Yeah. Because that was IG Live when you all blocked at home. And so I discovered IG Live and I started inviting friends and there was Benoit from Ressence, there was Julien from, in those days, Zenith, and basically I started interviewing them, which was fun on why they do what they do. And it's really. Yeah, it was. I found how difficult it is to be an interviewer. So thank you very much, guys, because I appreciate how complicated it is to bring something which actually has a feel. Conductor, you say in French, there's a flow to it and you do it super well. So thank you very much.
- [48:57]
Alain Ben Joseph
Thank you. And you've done an amazing job because you've brought your tribe also to the limelight with an amazing podcast, Tales from the Tribe, that we loved so much that the first two episodes actually were as well hosted on the Real Time Show Network. Will we see more episodes in the future, Max?
- [49:19]
Max Busser
Yes. We've taped two interviews which are wonderful. I'm doing the third on Monday. So we're trying to have, I suppose like you guys, we, we. We try and have like four or five before we start launching. Because you can't. I can't. Sort of. Especially as our. Our clients are very busy people and like suddenly say, oh, can you give me two hours next week? It doesn't work that way. So. So yeah, we're launching season two. I actually don't really know when we're launching season two. I. I think it's. It's soon. It's pretty soon. We'll. We'll keep you guys posted on social media for sure.
- [49:56]
Alain Ben Joseph
What you as well do for the community, bringing them together, is you thank them. And recently you've done so with something cool. The Mini Millions. Can we talk about that, please?
- [50:07]
Max Busser
The Mini Millions. I love my Mini Millions. And not only because of the name, by the way, that's Harris's name, Harris's idea. So, again, treat people the way you want to be treated. And we were coming up to the 20th anniversary, and for me, the point of an anniversary, I never look back. So for me, it's very weird to look back. So an anniversary was to celebrate. An anniversary has to be about, in our case, taking risks. Coming out with MAD2 after MAD1, that's a big risk. Coming out of SB1, that's a big risk. Coming out with the Serpenti, that's a big risk. So there are a lot of risks. It was about collaboration, which means you've seen Serpenti is a collab with Bulgari. You'll see another really, really, really cool collab on MAD in September. And it was about saying thank you. And we're like, okay, so how can we say thank you to the. We know about 1500 people around the world who are MB and F owners. Some of them have bought them new, some have bought them pre owned, but they're just owners and they're on the tribe. And how do you say thank you? How do you say thank you to people who've got the means to spend €100,000 dollars Swiss francs on a watch? They're people who basically, if they want anything, they just go and buy it. And so we had a brainstorming one day. I was like, how do we say thank you? And it wasn't me. I can't even remember who it was. It was somebody in the team was like, oh, we should create something that money can't buy. That made sense, because if you've got money, you want something that money can't buy, which embodies who we are, makes people smile, and which we would like to actually receive. Because at the end, it's always the same thing. Treat people the way you want to be treated. What would we like to receive if we were an MB&F owner and someone in the team, maybe it was Arnaud, I can't remember who it was, said, oh, we should like these figurines, like these bear bricks or whatever. We could do something cool around that. And we started sketching and then we thought, that's a really cool idea. Max, the other Max, Max Mertens, the young German designer I've been working with for the last few years, in parallel to Eric Giroud, took on this gigantic task of designing all these mini millions with each time the head of the watch. And then of course, you realize that some of them are going to be edited at 8 pieces. Like if the mini million of HM4 final edition, there were only 8 pieces, so there are 8 mini millions like that. And the final edition has a square opening to the HM4, while all the others have around. And we thought that saw us, no, no, we can't send a mini million with round openings to the guy who's got the one with the square ones. So we have to do a different one. But there clearly there's no way you can do a mold or machine it. Of course not, etc. So we went for 3D printing. And it's 3D printed at Abbe A product. Who's the artisan we work with? Who does all our craziest watch cases? So the HM11, the HM9, HM Auto Serpenti, that's Aurelien Boucher and his team. And he's got these insane 3D printing machines, which of course we never use at MB&F because don't do 3D print. And we said, okay, let's do that. And then we started looking at the costs, the 3D printing, the hand painting the box, just the whole logistics of sending 3,000 many millions to the right person at the right time. And you're like, oh my gosh, if you look at the number, the dollars, francs, euros, it costs you, like, wow. And I thought, you know what? This makes me so happy. It makes us all so proud. We'll do it. And we did it. And it's also something. It's a tricky project because it's something when you start, you can't stop. Because every single customer who comes into the brand now, or an existing customer who buys another MB&F, they're expecting that mini million. And so we've basically just signed on for eternity. But it's cool. It's cool. And we've designed the Serpenti mini million, the SP1, mini million and whatever is coming out. We're working on that. And as if we had a lot of free time, which we of course don't, we've just gone ahead and done it. And I think. I think it's made a lot of people happy and that's. That's why we do it.
- [55:20]
Rob Knudds
I was expecting a lot of beautiful stories and expansive thinking on this episode of the Real Time Show, But I wasn't expecting to end with such a heartwarming narrative about a product that isn't even a watch, but really exemplifies how one should treat their very best Fs. So thanks, Max, for that, for the joy that you bring to the industry, for the time that you've given us today and for dealing with our unscripted questions and roller coaster exploration of the industry and whatnot. We really appreciate it and we would love to get you back on the show again in a couple of years, I suppose, whenever you may have time. And I look forward to catching up with you in Geneva next time we're all there together. I am sure the audience is going to have many questions and follow ups about this, so if you do, of course you can get in touch with us via the usual channels at either Rob or alonherealtime show, or via the dedicated Instagram handle @therealtime show. We'll be back soon with more top quality watch content and interviews with the industry's finest. Until then, stay safe and keep on ticking.