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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:06]
B
Watch fans and welcome back to the Real Time show with me Aloman Joseph, your friendly neighborhood jeweler and our dear friendly neighborhood watchmaker, Rob Knudds. Calling in all the way from Dresden, we have a friend, a special guest, Leopoldo Celli, the co owner of the revived Mitton watch brand. Welcome, Leo.
- [00:33]
C
Thank you. Hi guys. Thank you for having me.
- [00:37]
B
The pleasure and honor. The pleasure and honor is all ours, Leo. You guys literally jumped in back into watchmaking history. And you did so while jumping hours are the bomb, the complication to go. Please walk us through why you've revived the brand Niton together with your dear friend.
- [01:10]
C
So yeah, that's, that's a great question, actually. Well, I think to understand why and how we got here, need to go back a few years and understand where I come from and where Yvon comes from as well. So we did this together with Yvonne Queterer, my business partner, who comes from a watch industry background and who's someone who's very experienced and talented in product development, but also has a passion for watch history and in general. And I think on that topic, we meet together on the fact that we think that a watch brand is much more than just a product. It's a history, it's a lot of things. And reviving a watch brand, first of all, it's a big responsibility. And not all watch brands are born equal or become equal in their history. And we were lucky enough to discover Niton, which has a fabulous history, a fabulous pedigree. And for us, it was both a mission of bringing this brand to the attention of the public because we thought that it deserved a lot of attention and also putting it back on the landscape of the big names that we know of today. Because Niton, over 100 years ago, it was founded in 1919, was to the likes of Patek. And so for us, it felt like a mission to bring back this brand and give it back the prestige that it used to have. So we felt a tremendous responsibility in relaunching this brand the best way we could. And we tried to do it by honoring what they did in the past, while also trying to bring it into modernity. So we, we didn't want to do a replica of what was done in the past, but at the same time, we also wanted to honor and respect what the tradition of Niton was and what the very specificities of Niton were at the time. And this coupled with the fact that we both, Ivan and myself, have an entrepreneurial spirit and we are entrepreneurs and we felt this was the right project to. To relaunch this brand.
- [04:07]
B
Please tell me a bit about your background. We had the honor to meet the first time while you were at Girard Perregaux, and I was blown away by how much knowledge you had about watchmaking. So please walk us a bit through your background, your history in watchmaking, and then from Gerard Perregaud. We encountered each other also at Renault Texier and Dominique Renault. So please walk us a bit through your. Your career and your passion for watchmaking.
- [04:38]
C
Correct. So, as I was mentioning, I don't come from a watchmaking background, so I'm an Italian, born and raised in France. I come from an education that is a dual education. My dad was an engineer and my mom was an architect and an art history teacher. So I've always had a dual culture between arts and science. And this developed into an interest in, I would say in mechanics and in design. I moved to Paris for my studies, and this is where I started my career. And early on I had an interest in. In luxury in general, but more specifically at the beginning of my career in fashion. And then I ended up working in the wines and spirits industry. I worked for the LVMH group for almost 10 years, and I was really passionate about brand strategy and branding and how these very old brands could express themselves in modernity. So it was right around. Around the time where E commerce was starting to be a thing and luxury brands had this very big challenge to express themselves on the Internet. So this was something that really passionated me about how you can translate a brand into innovation and into modernity. So this was the start of my career, and I had a career path in front of me at lvmh, which could have been my whole life, but I also felt a little bit bored, and I felt that things weren't going fast enough, and I wanted to become an entrepreneur. So this was right around my 30s, and I wanted to kind of hack my career path and to take calculated risks that were not risky enough so that I could land back on my feet. But I also wanted to learn more. And I had an interest in watches for. And I had. So for 10 years or so. I started collecting watches around in my 20s, and my dad and my grandfather were also collecting watches. So this is where I got my interest from. And this was around 2015, 2016. So it was right in the middle of what you guys can remember as the Kickstarter era, where a lot of brands were. You know, you could see a lot of brands launching on Kickstarter. And so I felt like it was a good time to do something in watches. And so I started my brand, basically. Actually, I think this is where me and Rob Knott met for the first time while I launched this first brand. And it was a long journey for me. It was a journey of self discovery. First, because I learned that I was resilient, sometimes stubborn, but I also learned that I could be gifted with my hands because I also decided to go back to school and to study as a watchmaker. It also gave me a better understanding of the ins and outs of the industry. And I was able to take out some valuable lessons and to make also some valuable contacts. That's actually when I met Yvon for the first time, because he helped me design the watch that I had in mind at the time. I also realized that the project that I was working on wasn't mature enough. And so I decided to move on. But I strongly felt that this wouldn't be my last entrepreneurial venture and that someday I would go back to building something of my own. And this is when I had the opportunity to move to Switzerland. So I moved to Switzerland and I had the opportunity to sharpen my industry skills. First joining Audemars Piguet, working on marketing strategy, and then I moved to Girard Perregaux, where I was in charge of communications and brand image. And Finally I joined Mr. Dominique Renaud, who we all know very well, where I could also touch more of this independent scene, which I thought was really interesting because I felt this, this is where there was a lot of the creativity and ideas that I felt exciting were. So I was really glad to join them. And in parallel, I was able to work on the relaunch of Niton.
- [09:58]
A
So I have three questions. I'm going to ask them in chronological order, although the questions germinated in my mind in a different order from your explanation there as to why you decided to pursue this challenging career path. First one, we'll go right back to the start. You mentioned that your father and grandfather also collected watches. And I'm sure that might have had some influence on your initial aesthetic sensibilities. So could you tell us what kind of things they were into and what particularly resonated with you as a younger person?
- [10:31]
C
So my grandfather had a very interesting life. He was a doctor, Italian, but he also lived in Libya, in Africa for 18 years. So he had a lot of connections with the elite of this country. And he was fortunate enough as a doctor to be gifted some watches from some very important patients. One of them was a gold Rolex Submariner. So this was very important piece which I remember seeing on him and which really struck me as something very precious and unique. And he was also a diver, a free diving diver because he was in prison in India during the war. And this is where he learned diving, and he brought this back with him in Europe. So diving watches were also something important to him because he was doing a lot of diving and my dad was also doing a lot of free diving, but he was more into. So his collection is more around like the 70s. So for example, example, he had an Omega Seamaster Soccer. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that watch, which is, you know, very colorful, very funky watch from. From. From the seventies. So he was. He was. He was big into Omegas. And this is actually where I also started my collection. And they also very passionate about cars. So I think cars also had an impact on the aesthetic and the sort of design things that I liked. And that specific case was cars from the 70s, especially old Lancia cars from Italy. So, yeah, so these had quite an impact on me as a kid, for sure.
- [12:58]
A
Okay, so you've got some really nice vintage inspirations there, which may have led somehow to the creation of Fugue, which was the brand that you were managing when we first met, if my memory, which is like a sieve these days, serves correctly. Was it the last year of Baselworld? We met in 2019 upstairs somewhere?
- [13:20]
C
It. It was 2018. 2018.
- [13:24]
A
Okay. I feel like I remember being with Sky Sit, a fellow journalist, around that time when she was working on her Scholar project. And she dragged me along and I was really impressed by the system that you developed. And certainly I still remember one of the smoky degrade style dials with a beautiful colorway that hit me in the heart, to say the least. Tell us about the experiences you gained from that first project when you first went into this sphere as a brand owner, and how those experiences shaped what you've done since with Niton.
- [13:57]
C
Yeah, So I think this was a very. It was a very strong learning curve for me because as I went into this, I had zero industry knowledge. So I think that first of all, I understood that I probably hadn't targeted the easiest market space, let's say, in the sense that, as we were saying, there were a lot of these Kickstarter brands. So there was a lot of competition, competition around, you know, let's say the 1,000 Swiss franc mark. And so. And the competition was also with some big groups like the Swatch groups. So Groups that had a lot of, you know, means to, to promote the brands and things like that. So in, in, in that specific case, I understood that, you know, the watch business and watch brands were also very capital intensive. So this, I think, was a big learning. Even though I had the impression of having started the project with a reasonable investment, I soon realized that it took much more than that to be able to build the brand on a longer term and to build it sustainably. So, so that was, I guess, probably the most important learning. Also, I think from the outside, not being in the industry, it felt like doing a watch was something easy. And I think it was easier than it would have been probably like 25 or 30 years ago, because the barrier to entry to manufacture a watch wasn't that high and it's actually lower today. But what I was doing was that we were taking existing movements and we were producing our own design and casing up movements that were off the chef movements. And so this was something that gave us the ability to come with a very specific product in terms of design, but not necessarily in terms of, of mechanics and movement. And so it felt like if the project would work, it would need to have its own very specific movement or at least some thought in. How do you make the product something completely finished to your vision? And I think this is one of the learnings I also took out from there is that, you know, doing a product is not as simple as it seems, and to do something that feels like a finished product, it needs to be thought through in and out, from case to movement and everything else. So this was another very important learning. Lastly, I think the networks and the contacts is also something that I learned was very, very important, which I was able to start then and to make contacts both in manufacturing as in, and things like that. And this also proved very valuable for the future as well. And I think this is also, it's a small industry and everyone knows each other. So I think building a network and building the contacts is also something very important to do and to start doing as early as possible.
- [17:49]
A
So the last question in my trio of chronological inquiries is this. Taking those learnings forward and having the background that you do, how did you approach building the narrative of the Niton brand out? Because that fusion of product and story is the thing that really makes a difference and allows you to create some separation from the many, many peers that surround you when you enter such a crowded field as watchmaking. So which way round did you go? Did you decide on the product first or did you decide on the story and build the product to fit it.
- [18:22]
C
I think with Niton, the lucky thing is that there was already a story in the sense that it's an historical brand, so it does have a foundation. So it was more a question of choosing which parts of the story we wanted to keep, or at least which part of the story we thought were important or very important to keep as an identity for the brand and then building from there. And I don't feel that we have created a specific narrative for Niton. I believe that we have taken or we have done some archaeology, finding really what the essence of the philosophy of Niton was, and then we have used that as fuel for both the creation of the product and the branding around it. And, of course, when working on a product, we started from what was Niton about? And not just in terms of the complications or things like that, but what made them do jumping hours, what made them do that kind of design? And so it goes deeper than just jumping on a trend or reproducing something that was done in the past, because the way they expressed jump power in the late 1920s was their very own specific way of doing it. So they were very avant garde, they were very modern for the time. So we took that into consideration and we felt that. That we had to bring that modernity as well to this revival. So it's a lot about analyzing what the brand was. And within this time frame, which we felt was the most important time frame, because niton existed from 1919 up until the late 50s, where the name disappeared. But. But we would say that the most important and interesting time is between the 1919 and the late 1930s, and then it changed ownership and gradually it disappeared. So it's about finding what is like the essence and the most important thing about the brand, and how do you carry it forward? And sometimes when I say we're lucky, is that sometimes you look at old brands and they've had so many lives or they've done so many things that it's very hard to find the essence of the brand. Right. And I feel that it's also the case with a lot of brands that are still active today is that what they've lost is what made them special, either because they wanted to do too many things, or also because the times change and the market becomes challenging. So you need to adapt and so you need to do things that sometimes are not the most appropriate for you. And I think we were lucky because this brand remained untouched in the sense that it kept its original DNA, its original philosophy. So in the end it was more of a work of sorting out things and keeping it as close, but also as far from what was the initial brand. But we didn't have to reinvent the narrative.
- [22:10]
A
So before I ask my next question, I want to pay you a compliment, maybe two compliments, and make one apology. Firstly, for my pronunciation, I have to apologize. I've been watching the World cup too much, obviously, because I sound like an American saying Naitan when it's Niton. And sorry about that, I just let myself slip into it sometimes. But Niton, if anyone's listening, it's me being an idiot. There's no disagreement as to how the brand is pronounced. Compliments website, incredible thing to interact with. It's very common that people want to create a striking website that is animated and flows and delivers the information well and communicates the brand's not just aesthetic but intentions directly. But it's very, very hard to do it and you've done it extremely well. So if anyone has not been to the Nitton website, I really would recommend it, especially if you're thinking about building your own website for your own watch project. The address is N I T O N Swiss. So go over there, check it out and enjoy scrolling, as I have done, because it really is quite special. And the second compliment goes to the watch as well, of course, because the execution is superb and it's a completely different strata of the industry from your previous project, which is where my next question actually focuses. Because as someone that's worked with independent brands myself and got certain brands off the ground in the early phases, one of the most common customer queries that I have, or maybe should I say potential customer queries, is will this brand be around in 5 years time? Will it be around in 10 years time? And that is something that you have to allay. Those fears are genuine and they are real. And I wanted to ask, what is the state of Fugue? And yeah, there was a pun there deliberately, right now and does it still exist? Are the watches still available? What if people have bought them, can they still get them serviced? And how have you learned from that experience and built that into Nitton going forward?
- [24:07]
C
So to the question of is Fugue still active? The answer is no. So officially, as of end of last year, we stopped all operations. That doesn't mean that the watch cannot be serviced and I think one of the advantages of working with off the shelf movements like we did in that case was a Sellita SW200, it's that they're very common and they're very easy to service from any watchmaker. And the watch itself didn't have any specific casing or construction that would avoid anyone from going to their local watchmaker and getting it serviced. So that's one thing. The second thing is what I understood while working on Fugue is that again, the market that I was focusing on was very crowded and it was a very capital intensive market. And I also felt that it wasn't a market. And I'm going to be quite blunt here, that had much of future and this is my point of view, but I feel like the watch industry as a whole is switching from a volume industry to like a big volume industry to a smaller volume industry. So I feel like the choice of doing something that. More expensive but that has more value in general and doing less quantities is where the future is. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any entry points, options. I'm just saying that this is where I feel that both my skills and also the trend is going to be going towards too. Because simply watches have changed their role and they've changed how. We also changed how we consume watches, right? So the watches have changed their role in the industry, in the market and actually to be completely transparent, I had an idea of kind of turning Fugue around by coming with a product that was much more high hand, much more developed, but in the end it also didn't really make sense because at the beginning the intention with Fugue was to make Swiss made watches available with a cool design. And so the accessibility was really part of the project. And so coming with something much more high end, with no real link between the two felt like too much of a stretch and protecting the brand. Positioning for me is really important and doing something that is consistent over time is also the best way to build a brand. So in that sense, the Niton project came about also at a time where it aligned with what my, with both the skills that I had acquired and also to the vision that I had for what a watch brand should be in today's day and age. And I think it also aligned with what Yvon had in mind because that's another thing to say, I would have never done a watch brand with my name. So this project was also interesting because it was an existing name, it was a name that it wasn't my name or Yvonne's name. And we both are, I would say, humble enough to not want to put our names on a dial. And so this felt like the right project to do it.
- [28:30]
A
I couldn't agree with you more regarding the decision to start again basically with a brand that was there waiting for you to bring back to life, rather than trying to push Fugue up into that higher price bracket. I really personally believe that brands should do what they do and do it well and not try and do everything and just accept that, you know, you're not going to hit every single target market under one label. That's a fool's errand in my opinion. One quick question on Fugue before I ask the next question that one of your comments raised and that is componentry. I mean, you made a very smart decision using off the shelf movements. So that should Fugue wrap up operations as it did. People could always get the watch service. But what if, for example, the watch leaks and the dial is damaged? Do you have a stock of components that can still be ordered from service partners, for example?
- [29:18]
C
Yeah, I mean, all of the suppliers that we work with are still around today and they still have the capacity to produce. So I guess it's a question of quantities and price, but I'm still around. The people that developed the watch are still around. So there's always a way to find solution.
- [29:43]
A
That's very reassuring. That is very reassuring and I think something that will reassure anybody who's thinking about spending a significant chunk of change, shall we say, on a Niton product, because they are not at all in the same price bracket. We're talking over 40,000 Swiss francs. AM I correct there?
- [30:01]
C
Yep, correct.
- [30:02]
A
So when it comes to a changing of the landscape where you say we're reducing the volume of products created and people are really now more focused on these very special, very high end pieces, I wanted to say that from my perspective, I feel that there is definitely a change happening, but it's actually fanning out towards both ends of the market where most activity is taking place. You may well have been one of the first brands to really enter this now. Very healthy, very crowded, very saturated, one might say entry level bracket. But there's more and more and more of those brands than ever before and some of them seem to be doing incredibly well. I'll point to Studio Underdog as a working example. But you could take any of the guys that showed at Chronopolis, for example, Serica, Nevada, Grenchen, Space One, Baltic, maybe even atelier Wen, although they're a little bit higher, they're going great guns. I'm not saying that you weren't right to do what you did. I think that many of those brands would love to be able to sell 10 products a year rather than 10,000 and make the same amount of profit. But what do you think's happening in the middle of the market? What do you think is happening with the Omega region and the Rolex region and even stuff going up to maybe as far as 20,000? Do you think that's suffering now and will continue to suffer?
- [31:16]
C
I think to your initial point, what's going to keep suffering is this idea that a brand can do it all, or can at least not even from a price standpoint, but also from a stylistic standpoint or from an identity standpoint. I believe that brands that are able to do the best tool watch and the best dress watch and all sorts of the best watches in all the categories, I think that's going to disappear and brands are going to become more and more specialized into what makes them different. Right. And on the entry level, what I think has changed from my Kickstarter days is that there's a lot more creativity today than there was back then. Back then, I think everyone was doing what I think the only brand has succeeded in doing since then is it's Baltic. It's this vintage identity, right? This vintage inspired watches from the 60s, 70s. This, I think, is changed because today when you look at this entry level, you don't only see these vintage inspired watches, but you also see things that are very futuristic. You see things that are quirky, that are fun, that are, you know, so it's, I guess the entry level has brought in more playfulness, more creativity, and that makes it so that it's working as well. And I think in their own way, all of these brands are also bringing a proposal that is very specialized, right? So the brands that are succeeding have a very strong identity. They're not like copycats of each other. So that's, I think, where they are able to thrive. And so I don't think it's a question of price point. I think it's a question of what is the proposition. Right. And so I think that in between the Omegas, the Rolexes, et cetera, I feel like, you know, Omega is always going to be selling some moonwatches. I don't think that's going to be an issue, however, like stretching the moonwatch in all sorts of different directions, in all sorts of different price points. That's going to be more challenging because the people are not going to come to Omega for a copycat or like a lower version of their moonwatch. They're going to come for the Moonwatch, the OG Moonwatch, right. And so I Feel that a little bit like we saw also with AP a few years back when I was working there, that they try to diversify with the code 1159. And we can say what we want about the success of that collection, but it's not to the point. It's not to the level of the Royal Oak, because the Royal Oak will stay the Royal Oak for them. It will stay kind of the flagship. And in that sense, I think Rolex has done a better job in the sense that when you look at Rolex, when you look at all the collections and the identity, I feel like the identity. Identity is much more present and much more easier to identify between all of their collections compared to other ones. So, yeah, again, I don't think it's a question of price point. I think it's a question of identity and consistency.
- [34:59]
B
I really, really wanted to steer the conversation back to Niton, but, you know, Leo, I always love to talk to you. And when we talk, it's never short lunches or no lunches involved. You provoked me, though. You triggered me. You mentioned Omega, you mentioned Speedy, you mentioned Swatch and ap. So we have to take a sidestep here. Shed a light on the initial Moon Swatch, then take a bridge Swatch Blompain, and then elaborate on your old love, AP and the Pop Royal. Just shed a light on that in the whole context that we are discussing right now, please.
- [35:45]
C
Yeah, well, I'm not gonna make a lot of friends there. No. But, no, to be honest, these, I think, to me, they feel like. Opportunistic coup. To me, they're like tactics, tactical operations of both brand awareness, because, of course, they shed more visibility on the brands involved. And so that's one also brand equity, to a certain point for some of them. For example, I think that seeing a different face of AP playing, being more playful with a project like that also, to me reinforces what AP has been known for for a long time, which is breaking the codes of traditional watchmaking. And I think that is in line with their identity in some way. But in the end, to me, it doesn't feel like something that will build the brand on the long term. It feels like the kind of spike of visibility, the spike in sales that will benefit the brands, but it would not build consistency. It will not build something over the long term.
- [37:25]
B
And their argument on the Royal Pop, that it was meant to bring in the newer generations, call them Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and to inspire mechanical watchmaking.
- [37:39]
C
So this, I don't buy it. Okay. I feel like there's a lot of interest in mechanical traditional watches from the younger generation without having to buy a swatch or do something with swatch because personally I think that swatch doesn't appeal to the Gen Z as much as they want us to believe. I feel like, you know, a different thing that to me has bring people into the mechanical watch industry and interests like it did for myself is vintage watches. Because vintage watches will always be accessible. There will always be an entry point in vintage watches, whatever your budget is. And I think this will be more interesting for these people than buying a swatch. Even though I love swatches. But I think it's a different category, right? So I think to get to your Royal Oak, to get to your AP, you start with a vintage whatever at 50, 150 bucks. And this is still the case. I mean, I started collecting, buying on ebay. And on ebay is the place where you can find a lot of nice things that are mechanical and not expensive. And I see a lot of younger people interested in vintage watches and building collections of vintage watches before they get, you know, the budget to buy into the bigger brands.
- [39:23]
B
So if I'm Nick Hayek Jr. I ring up Yvonne Helio. Gentlemen, I want to make a jump hour collab. What is Niton's answer?
- [39:38]
C
I'm not interested for now. I mean there could be tons of reasons why we could be interested in. Because again, I think tactical operations like that, they also serve some objectives, but I think they serve short term objectives and sometimes you need to make the sale or you need to make whatever, but at this stage we don't need that and we're not interested in that for now.
- [40:10]
B
You really don't need that because you guys literally jumped onto the market. You only made twice, 19 watches in gold and platinum. I believe you got flooded by not only requests, but actual sales. Did you in your wildest dreams expect this? And therefore, I don't dare to say manipulate the market, but kept it rather limited on purpose or were you being modest?
- [40:44]
C
No, honestly, we were never expecting such success, such interest in general. And we feel very, very, very lucky. And you know, to us this brand has something magical. Like when we discovered it, we had something that, you know, it's hard to explain, like it was almost like going deep in the ocean and finding a treasure box and opening it, like, wow, what is this like? And to some degree, if that emotion was passed on to the people that were interested, I can explain the fact that it's such a special brand that it got a very special Response. But never would we have imagined to allocate all of the first pieces in such short time. And to be honest, we, we were taken aback and we had to kind of rethink of what the next steps would be because we were expecting to take much more time to sell them. So that's very, very positive. But we always thought of building the brand gradually for the long term so we would not be manipulating the market or taking too many orders at first and then not being able to either build the quality we want or differentiate within the projects that we want. So yeah, we take it step by step,
- [42:23]
B
Taking it step by step. What did you do? Direct to consumer? Do you have retailers? What's the strategy and what happened after Watches and wonders? Were you officially physically launch the product, doing a press release beforehand.
- [42:42]
C
So we always thought of this brand as a brand and our vision is that to build the brand, the brand can build itself, but it also needs partner to build it on different areas. So for us, the retailers were always part of the equation, always part of the conversation. What happened is that we also wanted to sell direct, especially at the beginning, and we got the response that we got. So the first pieces were all sold direct to collectors. And I think in our mind we also want to cultivate the relationship with the collectors because we feel that today there is a very interesting conversation to have with them. They also look for the proximity to the brands and this is also how we're going to be building the brand. But after that we also decided to onboard a few retailers to have a local presence on the key markets. So today we have six retailers worldwide, two of them in the us, two in Europe, one in the Middle east and one in Asia. Because for us it's important to start building a footprint, even though it's a relatively small footprint, but to have also people that are able to show the piece locally, to help us also understand the market, to be able to do events with some trusted partners. So again, this was always part of the plan to have retailers and to grow the brand as a brand. Even though we want to work with like minded people, people that have this independence at heart, that want to promote brands, that push the creativity, that are able to speak about the product in the way we do speak about the product as well. So again, it's a partnership with like minded people, it's a small industry and we, so we want to build the brand like that.
- [44:59]
B
Please do feel free to mention those six because I think there are a lot of collectors listening to the Real Time show that are eager to get their hands on or learn more about Niton.
- [45:08]
C
Yeah, of course. So from west to east, we work with collectivorology on the west coast in California, then we work with Esper Lux on the east coast in Europe, we work with Chronopassion in Paris and with Verga in Milano. Then we work with Sediki in Dubai and Swiss Prestige in Hong Kong.
- [45:38]
B
If the first set are sold out, what's next for Niton?
- [45:46]
C
So, again, back to this idea of building a brand. The first 19 and 19 pieces were never intended to be a limited edition in the sense that once we are done, we stop it and then we do something completely different. We launched this first timepiece, the Prima Jump Power, as an iconic watch that represents a passage between the historical Niton and the Niton of today. And for us, it's a very important piece because it kind of summarizes what our philosophy is, both in terms of design, in terms of finishing. We have the Geneva seal on this watch, and this is something that's very important for the history of Niton also, I would say the creativity. So when you look at the bridges, they have a very specific finishing on the movement. Also the fact that we have precious metals. Niton used to do mainly precious metals also, historically. So it checks a lot of boxes of what Niton was and what Nitton is. So to us, it's a piece that will continue to stay on in the collection as a flagship, but we will be making. So we will be making a regular version of the rose gold and the platinum that we would be producing at, I would say, 30 pieces for each reference per year.
- [47:24]
A
I was taken by this movement, the Geneva Seal movement. I think it's beautifully finished. It's lovely to see a form movement actually fit in the case. And the font is top draw. It's original, creative, looks like nothing else, brings everything bang up to date and is wonderfully applied to the bridges. Now, when I see a movement like that, I think that's proprietary, that's been made exclusively for you by a specialist. However, I've seen it described on some established media titles, as in House, and I was just wondering if you clear that up for us. Is it in House or is it proprietary?
- [48:00]
C
So what we do and what we bring as the Nitton signature is the development of the product from A to Z. So both the development of the design of the casing and the rest is done by us, as well as the development, the engineering and the construction of the movement. What we don't do is we don't produce the actual parts or we don't produce the actual movement. So we have teamed up with a few different suppliers to do the actual manufacturing. But I think this is really important to say because a lot of the time you have brands that go to a manufacturer and they say, okay, I want a movement, I want it like this, I want X amount of power reserve, I want jump power or whatever, and then the manufacturer will be producing the movement. In our case, we came with some very, very strong ideas about what we wanted. The Geneva seat is one of them. The four movement is one of them. We also wanted to have the bridges screwed a certain way. And these were all things that, that the manufacturer would have never proposed to us directly. So it's always been a conversation and a challenge between us and the manufacturer to be able to achieve what the vision was. So in our case, I would say that we have a lot of added value when it comes to the movement. So I don't know how you want to call it, if you want to call it proprietary or in house. The fact is that we don't produce it in house, but we produce it with the manufacturer. But it's proprietary in the sense that we have designed it and we have came up with all of the technical ideas that went into it.
- [50:01]
A
Yeah, I think I would term it as in house design, proprietary, manufactured. And I think that that is an accurate way to communicate that because you obviously have gone above and beyond with the specifics of this calibre to make sure that it was exactly what you wanted, exactly what you felt, felt the product deserved. And it's a great first shot, to be honest, because it bodes very well for the future. I know that this platform has got more mileage in it and we'll see more iterations or more versions of this jump hour complication in this case and whatnot. But can you give us a little look further down the line in five, 10 years where you see Niton being? And do you imagine a whole range of products that follow the same high level aesthetics? It.
- [50:47]
C
Yeah, definitely. I think that the brand is. So the brand will be built around a collection of products that, you know, take this idea of, of this first product, but kind of extend it in many different ways. I think that, you know, we are going to be exploring a few different directions. Niton was known for participating in chronometry contests. So chronometry is definitely something that we are interested in. They were also doing a lot of artistic watches. So artistic watches, meaning ladies, cocktail watches. And crazy types of forms of movements. They no longer have an L shaped movement, which is really, really cool and which is not something see around today. So the goal is not necessarily to be stuck to this identity that we have in the first product, but it's to explore many different directions and again to stay exclusive in the sense of what I was mentioning earlier on is to do a certain number of watches per year, per reference and not go beyond that. To keep the exclusivity and to be able to grow within a range of different products that will all have their own thing in the sense that we don't want to do too many versions or too many animations of the same product. That's not our goal. And as we do it, we will try to always bring something that makes them special and that it's not just different color dial or different color strap or whatever. We're going to try and interpret it as a standalone product with its own identity that will stem from the same platform or the same idea, but expressed in a different way.
- [53:05]
B
Sometimes when I speak to people before we record the actual episodes, I forget to re ask important questions. Please elaborate on the name Niton and the rocks in Lake Geneva, of course.
- [53:21]
C
Thank you for reminding me that, Ellen. So the Niton name is actually a name that comes from a very specific landmark for Switzerland and for Geneva. It's the name of two stones that, that sit in the lake in Geneva. And I encourage everyone listening to try and find them because actually everyone passes by them and no one sees them. They're just beside Jedo, so just by the shore you can see them. And there are remains of glaciers that fell into the lake over 100 million years ago. So they're very old rocks. And what was interesting is that the three founders of Niton didn't decide to use their own names as the names for the brand. And this I think is a good circles back to our idea of not putting our name on a diary or things like that. It's a name that is not their name, but it's a name that is a name of a brand. So. So when you think about it, in 1919 these guys were already very forward looking because they thought of a name that was fitting for a watch brand or for a watch company that wasn't their own name. And the idea of branding back then was not something very elaborate. And what's interesting is that this name is both short, you can say it easily in a few different languages. So. So from a marketing standpoint, it's a great choice but to finish the story on the rocks. So these rocks are used to measure the altitudes of summits in Switzerland. So every summit in Switzerland is measured from what we call the repair du niton, the repair being the landmark of the altitude of all of these summits in Switzerland. So it's both a symbol of provenance because it's in Geneva and the company and the brand is from Geneva. It's also somehow a symbol of stability because it's been there for a very long time. It's been used as a reference point for a very long time and it's a symbol of Swissness as well. So it ticks a lot of boxes in terms of branding and in terms of what it symbolizes for us. It's also very mysterious because it's probably the. The most unknown symbol of Geneva. Even though it's very visible when you look for it, it's very easy to see, but not many people know about it. So for us it shows this idea of bringing back a brand that was so prestigious but that so few people know about. So again, it's. There's a parallel which is interesting there.
- [56:26]
A
Leo, thanks for that. That was an incredible interview and an easy one for us. Very few edits need to be done there. You speak extremely eloquently about your brand and your experience in the industry thus far, which is probably no surprise given your experience of the communication side of things. So if any of our listeners have any questions for Leo, about Nitton or otherwise, then please do get in touch. You can contact us on the usual channels. You know where we are on Instagram therealtime.show or you can use the official contact form on the website www.therealt time show. We'll be back soon with more top end watch making content and interviews with the industry's finest. Until then, stay safe and keep on ticking.