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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:06]
B
Watch fans. And welcome to another edition of the Real Time show with me, your friendly neighborhood watchmaker, Rob Knobs, and our friendly neighborhood jeweler, Alain Ben Joseph calling in all the way from Landon 10. You're not in Amsterdam anymore, are we, Dorothy?
- [00:19]
A
Well, sweet, sweet pies. I woke up this morning, I had no idea where I was. My kids woke up in the middle of the night, and I'm like, huh? Is the form starting now? I'm like, oh, no, the form was yesterday. Am I in Glass Hutte? Dresden, Frankfurt, Munich. At so many German cities in less than 36 hours. I was a bit confused, but what a blast it was. It was great to see you. I arrived rather late after missing my connecting flight with 30 seconds. But in Germany, rules. Rules are rules or signed. They wouldn't stop the bus going to the airplane. So I had to figure out how to get to Glasswater. I arrived at 11:30 at night, finding you way in the back of the bar, according to my cab driver, the best bar in Dresden.
- [01:21]
B
Is that what he said?
- [01:23]
A
That's what he said to me. And I found you there with eight pints of beer in front of you and two in each hand.
- [01:35]
B
Right?
- [01:35]
A
And there is proof. That's on my Instagram.
- [01:38]
B
There's not proof of that. Okay? There were eight glasses of beer in front of me and one in my hand. All right, eight 0.4 centiliters. There was nowhere near a pint in there. And I did not drink them all myself. Which you've been trying to convince everybody. I. I have, but I didn't. I swear I didn't. Maybe most honestly, not all of them, honestly, after.
- [02:00]
A
After admitted he was a good boy. He didn't drink all of them. It's actually a good magnet for attracting, like, fun people because everybody swarmed in at a certain point. They called the last round, and then everybody came to our table because we still had beers left. But you know what? We need to stop now because we are turning into a podcast that I always criticize that they talk for 15 minutes about the weather, what drinks they have and what sneakers they're wearing and what is new on Netflix, et cetera. So let's dive in. Rob, we met at the sixth forum by Nomos in Glashute. For those that have never heard of that, what is the Forum?
- [02:41]
B
Well, the Forum has become over the last six years, you said, Nomos's annual meetup of their very close friends, retailers, journalists from around the world. Everyone descends upon Dresden initially and then out to Glosseter on one of two days where they run a presentation, a very well oiled presentation. Now the format has settled in nicely over the six years. Everyone's extremely comfortable, relaxed. There is normally a speech from Uwe, the CEO of Nomos Glassiter, and then you'll have some technical talks, you'll have some product release talks, and then there's always a keynote speaker at the end. This year, of course, it was our friend and TRTS network member Lydia Winters, who has been working with Nomos as a consultant now for the best part of a year. I think it's getting on for it. Yeah, it definitely is, because she was involved in Watches and Wonders and she'd been there a while already, so that was great. Listening to her experiences of our previous career as the. What was it? Director of Fun or Head of Fun? Was that her original job title at Minecraft? So she was instrumental in building the Minecraft community into the 300 million strong tribe that it is today. And she's obviously a trailblazer in that space, in the game space. Now she's come over to Watches, which was her passion and hobby. One that she picked up from her partner, Vu Booi, who was there, and her co host on the this Watch Life podcast, which we implore you all to listen to because it's wonderful. And now she's made it her profession, her second profession. She left the gaming world, she's come over to watchmaking. So we've got all the goodness of Lydia and all of her experience and it's a great thing. She's a perfect fit for the brand and it was lovely to see the family continue to grow and those relationships that we enjoy picking up every 12 months strengthen and deepen even further.
- [04:28]
A
Something that only daunted on me, this forum.
- [04:32]
B
It's dawned on you? Not daunted. If it daunted on you, it would terrify you. But dawned as in like the rising of the sun.
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A
It actually terrified me.
- [04:41]
B
All right, okay, my bad.
- [04:43]
A
I'm like this. This guy looks so much like you were. And only afterwards when I saw his name tag, I saw surnames also aren't.
- [04:54]
B
Yeah, yeah. Robert's been working. So Robert Arendt is Uwe Arendt's son, one of three young Arendts, but the only one that works in the company at the moment. He's been in and around Nomos for many, many years. In fact, we worked together when he was probably about 17 or 18 in Basel back in 2000 and would have been 17 and 18, I think. Robbed first came out and he I and Florian Langenbucher, who you also met, who's now in PR with Alexa Montag up in Berlin, working out of the Berliner Blau office in Kreuzberg, shared a house together in Basel every year. So most of the staff were in hotels. A lot of them were in Weil am Rhein, which is just over the German border. They would get a tram into the Messe every day. But me, Rob and Florian stayed in what was actually an artists commune. We weren't there alone. We had like these resident artists there as well. It was a very strange but very lovely setup. And I was kind of charged with chaperoning Rob in his very young years when he was a miner, resulting in one of the most memorable experiences of my Baselworld career. It would have been the second or third year that I was there with Nomos, because the first year I drank like a fish, and the second and third years I went teetotal for the event so I could recover my reputation from year one, shall we say. And I found myself in a brothel with Uwe and Roland and I think Merlin Schwerner, Roland's son, and maybe Florian was there as well, and Robert Arendt, who at this point I'm pretty sure was 17 or 18 or around that age, at 3 in the morning, because they do really good steak and chips at this brothel, and it's the only reason why we go there, hands down, honestly. No word of a lie. And Uwe loves the steak and chips. So we'd gone there to have this. And I was sitting there thinking, this is a bit shady, you know, can't be. Can't be hanging around this place like this late at night, especially because me and Rob weren't eating. So I was like, right, I'm going to take Rob home. So we're going to. We're going to go back to the place you guys continue to enjoy the delicious meats that they serve at the brothel. And they did, and that's the end of that story. And there's no more color to be added to it whatsoever.
- [07:07]
A
Bringing it back to business patch. So second generation in the company, maybe. For our listeners that don't know that much about Nomos, it's 30, if I'm counting correctly, two or three years old.
- [07:27]
B
No, I mean, we'll be 35 years old now. It was founded in 1990, very soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, by Roland Schwernett, who was from Dusseldorf, I think is where he was living, whether he's a Dusseldorf native or not. I can never rem remember, he was working in computers at the time, but he saw the opportunity to pick up the Nomos name. So he did. And he started running the whole brand out of a small office above a kebab shop actually and spent two years designing the initial collection, which was launched in 1992 and comprised the Tangenta, the Tangenta, the Ludwig, the Tetra and the Orion. And all of those models are still in the collection today. So in operation with watches on the market for 33 years.
- [08:12]
A
Here you go. Still family owned because Roland still owns the company. The CEO who you just referred to, he, he, he did an amazing job because both them don't like to speak English so much. Roland hardly speaks English. Who have found it actually. He was very nervous, but I think he did a great job because the team told me that he didn't want to go on stage. But I'm happy he did. And he shared that. He's a watchmaker. I believe he was fifth generation or something like that. He said of watchmakers in his family. He's an engineer and I can't imagine a better CEO. They're fully independent. We had the tour of both the manufacture and the chronometry department of Nomos. My third time in glass, visiting Nomos. And I enjoyed every single time because some of the journalists that I hung out with were complaining. Some scooted off that have been before to take some pictures of the novelties already. I never in my life want to skip this stuff because there's so much to see. And you can with nomosis, literally touch everything, look at everything, look at the schematics, always, you know, photograph them. I FaceTime my kids because of the time zone difference. My kids were on their way to school so I FaceTimed them. So they were super happy. I even got some discarded platins or bushes that didn't make the quality controls for my kids. So those were souvenirs. I love that. And I actually that maybe the highlight of my trip was I bumped into somebody by accident while I wasn't paying attention. I turned around, I'm like, hey, Mark, that was Marvin, my design hero. Wow.
- [10:12]
B
And I mean, Matt Brown designed the Metro famously and also worked on the two special editions for ACE that you were double wristing with the other day.
- [10:20]
A
Right, exactly. So I had the honor, well, the first few to work with you on our first Ace No1's collabs. And earlier this year we launched reference eight and number nine. And those were two metro models. Every Metro model has to go through Mark Brown's studio and therefore his hands and brain. And because we are so close to Nomos, they said, you know what, we'll just connect you and you deal with Mark directly, which normally they don't at Nomos.
- [10:51]
B
Nice.
- [10:52]
A
So nice. They made my bucket list thing happen. Was awesome. Awesome guy. He reminded us, you and I, that we still need to record a TRTS episode with him. Oops, sorry, Mark, but we're already emailing with him since this morning to pick a date. So that was a highlight for me. I didn't know he was coming. I've only met him virtually, so it was super cool to hang out with him all day. We did some jamming, brainstorming. He told me about projects he's working on and funnily enough, he's never designed another watch.
- [11:31]
B
And that is weird. It is weird. I mean, the Metro was such a seminal piece for the brand. I mean, it came out maybe nomos had like three of these moments, I think in the 2010s where the brand just leapt forward suddenly. One of those moments was, I would say, the Weltzeit, which was designed by Hannes Vetstein, still my favorite model. Then the Metro really gave the brand a shot of vitality in the arm, a real youthfulness and the very famous power Reserve. The 1101 of course was the icon of the collection and remains the iconic Metro, I think, not just in my opinion, but probably on balance, the world's opinion. And then of course the neomatic movements in 2015, which really celebrated Nomos status as an in house manufacturer, pushed the brand into an international audience like never before. And it has these, I'd say those the triumvirate of like really significant 2000s releases. And for Mark to still be such an important and visible figure in a brand and to have finally come to his first forum. By the way, he's never been before. He did appear once on video, but he's never been physically present. It's just a great thing. All these years later and he started chatting to me at the coffee bar on the first day because we actually went on separate days this year. I went to the German Day and you went to the International Day. And he came up to me and just started a conversation with me in German. Assuming of course, as everybody at the German Day can speak German, that I would converse with him, which I did. Although to be honest, I was a bit tired and stumbling a little bit. He didn't seem to notice that I wasn't native. I think he probably just thought I was thick. But then later on it dawned on him, he was like, oh, he is actually the English one. And I'm like, well, yeah, but it was a real pleasure to have a chance to speak with him in such a relaxed environment. Let's talk about what else we got the chance to experience in that relaxed environment. Let's talk about some watches, if I may.
- [13:31]
A
I wanted to use Mark Brown as a segue to talk about models because it's very interesting what you said. I came on board as a Nomos dealer just after the 1101 launched and that has been in the top three or five bestsellers definitely at Ace and I think even maybe worldwide. Yeah, up until when the segue to this year, the Club Sport World Timer, which blew everybody's socks off this year straight hit both the limited edition, both the two, I call them the civilian models, the 790 and the 791. So the blue dial and the silver dial. Waiting lists are still about eight months, but good news for our dear listeners. We were literally taken everywhere in the manufacture, including all the workshops and all the watchmakers benches. I've seen a lot of World Timers being assembled, so they're not doing Rolex styled market making thing in the watchmaking. They simply can't keep up with demand. And the demand is there and they listen to the market. The six pack of limited editions sold out very quickly. So when I arrived at 11:30 on the Monday night, nobody wanted to reveal from the Dutch group, the German group, what novelties there are. Including Rob, including Florian. Florian was rocking the watch in the morning, Tuesday morning and he sat at my breakfast table and he pulled his cuff over his watch and by no means could I bribe him to show me the watch. So I had to wait till the Forum.
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B
Yeah, we did keep you dangling there, didn't we? Sorry about that.
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A
Yeah, so. So that was. That wasn't cool. So let's use that as a segue, Rob, to what the novelties were this week. But I'm sad to say I saw the watches at 11:30 in the morning. The embargo was until 2pm, 2 in the afternoon on the Tuesday. I'm not quite sure what day this episode comes out, but hopefully quickly. But the sad news is ACE already sold them out under 12 hours. So there are only 175 pieces of a new trio of Club Sport World Timers. Awesome pieces. But at breakfast I saw under Florian's cuff. It had to be a World Timer because I saw the push piece, the.
- [16:13]
B
Pusher, nice.
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A
Hole I said to him, I hope, I hope he didn't do just 175. Please, Florian, not 10 times more. So 1750. Please tell me you made 17,500. So he started laughing. He says, alon, normally I wouldn't answer this question, but he says, on a serious note, we can't even produce that many in one or two years of just one reference. So talk to me about that, Rob. So what did you think of the model? What are they and why can't they make that many?
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B
Okay, so the model we're talking about, it's a three piece capsule collection that joins the Club Sport Neomatic World Timer family. This capsule collection is called Night Navigation and it's inspired by not just the lights in a plane's cockpit, but also the lights viewable from the air. There are three colorways. All of them use black as a base. There's an orange colorway which is called Grid and this is inspired by the grid system of road networks in the States with orange street lamps. There is a turquoise colorway called Trace, which was most people's favorite, I've got to say, and that is inspired by the sort of cool blue lights of the city lower down. Less, less, less altitude than the grid. And the third model, which is a kind of yellow green as I see it, there's some dispute as to what color it is. Some people say it's also orange. I don't think it is, but I think you think it's kind of a pale orange. That is called Vector and that was inspired by lights along the coast a little more yellow, a little warmer, a little more summery. For me, that's the one that actually looks most like a cockpit instrument because it has a kind of almost luminous green daylight look to it. All of the colors in question glow in a dark themselves. So you've got an orange glow, a blue glow and then a greenish glow from the Vector. They are all accented with an orange home time hand and an orange city indicator. And obviously for the grid model that means it's orange on orange, but for the others there's a real pop of color. It works really well with a turquoise Trace model. They've got open case backs. The ClubSport NeoMatic WorldTimer has got its own cool little rotor with an engraved globe on is the first Neomatic World timer from the brand. Because the Weltzeit is powered by the DuW5201 movement, which is of a different architecture entirely. If you look at the cross section of these move, you Will see quite significantly how much they've changed from the 5201 to this reference, which is in the Neomatic line. It's around four and a half, maybe 4.5 millimeters thick. The movement, the whole watch is 10 millimeters thick. Comes on a bracelet or a leather strap or a fabric strap. But the bracelet is really the way to wear these clubsport models. I think it's got water resistance to 100 meters. Is that correct, Alon? Or is it even more. Actually, this one could go down further, right.
- [19:34]
A
This is 10 bars. Because I think all the nomos they put as five bars. This is 10 bars. And. And they. They actually called it a God, that watch. At a certain point I'm like, really? Should you call up? And then I thought about it, I'm like, yeah. It has that red tab circle ring on the crown. When you unscrew it is a visual reminder that your crown is open. So to make sure it's screwed down when you are near water. Amazing piece.
- [20:09]
B
Yeah. It's kind of. Kind of hard to get one's head around because this watch in house, Slimline World timer on a metal bracelet limited to 175 pieces for each of these executions. So it's 175 grids, 175 traces, 175 vectors. It retails for the sum total of €3,940. I attended the German day. As I said, I was rapidly translating and making notes as best I could. I got to this price and I put a big question mark next to it because I thought I'd misheard it. I thought like, oh, I must have got a number jumbled up there, because I heard the 40 and thought maybe it was 4900. It can't be under 4. It can't be under 4. It's impossible for it to be under 4. It's almost €1,000 cheaper than the Weltzeit, which is an old model, obviously. I think the Welze site Now is around 4860. So what do you make of that, Alon?
- [21:10]
A
So I was also sitting, taking notes. But the forum is like a class layout, well, actually a wedding layout. So I was sitting with my back to the stage. I had to turn my chair around. What I love about Nomos, they always have a beautiful notebook and beautiful nomos pencils. And I love to write with pencils. So like a good schoolboy, I turned my chair, sat down, listened and absorbed every word. And I was taking notes also very quickly. And as I'm a a commercial guy, price is an important thing. So I made sure I'm paid attention. And on my table I had a lovely Norwegian colleague, a jeweler from Stavander and two Greek retailers from different companies from Athens. And the lady sitting next to me from Athens was copying my notes, but in a nice way and she didn't hear the price as well. But I remember 3940 because that was the launching price of the regular world timers as well as the six pack limited editions that launched during watches and wonders 2025. So I have to say I find it very elegant of Nomos to price their limited editions at the same price as a regular core range model because we all know that to produce smaller batches of watches and or dials or special engravings make production more expensive. So I think it's bonkers. They had a visual overview what the market said about the watch. So they created a real of an accumulation of all the content creators and watch journalists and media. And several times they put in the video that they said we hope NOMOS isn't watching. This is priced way too low. So to explain to our listeners that aren't that familiar with Nomos, Rob, why do both you and I and the majority of the watchmaking community and those buyers of almost a thousand to fifteen hundred world time collectors think this is so valuable? Because they flew off the shelf and they keep on flying off the shelf. And the thing is, they created a new caliber. So the Dwarf 3202 is a new caliber. Who knows? And we all know it takes millions to develop a new caliber. So walk us through why this is so special.
- [23:54]
B
Well, it's a good question and I'll just address the point that you asked me previously that I didn't get around to you. So why is it so hard to make something like this when you're working with fine tolerances as they are? Obviously you have to expect a certain amount of failure or a certain amount of resistance from a movement to be put together. Now NOTMOS has got a handle on this very nicely because they own their means of production. Of course, they create almost every component of this watch themselves. And certainly the ones that I'm referencing with this answer, they also have extremely high standards in house, but they take their time in ensuring that what they're making works. And so rather than them having to wrestle so much with this movement, they put the time and the patience and focus into the development of the components, the manufacturing of the components, the quality controlling of those Components. So it's, it's a long process. It's a caliber that has some pretty unusual pieces in it. It's some very specific pieces. And although it is a new caliber, what's been great about the evolution of the Neomatic family since the DW3001's release in 2015is that it's not modular, but it is relatively receptive to adaptations. We saw with the 6101, which is the update original update movement with this great peripheral date, which of course can also be changed to have a normal traditional date window. Or in the case of the update 2 or 2 update or 2 date. Is it called date 2? Whatever it is, I love that watch. The one with the double date. I think that's brilliant. The all you had to do, all I say all normals had to do. It was a huge developmental process. It was an absolutely genius upgrade. Was built outwards of the caliber, which they did. And within that process they created the fail safe mechanism of the date. And within this world, timer processes of course created again, not just a complicated movement that displays a lot of useful information on the dial, but one that is very, very robust and very hard to break. It is absolutely rock solid. When you press that pusher at 2:00 clock to jump your city ring around in an anti clockwise direction and for your hour hand to pop forward in a clockwise direction to the next time zone, it feels like a million bucks. And yeah, they've spent that on the development thereof. Why are we so crazy about it? Well, nobody else makes this movement. I mean, the Weltzite itself was lauded for years as one of the most intuitive and easy to use complications when you're traveling the world, especially when you're going forwards in time. It does require many clicks to get yourself back in time. If you have to knock the watch back one or two hours. But that's a joy in itself because the watch is so easy and pleasurable to operate. You can't get this from anywhere else. It's designed for Nomos, so there's no shortcuts taken in the esthetics as well. This is really important, like when brands buy in movements off the shelf from Selleta or Eta or Soproduct or Le Ju, the layouts and the dimensions of those watches. So you often find that something has been somewhat awkwardly forced into a lineup because it's the only complication available to those brands if they want to diversify their offering in more complicated, more interesting pieces. Nomos doesn't have to do that the gloves are completely off. There are no handcuffs on this brand whatsoever. They can do whatever they want and they do it very well. They take their time making sure that something works before they release it into the market and the community gobble it up. Look, if this were just an aesthetic upgrade on an off the shelf movement, people would still be going wild for it. Because very few brands experiment as ambitiously or as successfully with color as Nomos does. But this is everything at once. This is just an incredible achievement. It's a great step forward for the brand. I'm very curious to see if we'll see this movement be make its way into the weltzite. At some point it would be possible to reduce the weltze thickness marginally, but not necessary because it wears like a dream as it is. But you would imagine maybe there's a possibility to see a Weltzit 2 that uses the 3202 calibre itself. What would you say to that? Alon necessary or completely unnecessary?
- [28:23]
A
So you and I share a deep love for, for the Zurich case. And you actually subconsciously passed on that deep passion to me by simply during a training that you did in store in Amsterdam. I remember that training vividly because it was the most professional training I've ever had by a watch brand. And I fell in love with you on our first encounter. It was love at first sight at Basel World. I remember that vividly as well. And our witness are both Dala, my colleague, and your ex colleague, Maltina. So we have two witnesses. But that was physical. The intellectual love was that.
- [29:13]
B
That was physical, was it? Oh God. The glory days of Basel.
- [29:21]
A
There were glory days. I still miss Baselworld. So that training was a. Well presented because it's rare that a watchmaker can explain watchmaking in a style written in the Dummies 4 books. You know these yellow books, Dummies 4, that format. Yeah, yeah. So that's what you did. And, and I, and obviously I'm above average in my knowledge, so I often throw these trainers a curveball or ask them big questions and they get stuck. And mind you, I'm one of the 160ish pupils of the Omega Academy for the Grand Ambassador training, the five day training in Brbien and all around Switzerland. And so I went deep on training. So I, I've. I've seen quite some trainers in my young years. I'm an old geezer now, but. Okay, so I'm deviating to go back. You, you did, you didn't get stuck just on technicality and calibers and finishes etc, you, you knew who designed the case and you've explained how there is no straight edge on the case and that it's a very complex case that the lugs had to be created separately and screwed in from the inside. And that blew my mind because that's an old method that only hotel luxury brands used to do and the fact that you even knew it. And you could also bring back technicality and romanticism of watchmaking to commerciality because you gave us tools as salespeople on the floor to explain to consumers the diversity, the delta in pricing within the the Nomos brand. So sorry, this is a very long intro to my answer why I don't think the Zurich needs so much per se, the 3202 DW caliber, because the architecture of the case is there. And slimming that one down the sewer case, I don't know if it'll do it justice, although I'm very much for slimness of calibers. So I think the duality of two World Timers delights in the Nomos collection can definitely coexist.
- [32:01]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think you're absolutely right that they can coexist. I do wonder from like a manufacturing perspective, from a quality control perspective, whether Nomos would be tempted to try and use the same movement in the existing Welzeit line or update it slightly just to streamline their manufacture. Because of course the DUW 5201 is only used in the Welzeit now. I think there used to be a tangent to gmt. I don't know if it still exists in the collection. Does it still exist in the collection?
- [32:33]
A
No. That Tango mat.
- [32:36]
B
Yeah.
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A
GMT is, is, is discontinued. Cool piece, by the way. So if you still like one, try to find one at dealers. Maybe they have old stocks. It's an underappreciated piece. It's very cool.
- [32:50]
B
It is, it is.
- [32:51]
A
Basically you have the city codes in a little window, right?
- [32:55]
B
Yeah. I think. Are they airport codes or are they just city codes? I can't remember exactly, but it was a great twist on the, on the display of the information. This was what I always loved about Nomos and how they can do this over and over again. They have the pot course with the Club Sport or with the 3202 to do the same thing in a different family. You know, we could theoretically see an Orion World Timer. I doubt we will. But like, it's, it's on the table as a possibility now that they've got this Caliber. You know, interestingly, the. I don't know if you remember this because it was quite a quiet release and it really was overawed by the Club Sport Neomatic World Timer releasing Geneva earlier this year in April. But do you remember the larger diameter Mini Matic that was released? Yeah, that project repeatedly. And I don't believe this is communicated widely. So I hope Nomos isn't too angry about me saying this. I believe at one point in its life it was intended to be a member of the Zurich family. It was intended to be a Neomatic Zurich. And they got down to the design and the development process, they looked at it and said, actually, maybe it fits better in the Minimatic. I only discovered this because when I picked it up myself, I think I said to Martina, I said, you know what? This has got a bit of a ring of a Zurich about it. And she looked at me a bit funny like, well, you know, during the development process, it could have been one or the other. And in the end they went for the Minimatic. And I would say, although it's an interesting piece and it does bring the Minimatic to bigger wrists because the original Minimatic is an extremely stout and very compact wear. I love it aesthetically, don't love it so much on my own wrist, but I am determined to buy one eventually because I think it's just so brilliant a design, I have to have one. But I don't think that the Minimatic style codes work as well in those dimensions. And I think this comes back to maybe the point you're making about the fact that the Zurich is what the Zurich is and it works in those dimensions. It doesn't need to be reduced or fiddled with or messed around with in any way. And we've talked about this previously with watches such as the Rolex Datejust 36, which I believe is the only true execution of the Datejust. I don't think that it works as well in bigger dimensions. You can blow something up from its original proportions and maintain the same distances between components and relative size ratios. But at some point, I think it is a truth, if not an actual objective truth, but an esthetic truth, that there is a sweet spot and that certain designs work at certain dimensions and proportions better than they ever will at any other size or proportion. And I think that the Zurich Weltzer is perhaps a great example of that. And maybe you're absolutely right that, you know, leaving that where it is with the 5201 and focusing on the 3202 with the club support is the way to go.
- [35:54]
A
That being said though, that new caliber in the Minimatic, the new Minimatic, the thing you said about the update and to date. So the update is when you have the date as a real track on the outside. So those are the two updates. It's a word joke, it's an update to the design and they pushed the date ring upwards outwards. So you have one in a tangenta pneumatic and you, you have nowadays a Metro update. And the two dates you're referring to have indeed two times the indication of the date on one watch launched at the fifth Nomos form last year. So we've seen a new generation of Calibers launched. So it's the 4000th platform. So the duw 4001 for example, those are the hand wound calibers, the new generation. So I think we'll see more of that. And it does make sense to streamline more because to circle back to the question why Florian laughed me, laughed at me in my face when I said make 17 and a half thousand pieces is they can't keep up with demand and it's not easy for a watchmaker to ramp up production. So what is a bottleneck at Nomos, you think, Rob? Because then we have to explore what they actually do in house. And they do quite a bit.
- [37:43]
B
I mean they do a huge amount, as you said on our little Instagram live that we did the other day from the airport about the hairspring itself, the proprietary alloy, the swing system, which has been something Elmos has been talking about for years. And obviously they make all the plates, they make the wheels, they don't make the jewels. Nobody really makes jewels themselves. Screws. I'm not sure screws are normally a bought in component as well because of the huge MOQs and specialized manufacturing processes you need to produce them. But I think they definitely blew them themselves because they have all the ovens in the workshop. So there's a lot of, a lot that they do in house. Potential bottlenecks, I would say components that are still outsourced, I guess cases are still outsourced. That's always problematic, you know, because case manufacturing manufacturers delivery times have skyrocketed since COVID Nothing's really recovered. You always seem to run into holidays around the world like that prevent you from getting pieces delivered when you want them. So that could be an issue. But I think Nomos has got a really, really good handle on its supply chain. I think they've invested heavily in stock. I think really the main bottleneck in terms of delivery times and why we see eight month waiting times on models like the Clubsport Neomatic World Timer. Come down to human power in the workshop. You know, it takes a long time to train up a watchmaker to the standards that are necessary to assemble Nomos Cal. There's no nowhere to hide with an OMAS watch. You know, the dials are very open, they're very often very uncluttered and free from dial furniture. As I like to say. The case backs are ever more often open. So you have to have absolute cleanliness on every component. You have to check and check and check again that there aren't any hairline scratches on any of the pieces. And you know, glassater is only so big. Nomos has actually taken steps to increase its assembly capacity by opening a new workshop in Dresden, in the Hellarau region of Dresden. This has been done for a couple of reasons, and it doesn't affect the maiden Glassiter legal requirements because of course, all the components are made in the region and some things are assembled or worked on or serviced more often in Dresden than they are assembled to ensure that that assignation remains true. They did it because they needed capacity for service, because there was at one point a massive service backlog of like three to six months, which is humongous for somebody wants to have their watch on their wrist every day. But also to attract more watchmakers to the company. Because working in Glosseter, if you're a watch lover, if you're a watch fan, it's kind of like almost a religious experience. You know, it's a mecca of watchmaking, certainly the horological heartland of the German industry. And it can be a real privilege to be there. And you can really feel like you are part of that culture and that heritage that is now 180 years in existence since Ferdinand Adolf Lange first established, established his workshop in 1845 in what is now the Nomos shop, the only vertical Nomos boutique in the world at this point. Although that may soon change with the development of the operation in New York City. And I think it's important to acknowledge that a lot of the best young talent coming through the watchmaking schools around the world maybe don't want to to be traveling into a sleepy hamlet, 5,000 people strong in the middle of the Muklitz Valley. Rather, in fact, they would prefer to be in a lively and very livable city like Dresden, where they can settle very close to their workshop, have a life, have a family, not constantly be dragging themselves into work at crazy hours in the morning, because remember, watchmakers start work around 7am and they finish around 3:30. And to get to Glassater from Dresden you have to take two trains. You can start on the Bad Shanda line, which goes all the way from Meissen down to Bad Shanda near the Czech border. But you have to change trains in Heidenau and get a train in the direction of Kott Altenburg, which is a place where most of the German Winter Olympic team do their training. And in fact we met a few of them at the forum. So we should talk about that. That's an unintentional but apt segue. So that's in total about a 43, 44, 45 minute journey. And you have to do that twice a day. And you know, in the winter especially you have to be getting out of the house at like half five, six o' clock to get to work on time. So that's, you know, that's something that Nomos was aware of. They wanted to be attractive to the up and coming talents and so they made that move and put a new facility in Dresden. And I think that that will continue to grow and expand so more and more people, people can join the Nomos family. So let's just talk briefly about the speech we received from three German Olympians and one of the most successful bobsledders of all time. Tell us your thoughts on that.
- [43:05]
A
I had two of the three, so probably one fell off the radar the day after or he had too much to drink. But I was impressed on many levels. Besides the fact that they won medals, they knew how much Graham gold was on the silver plated, the gold plated medal. So that impressed me. These guys are actually military and policemen and they had a sense of humor. A German with a sense of humor. Wow. So great presentations. They were cracking jokes on the fly. I don't think they repeated jokes from the day before. So it was very cool. And we can't say too much, but just keep gold medals in mind and almost the only thing I will say. And stay tuned for the 13th of November.
- [44:07]
B
Yeah, there's a couple of things coming that are unfortunately embargoed, but as Alon says, keep an eye out in November and also in mid October when we're going to see a new set of. I think we can say what the model is, but we can't tell you exactly what it's going to look like. A new set of tetras, as is often the way with Nomos, refreshing their tetra collection every couple of years. So there's still plenty more to come before the end of the year. Very exciting stuff. Thank you to the team at Nomos for inviting us once again to the Forum. I'm already looking forward to the seventh edition that will be hosted next year around the same time. If you have any questions for us or the team at Nomos, then please do get in touch via the usual channels. You can contact us via our email addresses, either Rob alon or David therealtime show via the contact form on the website www.therealtime show or via our Instagram handles. That's R O B n u d d S a l o n b e n J o S e p H D a V a u c H e R and Scarlet can be found at Scarl in the Shire that's S c a r l I n t h e S h I r e Long before we wrap it up.
- [45:11]
A
Well, the cool thing is, buddy, we're recording this actually on our third birthday and it only daunted on me this morning. So I put out a post, wrote a message to our TRTS community. So here on air. Dear Rob, Happy Birthday. Thank you for sticking with me three years and a big thank you to our community and their listeners and viewers that you made us who we are. Because without you we wouldn't have done it. So this journey has been amazing. It flew by. And that means one other thing. One of our next episodes has to be our traditional GPHG guessing game.
- [45:57]
B
We will be back soon with that GPHG episode, which will likely run into a double header as it has done for the past three years. To echo Alon's thanks to all of you for sticking with us this long and for making the real time show what it is. We are truly grateful. We can't wait for the next three years and before that, of course, we'll be back very soon with interviews with the industry's finest, more Q and A sessions and more articles. Stay safe and keep on ticking.
- [46:29]
A
Sam.