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The Real Time Show
Urban Jurgensen's Alex Rosenfield Is Spearheading The Revival Of A Legendary brand
00:53:57
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Watch fans. And welcome back to the Real Time show with me, your friendly neighborhood watchmaker, Rob Nudds. I'm joined as usual, by the friendly neighborhood jeweler Alon Ben Joseph, himself calling in from Amsterdam. And today we are joined by a guest new to the show, Alex Rosenfield from Urban Jurgensen, a brand that has been on everybody's lips since its relaunch last year. And it has already earned itself some new accolades, which I'm sure we'll touch upon. But first, I'm going to kick it over over to the man in Amsterdam to start us off with a lovely question.
- [00:37]
B
Well, I'm super excited to sit down for this episode because Alex Rosenfield is an enigma. Urban Jurgensen, epic name, epic watch brand, Epic watchmakers that started it in the 18th century modern era. Urban Jurgensen is linked to Kari Vouter Leinen up until the end of last year. Co CEO with Alex, Amazing rebrand, amazing models. It populates my Instagram feed with beautiful pictures of watches and actually very cool celebs that rock them. So, Alex, please, let's get rid of the mystery. Who are you?
- [01:23]
C
Oh, well, thank you for having me. I'm really glad to be here with you. I don't think I'm such a mystery. I think I'm just a bit of an outsider to the watch world, so. So I'm really happy to be part of it and to be getting to know so many great people within the watch world.
- [01:36]
B
Well, one thing we can now state, he's very modest. So please, Alex, be a bit more American. Tell us where you are, where you're from, how did you get into the watch world and what is your relationship to this epic brand, Urban Jurgensen?
- [01:51]
A
Sure.
- [01:51]
C
So we are American, which I think is an interesting, you know, enigma within, to use your word, within the watch world. I grew up outside of Chicago. My family is based now in Chicago and Los Angeles. I'm in New York. And my father was a devoted lifelong watch collector. It's really been his passion and he has always been interested in the independence, particularly I came to watches more as somebody who loves aesthetics. I was in the fashion world, brand marketing, cosmetics, publishing, so from outside of the watch industry, but always grew up around great watches and appreciated them. It was very much, for me more of an aesthetic appreciation than it was an understanding of movement, architecture and escapements and that side of things, which I think, I mean, we can get into it in a bit, but I think that that's part of what's defined how we've worked on Speaking about our relaunch and our next chapter of Urban Jurgensen. So just to tell the story quickly, Urban Jurgensen was founded in 1773 in Copenhagen by Jurgen Jurgensen, who was Urban's father. And he was a great journeyman watchmaker and was the watchmaker to the Danish royal court, was quite accomplished. And he had this son, Urban. And Urban was just an incredible watchmaking prodigy. Just it came natural to him. He was just sort of a brilliant maker. And so he learned everything he could from his father, and he wanted to learn more. So he went on this watchmaking quest, as we talk about it, and he went to France and he studied with Abraham Louis Breguet, and he went to England and studied with John Arnold, and he went and studied in Le Lock, Switzerland, and he went back to his home in Copenhagen, and he was a committed Danish national. And what did Denmark need from a watchmaker in 1800? They needed somebody who could help within the, you know, the move to a maritime economy, who could help make marine chronometers and other tools that would allow Denmark to compete with England and France and the other seafaring powers. And he did that. He made these incredible marine chronometers. He made thermometers that worked below mercury. He made all sorts of tools for the Danish navy at the same time. He had just an incredible aesthetic eye. So he was simultaneously the watchmaker to the Danish royal court and an inventor for the Danish navy. So there was this kind of merging of science and. And beauty and esthetics, and that really defined the company at that time. And I think it's. We go back to it as a defining value of the company, but it defined who he was. He became a member of the Danish Royal Academy of Science, which, you know, is a rather rare and incredible accomplishment for a watchmaker. There weren't watchmakers who were considered great scientists. So he was really doing more than you would expect and more than I think people even knew about. And the company stayed in family hands. He had a son, Jules Jurgensen, who was a great watchmaker. And for about another hundred years, the company stayed in the Jurgensen family. And there was the pivot to WristWatches in about 1900 and some economic changes. But most importantly, there were no more watchmakers in the Jurgensen family. So they sold it and it moved hands a couple of times. The company has been continuously existed. It's always had the ability to service watches. There have always been Urban Jurgensen watches since 1773 to today. But it had sort of fallen into A period where it was little known and, you know, not one of the great watchmaking houses anymore and less appreciated. And there's just sort of a very charming story. This guy, Peter Bamberger, who was a Swiss watch collector and businessperson in 1979, was in Copenhagen visiting friends, and he walked into a little watch shop and he saw a display of Urban Jurgensen pocket watches, and he wanted to buy them. And the guy who owned the store kept saying, these aren't for sale. This is a display honoring the 200th anniversary of the founding of this company, and we aren't selling these. And he kept saying, but I want this one, or what about this? And how do I get one? And finally they said, well, here's who owns the company. Why don't you get in touch? And Peter did, and he bought the company. He didn't buy the wristwatches or the pocket watches. He bought the company eventually. Eventually acquired the pocket watches. But he brought in Derek Pratt, the great British watchmaker, and they set about reviving Urban Jurgensen. And from 1979 until about 2000 or, you know, sometime in the 90s, it was really Peter and Derek's vision of what Urban Jurgensen was. And I think we think of that as sort of a second golden age for the company, where it really became again, about incredible craftsmanship, innovative and interesting movement design, elegant classical watchmaking. You know, in the midst of the quart quartz crisis, when a lot of these techniques, the gyoche, the engine turning, a lot of these decorative techniques were sort of out of vogue or not being. Not being maintained as practices really, even within high watchmaking in Switzerland. And that's what they really cared about and what they really invested in for the company. So they made some rather incredible pocket watches and some really wonderful watches and held the company, worked on it. Derek and Peter both. Both died, and the company moved to Dr. Krat, who also loved and cared about the company, took great care about care of it. But I think you saw the consolidation of brands and, you know, changing markets, and I think he recognized that the company needed a big cash infusion and needed owners who were willing to invest more. And so it was sold to a group of Danish private equity folks who were really wonderful guys, but they had a vision for the company. I think it was to be a bit more mass and to produce more watches, but at the same time to do it in a way that was more complicated. So to invest heavily in these detent escapements, but to do them cheap, which is just, you know, in our Opinion a balance that's almost impossible to strike. Detents work very rarely in wristwatches, only when, you know, there are a lot of additional parts and things that create expense. So doing less expensive detents was a, was just a challenging business pivot for them. And by 2020, we found out through friends in the industry that those owners were ready to make a change. And my father had bought his first Urban Jurgensen in the early 90s and loved them. And it had always been one of those watches he wore that I just thought was incredible. They're so beautiful. I believe he had a, he had a ref 9 and a ref 1. And they're just such wonderful, classical, beautiful wristwatches. And we thought, this is one of the great horological houses. This is one of the great names in watchmaking. And we had never had any intention of owning a watch company. You know, we were all in other businesses. But we thought this company needs to be in the hands of somebody who will love and care about it and focus on what was really exceptional about the company at its highest moments and bring it back to relevance. So in 2020, we to 2021, we purchased the company. We asked Kari to join us in reviving the brand. He designed the first three watches that we launched in June. And you know, that's sort of the story of how we got here. Sorry to go on for so long.
- [09:43]
A
No, it's incredible. It's incredible to have that kind of insight into the, the history of Urban Jurgensen and how you came to be involved in it. So you said that you got Carrie on board soon after you acquired. He was responsible for designing those first three pieces which were greeted with much acclaim. Tell us about how they were received immediately in the market.
- [10:06]
C
Well, I think that Kari has a wonderful history with Urban Jurgensen. He joined, he worked for Peter Baumberger sort of at the very beginning of his journey with Derek Pratt. So Kari was a very young upstart watchmaker. This was really his first job. And he was working for Derek and working for Peter designing watches for Urban Jurgensen, working on these movements. There's a well known watch. Sorry, my dog is growling. There's a well known watch within the Urban Jurgensen world called the Pratt. The Urban Jurgensen Pratt oval pocket watch that sold at auction a few years for a rather record amount of money for a time only watch, pocket watch. And Kari was the one when Derek had worked on that watch for over 20 years, designing the movement, making the parts, figuring out these sort of complex problems involving constant force and the use of a Raylot triangle on the remontoire to the tourbillon to create constant force. And he had envisioned this watch, but he became ill rather quickly and wasn't able to finish it. So Peter took what was really like a shoebox of parts to Kari and said, can you make this into a. Into a watch, into a working watch? So Kari assembled and finished that watch. So his history with Urban Jurgensen was deep. And our relationship with Kari has existed for a long time. My father was a collector of his for many years. They've been friends. And so we approached Kari and said, you know, we've bought this company. Would you like to come on and be part of this next chapter? And I think that he was very excited to do that. I think Urban Jurgensen, both because of his history there, because of the shared Scandinavian roots, there's sort of a similar design language. I think a lot of the Urban Jurgensen design language became part of what is the Voodolainen design language. And so there's just sort of natural synergies. So we asked Kari if he would join us. He really accepted immediately and set off on deciding, you know, what would be the first few watches. And he and Andy, who's my father, really began working on what those would be. And the first thing that they wanted to challenge themselves with was turning the oval pocket watch into a wristwatch. So that's what became the UJ one. And it was a real challenge for Kari, but a real challenge for watchmaking generally. I think it's something that people had looked at and didn't know if it would be possible to miniaturize it, to make it stem wound instead of key wound, to keep the flying B barrel, to keep the architecture of this watch and turn it into a wristwatch. So that was the first watch that Khari designed, and then we wanted and that he made in a limited edition of 75. There's three versions of it, each of them 25, to celebrate the 250th anniversary. You can see that it took some time because we're a few years past the 250th anniversary by the time we launched. But that's what that watch was done to honor. And we think it's really sort of a bridge between the company's origins and its history and where we're going, which is really beautiful, handmade, complex watchmaking, but within the context of more of a brand or a company that seeks to communicate with people differently in a way that's a little bit Larger than what you typically expect from independence. The next two watches he designed were meant to be what would be our core collection. So we see, we see it as important for us that there be watches that exist across time. You know, I think you see that within the great, the greatest watchmaking houses that have gotten sort of larger. You see these watches that exist perpetually, whether there's dial or case change, you know, small changes. But the UJ2 and the UJ3 are those watches for us. So the UJ2 is a time only double balance natural escapement wristwatch. Again, it has a lot of the same design language. It has the same level of finishing that you expect from Kari within his own watches at Voodal Leinen, but again within this different context. And then for the UJ3, which is a perpetual calendar with the double balance natural escapement, Kari collaborated with Andreas Strehler. So it has the Strehler precise moon phase which is accurate to one day within 14,000 years and is instantaneous. And we felt that those were really the core of what the DNA of Urban Jurgensen would be and the values of Urban Jurgensen would be going forward.
- [14:49]
B
Where do you take the brand from here? I love the revamp. Even the website is scrumptious. I love how you guys pay tribute to the teardrop shaped lugs that are very contemporary, but pay tribute. Let's not forget the hands. Also the signature hands with the O's or the circles which I love and the off center sub dials or minute tracks, let's say. Can we pause for a moment maybe to talk about the zero on the 12 o' clock position? We know that Russians always start their time at zero, not 12. What's the philosophy for Urban Jurgenseida?
- [15:38]
C
Well, I think that there's sort of a. There's two. There's a philosophy to it that we think is very true to Urban Jurgensen's heritage. Which is Urban Jurgensen is, was a Dane and comes from this Scandinavian culture where I think there's a real philosophy around time and around spending time. You know, you live in these climates where there's days with so little sunlight, the days are so short. There's a real appreciation of knowing that time has to be spent and that time is a precious resource. We often go back to this phrase, this Danish saying, he who saves it for the night, saves it for the cat. Because if you don't use your time, you're going to lose it. And so I think we have this philosophy of, you know what our, our slogan Art is time kept and spent beautifully, because time kept well matters. But even for those of us who really, really love our watches, your watch is not the center of your universe. It's not what your day is about. It's on your wrist. It's that companion that goes along with you while you do all the things you do. But how you spend your time is what gives you meaning. So I think we liked this idea of the day starting at zero and progressing and being full of all of the things that life includes. And I think that it was a way of touching on that sort of Scandinavian heritage from a more literal perspective. It's something that appeared on a lot of the Urban Jurgensen, or on some of the Urban Jurgensen pocket watches or instruments he made for the Danish Navy, where the main dial would actually not be the time, but it would be a measure of something else. So there would be a zero at the 12 o'. Clock. And I think Kari just thought that that was an interesting evocative signature to add to what he was working on and to sort of speak a little philosophically to what the company means and what time means.
- [17:34]
B
Danish roots today could we conclude its fully Swiss made run from the US
- [17:42]
C
So the watches are fully Swiss made. The watchmaking operations are all in Switzerland. The rest of the company's executives are in the United States. We like to think that it's Danish spirit with Swiss precision and Swiss making and an American philosophy. And we think that that's important to doing things in our own way and to having the freedom to do things in our own way. I think it's also true to the company because Urban himself, as I said, took this long journey and studied all of these places. He was born in Denmark. He ended up moving to Switzerland. He married a Swiss woman, he raised his children there. But I think Denmark was always really his home. And I think that there is this sort of polyglot nature to Urban Jurgensen. It's always been true of it. In the Peter era, you had a Swiss businessman, you had English watchmaker, and then you had Kari, who's a Finn. So you have always had all of these cultures coming together. So we certainly respect the Swiss making of the watches and the care that goes into that and the legacy of that within Switzerland. But I think we think that there's something nice about bringing in just sort of a lot of cultures and a lot of different perspectives. And then I think to leave the watchmaking for a second and think about the way we communicate with people and what our goals are. For the company and how we want to interact with clients, how we want to interact with social media, with, with, with explaining what we're doing and introducing it to people. I think that we really bring an American sensibility to that, or at least an outsider sensibility to that. So I think that that's been fun for us and we love that the company's in family hands, so we have the freedom to do that.
- [19:21]
B
Amazing. I asked because I, I got thrown off because the dials bear Copenhagen. So they do.
- [19:27]
C
They have always said Copenhagen and it' back and forth on. But we thought it was important to honor where the company started and something that makes it somewhat unique. But the watches are completely Swiss made.
- [19:39]
B
Amazing. How big is the team for the brand? Urban Jurgensen
- [19:47]
C
we're about 30 or 40 people now. Growing pretty quickly, but we are growing. Our focus is always that the quality of the watchmaking never change, that we will never allow any growth that leads to a diminishment in the quality of what we're doing. So it's the quality of the finishing, the hand making. Every watch really is handmade, start to finish by a single watchmaker and decorator working hand in hand in the same way that you would have with Kari or Rexhep or any of these really great independent watchmakers. So we're doing that in a way that we hope we will grow in scale to make more watches per year than those those watchmakers make. And you know, they do that on purpose and we respect it tremendously. But we think that this is a different sort of company, but we will grow only to the extent that we can do so while maintaining that quality.
- [20:49]
B
How much of the watch production is done in your own ateliers in Switzerland?
- [20:55]
C
Most of it. You know, we have dial suppliers and case suppliers. That's not done in house, as it isn't at most companies. But the watchmaking is. Is really done in house.
- [21:07]
B
And Kari's role today is what?
- [21:10]
C
Yeah. So Kari is a strategic advisor to the board and on the board and is involved really in everything we do. I. His role changed in December or January from being co CEO to this new role. But I'd say his. His contribution has not really changed. He. I always say, is it? Why would any company want Kari Vudelainen to spend his time on it? Infrastructure and making sure payroll goes out. So those sort of operational responsibilities are no longer things he's working on, but overseeing watchmaking, making sure our quality is where it's supposed to be. Working with us on thinking about what the next set of watches is, you know, which I think some of which he'll design, some of which other people will design, but he's really still very much around. We speak to him regularly. He still comes to Beale, where our factory is. He's still involved. It's just, you know, I think, as I say it, infrastructure is not the right use of Kari's time. And I think he did the same thing at Voodolainen, which is he has a CEO now because he wants to be at the bench. He wants to be making and designing watches. And he has said to me in the past that watchmaking is his joy and emails are his obligation. And so I think anything that gets more watchmaking and fewer emails is a good improvement for everybody.
- [22:39]
B
Don't we all? Talking of emails, I assume the moment it became clear that the Rosenfields got into watchmaking, and this is an assumption, you got flooded by emails asking to buy more brands. Do you guys have more watch brands? And if not, do you have the ambition to buy more brands?
- [23:00]
C
We actually have gotten no emails like that. So if somebody wants to email us and they have a great company, they should. But it's not our intention to own more watch brands. It was never our intention to own a watch brand. I think, you know, 10, 20 years where this goes, I have no idea. But our focus right now is really making Urban Jurgensen a very special company. A company that takes the best of handmade, independent watchmaking and brings it to a broader, more inclusive audience.
- [23:33]
A
What have you noticed are the main differences between the fashion industry, as you had previous experience in, and watchmaking, and how does your past experience help you in your current role?
- [23:47]
C
So I think in what we have noticed, I mean, not to speak about watchmaking, but about sort of the watch business, I think that there, it tends to be, the watch industry has felt to me a bit insular and a bit conservative. So I think that there's a tendency to do things the same way. I think that fashion is always largely focused on building a broader audience and communicating more. So I think what we've tried to do, what I've tried to take from my fashion background, is I was somebody, and this is why I mentioned my personal story before. I was somebody who was introduced to really great high watchmaking and welcomed into the community and aware of it, even though I wasn't a movement geek, even though I was more of a design person. And I think that my take, and tell me if you think this is wrong, is that very often in watchmaking, the People who are doing the communicating are also the people who are making the watches and are, at their hearts, engineers and most interested in one aspect of the watchmaking. So I think that a beautiful handmade watch, an urban Jurgensen watch, there are things to love, whether it is the movement, it's the handwork that goes into the dial making, or the case, it's the human element of the assembly, it's the history of the house. And I think that there are all of these things that you can love, Things that are aesthetic, things that are mechanical, things that are emotional. And I think that the watchmaking world has done a very good job of communicating precision and rigor, but not necessarily as good a job in as many cases in communicating emotion and beauty. So I think that we want to really celebrate that side of the watchmaking in addition to the complex movements and, you know, our watches have, within a brand context, some of the most complicated movements of any company. But. And we celebrate that and we so that. And we want to speak to traditional watch collectors and connoisseurs, but I think we want to also have a language that speaks to people who love other things, people who love fine art, people who love decorative arts, people who love fashion. So I think that what I've borrowed from my fashion background is this idea of how do we speak to a bigger audience without diluting what we do in our watchmaking, but just opening it up to more people and making more people feel welcome as clients, as appreciators of what we're doing, whether it's the movement that you come to it from loving or whether it's another aspect. I think that I uniquely had this access because of my father to this world. I wasn't gatekept out of it, but I think gatekeeping, somebody who really sees the watch as a beautiful object because they don't understand the escapement is a mistake. Because I think that however you come to it, you come to appreciate many aspects of it, and there's a lot to love.
- [26:49]
B
I love the way you linked everything. I love the new website. It really oozes a vibe. I love the stories. But there's one thing annoying me, Alex. I can't find where I can find the watches.
- [27:05]
C
Well, have you emailed us? Because we respond to every single email, and we are on the road making sure that people see the watches. We know that this is the real block right now is a watch is great in a picture. Any watch or any great watch is great in a picture. But you need it on your wrist, and you need to see it in person. We want to be direct to clients because we want that direct one on one relationship with our collectors. But our goal for this year, we relaunched in June. We spent a few months really getting things up and running, building the team, building our operations. But what we're really focused on right now is getting out into the wild and making sure people can touch and feel and see the watches in person. Our team's headed to Doha tomorrow to be at Art Basel Qatar. We'll be really all over the world in the next six months to a year. And our goal is to create opportunities for people to see the watches. But we have an office showroom in New York. We're opening one in Geneva. They won't be stores, but they'll be places that by appointment, people can see the watches. And we hope people contact us. And then, you know, we are all over the world and we're traveling a lot. So whenever somebody reaches us and says, you know, I'd love to see the watches, and I live in this city, we track all of that. And the minute we have a plan to go to that city, we will let people know. And we've been in touch with watch collectors, clubs, and different groups around the United States and around the world to figure out how do we reach people who will love this, how do we show them to people? And in a way that might seem silly as a business matter, but is important to me, how do we create opportunities for people, even if they will never be a buyer of our watches, to try them on and feel the sort of beauty and magic that a handmade watch has? Because, I mean, you guys have worn them, I'm sure. But there is something deeply human and emotional and resonant about a watch that was made by someone's hand, where the accuracy and the precision is there, but there's still something different about each one, human about each one. There's a sort of magic to that. And I personally think that you feel that when you put it on, and I've heard that from other people. So our goal is for collectors who are interested in buying, but also for people who just appreciate what we're doing to get these out there. We're gonna be a little bit on the art world traveling schedule. We'll be a bit on the watch world traveling schedul, but we're also going to just be traveling a lot to make sure people can see the watches and try them on.
- [29:37]
A
You've been seen on the wrists of plenty of celebrities in recent months, which is Quite an incredible way to start your rebirth into the market, as it were. How did those partnerships come about? Were you already connected to a lot of the people that have reps the brand through your fashion involvement?
- [29:57]
C
So that's a bunch of sort of different organic relationships. We decided that we really wanted an effort to speak to different audiences, to speak to people of different ages, people of different genders, people of different races and geographic locations and to really do something that was very inclusive. Because I think that very often watches are, are sold or communicated as items built for men, for a group of men who are collectors. Women are allowed to wear them. But there sort of isn't this permission structure of welcoming people in the same with. I think it can tend to be very old, focused on, you know, a much older audience. Whereas we think there are collectors who are young and people who love beautiful things who are young, who will be interested. So we, before we even launched sort of thought about this idea. How do we, without having like brand ambassadors in the way that some of these big companies with huge budgets and huge reach do, like a Rolex. How do we find people who represent the values of what we're doing and speak to different communities? So we created this, this series Time well Spent, which is, comes out every few months. And it's a different person within a creative field who we feel represents some aspect of what we're working on, some of the values of what we care about, creativity, innovation, artistry. And we want those to be very different people. So the first one was James Turrell, the great light sculptor. The second one was a guy who's the principal dancer for the American Ballet Theater. And the third one was a 19 year old singer from England who we think is going to be a huge star. She's just an incredible songwriting and singing talent. So we looked to those as an opportunity to open up what we're doing to different people. Some of them are people we knew and had relationships with, some are people who friends have introduced us to. We were very excited A couple of months ago we got to know James Turrell quite well and he. We're very, very lucky that he has sort of loved what we're doing, the philosophy of it, the watches. He's a pocket watch collector. So knew Urban Jurgensen and Jules Jurgensen and owns Urban Jurgen and Jules Jurgensen pocket watches from the 19th century. And he's really become a part of the family of what we're doing. And we see it as a family in that way. We see it as a community. He said to us. My friend Ed really should be part of this. I want him to do it. We said, what do you have in mind? He said, well, do you know Ed Ruscha? We said, well, we certainly know who Ed Ruscha is. We don't know Ed Ruscha. But he called him up and said, you should do this, you should meet these guys. And we went over to his studio and showed him what we were working on. And I think that there's a deep passion within us for what we're doing. There's a desire to share it with people. And I think that we felt very lucky that a lot of these celebrities or people with some notoriety have shared that passion and liked the vision and liked the watches. And so it's really happened very organically.
- [33:08]
B
Circling back to how you get the watches and wrists. It doesn't sound like retail 2.0, not even 3.0. It's full circle 4.0. You're going back to the old methods. You've highlighted that you're opening showrooms. Does that mean you are a, let me call it in a non elegant way, direct to consumer brand? And if so, is that the strategy for the coming years or do you see yourself working with retailers?
- [33:44]
C
Yeah, so we're opening. I, I think showrooms is probably the wrong word for it. I don't know what a better word is, it's the word I used. But they're really offices where we will be working, but where we'll also be meeting with people by appointment. So, you know, they won't be sort of boutique showrooms. But yeah, we are a direct to consumer company. We feel really for two reasons, which one is that we want to have that direct immediate relationship with our clients, to know them, to have their feedback, see what they love, to explain what we're doing to them. But the other part, you know, just to be very frank, is these watches are incredibly expensive to make. So our, our prices are, are quite high. We think they're ethically high because the price is a direct reflection of the number of person hours by skilled craftspeople paid fair and good wages. So it is expensive to make these watches. It is expensive then for clients. In order to have a margin that would allow for a retailer, the watches would become prohibitively expensive to clients. So the margin is not huge. It's not like we're capturing both a wholesaler and a retailer margin ourselves. We've really cut out that part of the margin and it's the only way we're able to offer the watches at what is still a high price, but is an ethical price. I think that if we tried to have retailers at these prices, it would be nearly impossible.
- [35:17]
A
What kind of models do you have in mind for the future? Because you've got off to such a flying start and impressed everybody with not just the aesthetics, but obviously the technical prowess of everything you do. It's a hard act to follow.
- [35:31]
C
It is a hard act to follow. But I think that we built these three watches and we built what we've done so far. You know, of course, realizing it's only been a few months that it's been out there in the world, but we did it by making things that we loved and believed in, things that we wanted to wear, things that we thought were exceptional. So we will keep working with Kari. Kari is working on designing some new watches. We're also working with some other real luminaries from the independent watchmaking world. Nothing to announce yet, but there will be. Our philosophy is that Urban Jurgensen as a company has been at its best when Urban was at the helm again, when Derek and Peter were at the helm, where great watchmakers who put their names on what they were working on and built things that were at the. That were classical but were really at the edge of what the technology was at the moment and were the very best that they could do and that a person signed and took. Took ownership and pride in. So I think that we think we will make other watches that we hope will delight people and that they will love and that we will love, love by following that same philosophy known watchmakers whose reputations and visions and ideas you can love and respect, making the things that they want to reach a somewhat broader audience.
- [36:58]
A
I assume you will be present during Watches and Wonders or Geneva Watch Week, but where will you be specifically? And what should people expect from you? Have you got anything exciting planned?
- [37:09]
C
Yeah. So we are actually, I will not be there. Most of our team won't be there. Our chief commercial officer will be there to meet with some clients. As I said, we have been getting a lot of emails and requests to meet, and there have been some people who we haven't been able to see in person. So he's going to go to Geneva to be there to take appointments with people who just want to see the watches. And we're happy to meet anybody who'd like to see the watches while we're there. But we have nothing to announce this Watches and Wonders. We just came out with three models, a number of variations of each. We think that for this year, we've said as much as we have to say. We've introduced as much as we think there is to introduce at the moment. We want to wait until we have something to announce something new, to ask for people's attention in that way. Again, I think that Watches and Wonders is fantastic, but is so dominated by mostly very large companies and companies that, that work on this schedule of regular releases for Watches and Wonders or Dubai Watch Week or Geneva Watch Days, this kind of roving watch calendar. We're a little bit off of that because we launched in June and it's too early, we think, for a novelty or for a new watch. So we are going to stay quiet during Watches and Wonders. I unfortunately have other meetings, so I won't be able to be there. But I think that in a year from this Watches and Wonders, we'll have some things to communicate about and to meet with people about. And we really, we want to ask for people's attention when we have something to say. And we want for now to be really focused on showing more clients, end users, lovers of watchmaking, what we've made. So that's what we'll be doing this year during Watches and Wonders.
- [38:56]
A
You've worked with and still work with one of the greats in modern watchmaking in Katri, and you are the custodian of one of the great names in watchmaking. Who else outside of Erwin Jurgensen family do you look at and admire from the past and also from the present day
- [39:17]
C
watchmakers? Admirer? Well, Brexep is an old friend of my father's and of our families. And, you know, we truly love what he does. I think that he's, you know, just a genius person and so wonderfully charismatic. You know, I think there's other great watchmaking coming out of a number of houses right now, you know, smaller, smaller brands from the past. I think that, you know, we love the urban Jurgensen past. I think Breguet has, you know, really an incredible old history. I think the Daniels watches from Breguet are coming to be appreciated again, but were a bit underappreciated for a while, you know, and then. And then really looking at the distant past. So I think it's a constellation of people, but it's people who share these same values which are what does it mean to innovate in watchmaking? What does it mean to do things at the highest level, slowly, with care, with precision, but also with a kind of love? And I think it's that love and that care that gives a handmade watch its Magic. I think there fantastic industrialized watches that I wear and I love and they're great, but really there's something different about a watch that's made by someone's hand. So I think that watchmakers over time who've shared that philosophy are really who, you know, mean the most to us and inspire us.
- [40:43]
A
I'm very curious to know which watch is on your wrist. We don't often make a big deal out of wrist checks, but oftentimes new brand leaders are the last person to get a watch because the demand outstrip's supply. And you, you know, magnanimously step back and say, okay, well, you know, for the customer first, but do you have an urban Jurgensen on your wrist? And if so, what is it?
- [41:04]
C
Now you're making me feel like I should be more magnanimous, but I am in fact not. And I am wearing a UJ2 in platinum and blue today. It kind of goes back to what we were saying, which is we need people to see these watches. So I wear them every day. Andy wears one every day. Kari wears one quite regularly. And it's really allowed us to just show them to people as we go about our lives. As we bump into people, it's sort of one of our best tools to make sure they exist in the world. We now have deliveries going out to clients, and having watches on clients has been probably the number one driver of sales and of interest for us. So Andy Khari and I were kind of the first testers of those. And then being outside of Switzerland, this is funny to me. It probably isn't funny to anybody else, but Kari had designed this new case. We loved it, we'd seen it in person, but we hadn't really like kicked it around and worn it. And we were sort of getting to the point where we were locking in designs. And Andy said, and I said to him, we really need to see this. So he sent us an unfinished. A stainless steel prototype of the UJ2 with an unfinished movement to just kick around. So for we launched Relaunched in June, but since last January, I've been wearing that watch. And that's really the watch I wear the most. The problem is the movement isn't finished. So when you explain to people the beauty of the movement, you can't show it to them with that watch. But it's still pretty cool to have the unfinished one. But. But I. I think wearing them and experiencing them and showing them to people has just been something we've tried to do through ourselves
- [42:50]
B
while listening to you, Alex. I'm sitting and thinking that obviously a. A glass can be seen half full, half empty. A lot of people are negative by nature, so they'll see it as a disadvantage that you are stateside in the U.S. not in Europe, not even near to Switzerland. Me, myself, luckily, I'm an optimist and positive by nature. I see the glass always awful. So I'm not even going to ask you a rhetorical question. I'm gonna put an hypothesis out there. The hypothesis is coming from this pedigree with your dad and you being true collectors, longtime collectors, deep, deeply rooted with urban union. As collectors, you are custodians. As Rob said. What benefits does it give you being on the outside running such an epic brand together with, as Rob said, one of the best watchmakers alive today?
- [43:55]
C
Yeah. So I guess I would start by saying we feel very confident about what's happening in Switzerland. The watchmaking, the process, the oversight of what's going on, the quality. Because we both have Kari and a really fantastic team of Swiss based people who we interact with every day and who we just really trust and rely on to make sure that part of the business is functioning as it should. But I think that to me, it feels like a tremendous advantage to be in the United States. It could be the same to be in Europe or Asia or the Middle East. But I think that watchmaking tends to be a very centralized business. I think that you get a lot of group think. I think you get a lot of, of common, common understanding. And I think sometimes with these companies, I never want to say anything bad about them, but I think sometimes there's at the very core, at the center at the decision making process, not people who are seeing, who are interacting that much with people who are not part of the watch world. So a lot of our focus, we really want to communicate with devoted watch collectors, but we also want to communicate and show what we're doing and bring what we're doing to people who are not traditional watch collectors, as I've said, to people who love fine art, decorative arts, antiques, fashion, vintage cars, people who appreciate things that are finely made and beautiful and, you know, remarkable, but. Or who love technology and engineering, you know, all these different pathways. But I think that within the Swiss watch world, there's such a. The watch making world is so central there that I think sometimes people forget how big the universe of people who don't know what we're doing is. And I think that we kind of have a little bit of distance from that that gives us a little bit More freedom to think about what we want to do. We also, you know, we often say that we aren't like a big company that has a design board and has a giant marketing department and has, you know, huge divisions where a decision has to go through 18 layers of review. And somebody who's running that business is too afraid of making a misstep, so they don't want to take a risk, you know, because one quarter of sales being off because you did a marketing campaign that wasn't like the marketing campaign you'd done before, and it turns out the market didn't like that. And suddenly you're not going to work in the Swiss watch industry again because, you know, you're the person who greenlit that. We're a small family company. So if we love an idea, if we think there's something interesting, if we think there's somebody interesting to work with, these are decisions that get made between two or three people in 30 minutes instead of between a hundred people in divisions over the course of weeks and months. And I think that that and the physical distance from the watch world has just given us a lot of freedom to do things our own way, to communicate visually in our own way, to create this brand universe that is very purposeful. I appreciate that you said that we've appeared on your Instagram feed and that you like the website. All of that is done with real thought. So I think it looks different than what people are often used to seeing in the watch world, but that's done with a real thoughtfulness to what makes our watches special. What makes them special to us is the hand making, the human aspect of them, the incredible attention to detail, the idea that we're pursuing perfection not because it's necessary or really even makes the watches better as mechanical objects, but because there's pleasure in doing that and in the pursuit of it. And so everything we communicate visually is meant to have this feeling of hand making, handwriting, paint, splatters, collaged paper. We have these sort of whimsical company icons. There's the Danish royal herring, who has a crown. There's the dog lug, who is a Great Dane who wears an urban Jurgensen around his neck. And these are all meant to bring fun and joy, because I think that that we can take the watchmaking seriously, but we don't have to take ourselves too seriously. And so I think, to give you a very long answer to your question, I think that the distance and the outsiderness of what we're doing has allowed us to think a little bit more freely about those things.
- [48:34]
A
It's starting to round into shape in my head exactly how you approach the brand and how you're able to know. When you first said you have 30 to 40 people working for Urban Jurgensen now, I was gobsmacked because that's quite a lot. That's quite a big operation. Many, many brands, extremely well known and deeply rooted in the industry operate on a skeleton stuff. So you've got some serious power there behind you. But you're approaching this with an extreme sense of calm. It feels like there is no desperate decision made here. Everything is curated, everything is well thought through. Thoughtful is is a great way to describe how everything comes across. Is that because for you this is really passion first and business second, or do you need the brand to be a stunning financial success?
- [49:29]
C
I think that we certainly approach it as a business, but we approach it as the company is over 250 years old. Old. It's in our family now and our goal is for it to stay in our family and grow for another 250 years. So when we make decisions, it's not about what happens in the next quarter, it's about what happens in the next quarter century. I mean, it's really, really long term thinking and it's meant to be purposeful. So I mentioned we bought the company in that between 2020 and 2021 we didn't launch our first new watches until 2025 and that could have been six or seven. We didn't set a date on when we needed to launch. We were going to launch, relaunch, when the watches were ready, when we felt that we had something that we loved and we were ready to show to people and we thought really communicated what we wanted to do and what we were trying to do. So I think that, that some of the calm you're feeling is sort of a mantra that we have within our team, which is slow down. We don't need to get things done overnight. The goal is not new, new, new constantly. It's things that are exceptional and that stand the test of time. And I think that takes time. It's a little bit the reason we're not going to Watches and Wonders this year, which is it's not about maximizing what we do each day or each month. It's how do we build this for the long term. How would we ask for people's attention? Do we feel that we're asking for it because we really have something to show them? How when we introduce a watch, is it not something we just think is okay, but something we absolutely love and feel good standing behind and putting this amount of love and effort into communicating to people. So. So we do approach it as a business. There's certainly a business philosophy to it. It's not a whim, it's not a vanity project, but it's really done intentionally to take time and stand the test of time.
- [51:38]
B
I'm 100% sure you've gotten requests for bespoke pieces, customized pieces, piece uniques, as they say in French. Do you guys make that?
- [51:50]
C
We don't. And we think that this is one of the things that's different about us from other independents. I think that we sit or we see ourselves as sitting eventually within a space that brings the best of independent watchmaking to a much more brand like context. So how we communicate with people, how we interact with people. One of the things that's wonderful about what Kari does is that that any client who comes to him and wants to change something wants a unique dial, wants to change the numerals. He's open to doing that, but it is extremely costly and extremely time consuming. We want to bring watches that we absolutely love, that represent what we're doing, that we stand behind and offer those as they are to the collecting world and to the broader world. And in order to do that and, and keep producing at a. At a pace that makes sense, at a price that makes sense, and to stay focused on our growth, we are not doing unique pieces at the moment. We will, over time do some things that are limited. So we may do a series of 10 of something, or we may do a couple of, you know, some very limited versions or series of things, but not unique pieces to clients.
- [53:14]
A
Alex, I love it when an interview goes this well and I really have very little work to do in the editing suite. So thank you very much for being a very polished and personable guest. I'm sure our audience will enjoy this episode as much as Alan and I have enjoyed listening to you talk for the last hour. If you would like to ask Alex any questions and you know how to get in touch with us, you can do so via our Instagram handle herealtime.show or via the official website at www.therealtime.show. we will be back soon with more top quality watch content and interviews with the industry's finest. Until then, stay safe and keep on ticking. Sam.