While most of the world is in self-isolation due to the coronavirus, Voutilainen is the investor no one saw coming, opening a new production facility in a small idyllic village in the Swiss mountains.
lainen is the leader of the group of investors who've acquired the company Urban Jürgensen to be more precise. This is the same company that made the watch Voutilainen long dreamed of owning. In an interview Voutilainen gave in 2015, he admitted he considers this perpetual calendar by Urban Jürgensen in a pink-gold case one of the most beautiful watches ever made.
He finally managed to buy it as gift to himself for his 50th birthday in 2012. Now, nine years later, he's bought a piece of the company itself. The decision to invest in this particular company is no coincidence — Kari Voutilainen worked there himself when he was only starting out on his career.
After Voutilainen announced he'd found his calling as a watchmaker and said he wanted to work at a watch repair shop run by a friend of his father's, he went on to study watchmaking in his native Finland before relocating to Switzerland and enrolling in WOSTEP.
Voutilainen worked for Michel Parmigiani in the 1990s, where he specialized in restoring complicated antique models at the time. He'd already created his first watch by 1994 — a tourbillon pocket model with a guilloché pattern hand-engraved on the dial. This remains a distinguishing feature shared by Voutilainen's watches to this day.
The first wristwatches created by his own company called Kari Voutilainen Artisan d’Horlogerie d’Art were unveiled in 2002. The Urban Jürgensen & Sønner company Voutilainen has invested in is the Danish brand which was the appointed supplier of chronometers to the Danish Admiralty in the past.
The brand was revived in the 1970s thanks to Peter Baumberger. When Baumberger passed away in 2010, the auctioneer Helmut Crott took over the reigns before the company was subsequently taken over by a group of Danish investors. The company might be in more stable hands now with Kari Voutilainen at its helm, for whom the brand is so close to his heart.
Voutilainen has joined the company together with his daughter Venla, who'll be in charge of the company's after-sales service. Urban Jürgensen & Sønner was acquired by its new owners just ahead of its 250th anniversary in 2023. The brand is rumored to be planning a total reset. All the current models will be discontinued and new watches will be unveiled in the anniversary year.