Interest in timepieces by independent watchmakers has grown significantly over the past two years among participants in the pre-owned watch market.
Any form of investment is always a risk. What's behind the sudden increase in the auction value of watches from small manufacturers and tiny workshops? Above all, it's a reflection of significant growth of the pre-owned watch market itself. Many new players have arrived on the scene looking to make successful investments.
They're prepared to take risks by placing their bets on what are little-known names today, in the hope that they'll rise to fame in the watch business a few years from now and their work will become popular. They're also prepared to invest in small manufacturers which have yet to have the chance to watch their timepieces go on the second-hand market, never mind having some sort of influence over it.
In any case, collectors and investors have always kept the closest eye on independent brands, as they simultaneously tick four boxes and meet the following criteria for a collector's watch:
- they're exceedingly beautiful and unusual from a design point of view;
- they showcase the most technically interesting and promising ideas, even including unique escapement designs or unusual takes on well-known complications from the Grande Complication category;
- they're rare watches, released in extremely limited editions or even as a bespoke piece unique;
- the majority of their cases and movements are worked and decorated by hand, and this also applies to their dials, which are on the same level as masterpieces of art like paintings, sculptures and fine jewelry in terms of how they're executed;
- sometimes the price of a piece which offers a high watch per dollar value but is under-appreciated due to its obscurity can multiply over time, as was the case with pieces by F. P. Journe, Richard Mille, Voutilainen, Konstantin Chaykin etc.
We all recognize companies like Rolex and Seiko to name a couple of examples. They make wonderful watches, but they're released in very large series. The titans can't afford to limit their impressive production capacities to minimal limited editions. It's even harder for them to create watches with unconventional designs.
That's largely due to the fact that their watches need to appeal to all sorts of different tastes at the same time — clients from the US, Japan, Australia, Canada, Brazil, India, Germany and Italy… And it's difficult to please everyone.
That's why they try to boil tastes down to an average in order to appeal to different people from all over the world, which doesn't tend to blow the mind of an individual client and make them want to buy this one particular watch right away. That is unless, of course, the watch was previously worn by someone like Paul Newman, Mahatma Gandhi, Napoleon Bonaparte or another great.
The titan's can't afford themselves the luxury of working and decorating all the parts by hand. Strange as it may seem, even the latest-generation 8D machines aren't able to engrave Vacheron Constantin's trademark tourbillon bridge, which has a slightly tapered shape.
Yet this is a mighty manufacture, and you'd think money is no object when it comes to equipment. However, those pesky tapered tourbillon bridges still have to be engraved by hand to this day. And the same can be said of watch dials.
The likes of Rolex can only dream of being able to work them the way independent watchmakers like Kari Voutilainen do these days. The Japanese holding company Seiko is a case in point, which marks its 140th anniversary this year. In honor of this big date, Seiko released a series of four watches with an indication for a second time in the Grand Seiko Heritage Collection GMT.
The Japanese watchmaker didn't even try to invent a new series of original patterns for the dials, and simply decorated them with the most ones that generate the most demand. The most underground workshops do everything they can so that people don't loose interest in them.
Over the past four or five years, holding companies have swallowed up Girard-Perregaux, Ulysse Nardin, Corum, Ebel and Frederique Constant. It looked as if they'd asserted their dominance, but then independent brands suddenly began to spring up or be revived one after the other.
They ranged from very young watchmakers like Rexhep Rexhepi, David Candaux, Ming, Naoya Hida & Co., Petermann Bédat, Théo Auffret, Cyril Brivet-Naudot, Rémy Cools and Anton Suhanov. To famous renowned masters and names such as Svend Andersen, Kari Voutilainen, Bernhard Lederer, Laurent Ferrier, Marco Lang and Alain Silberstein.
A new lease on life has been given to Konstantin Chaykin, Hautlence, Arnold & Son, Louis Erard, De Bethune and Moritz Grossmann. And each new brand is more interesting than the last. And the watches they've presented aren't any old sentimental pieces or artsy-fartsy models with rough angles cobbled together with a file and a piece of sandpaper.
They're complicated pieces with serious perfected finishing and unbelievable potential. Their movements and mechanisms have solved age-old problems that have plagued watchmakers, such as constant force, the effect of gravity on timekeeping accuracy, and the quest for alternatives to the anchor escapement.
There's a good reason why the winners at last year's Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) included the designer Endeavour Cylindrical Tourbillon H. Moser X MB&F (CHF 79,000), the Petermann Bédat Dead Beat Second model (CHF 64,400), and the revived Charles Girardier brand's Tourbillon Signature Mystérieuse (CHF 90,000).
What would there be to judge if the list of prize-winners were to only mention six big brands out of the 18 nominees — Vacheron Constantin, Piaget, Breitling, Bulgari, Van Cleef & Arpels and Tudor. Is this just the beginning? Independent brands also have their disadvantages, as the likelihood is no one will ever find out about a little-known watchmaker.
That's because a.) they don't have any advertising budget to speak of, b.) they can go bankrupt without a patient sponsor, c.) they can get caught up in a long or even never-ending pursuit of a new concept for telling the time or d.) they can simply get swept under the banner of a large manufacture.
But let's not despair. After all, statistics and reports from auction houses have shown most fans of watchmaking are very optimistic about small unknown watchmakers, and this optimism is growing. We'd like to wish these watchmakers success, and the collectors who believe they'll be stars one day.