Q&AIn Funky Town: H. Moser’s CEO Edouard Meylan

Over your six-plus years as CEO of Moser, how have you brought your own vision and perspective to the brand?

Hopefully, there are many ways in which I have influenced the evolution of the brand. The most evident would be the touch of modernity and sexiness to what was already an amazing brand, but was missing that touch. There were beautiful products already, but sometimes, according to me, they were a little dusty. The second point would be probably in the language we use to express ourselves. I think we’re very opinionated, we are polarising. We use a touch of humour that is unique and different. And then what people don’t see is on the production side. We are much more efficient, producing three times more watches with 40 percent fewer people.

Since you’ve been at the helm of Moser, what would you say have been the biggest product highlights?

Form a brand awareness standpoint, the obvious milestone would be the Swiss Alp Watch. A lot of people told me that they discovered the brand because of this watch. It was something that people kind of took as a statement from the Swiss watch industry—even though it only came from Moser—about where we stand compared with connected watches, and how we fight for our tradition. The second one would probably be the ‘Swiss’ watch, which was our statement about being Swiss-made. We meet people every day who remember the cheese watch. Of course, it’s one small piece of the brand, but I think it was an important one.

“The ‘Swiss’ watch, which was our statement about being Swiss-made. We meet people every day who remember the cheese watch.” The watch Meylan refers to had a case made of Swiss cheese.

In terms of development, the perpetual calendar is something that we continue to optimise and to re-engineer. But I think the key milestone has been our ability to develop automatic movements at very reasonable prices, manufactured in-house with our own escapement. For an independent and small brand like ours, it’s been quite an achievement. It was easier for us to develop a new perpetual calendar and a tourbillon, a minute repeater, because we’re looking at small quantities. But when you want to make something where you’re competing with big established brands, who make like 10,000 or 100,000 watches a year, you need to be extremely efficient and have good engineers and good watchmakers. And that’s what we’ve achieved.

Which is your personal favourite watch? And which complication are you most interested in?

In the past, for me, the watch that kind of made me realise what I wanted to do with H. Moser is the one I’m wearing—the Perpetual Calendar Funky Blue. Why’s that? When you take over a brand, a big mistake you can make is to get rid of everything that’s been done before. I think our capacity of taking the best from the past and to improve or build on it is what has made Moser a success. We took the Perpetual Calendar—the white gold, silver dial—it was a little dusty, as I said. By changing the colour of the dial—to this electric blue fumé—and by putting a kudu leather strap, it changed the watch completely. And it made us realise that this was the future of the watch—built on tradition and on elegance, but sexy and edgy at the same time. And that’s what we’ve been trying since then—to replicate that approach with every single product we do. We reached a point where we developed the Concept watches, with nothing on the dial. It was a big, bold move for a small brand. It was I think the strongest statement we’ve had so far and those dials became our signature simply by removing our signature. For the future, we will continue this way, and also bring in new complications, like the chronograph, which we don’t have in our offerings today. I hope we can bring new complications to the level of our perpetual calendar.

"The watch that kind of made me realise what I wanted to do with H. Moser is the one I’m wearing—the Perpetual Calendar Funky Blue," Meylan reveals. The hand-wound watch in 18-karat white gold here is fitted with a strap that different from the one seen on Meylan's wrist above.

The Endeavour Perpetual Calendar Concept is an even more pared-down version of the above watch, as it does away with all markers, as well as the small seconds. With only the hour, minute and month hands, and the date window and power reserve indicator seen at the centre, and at three and nine o'clock respectively, this is the epitome of understated luxury.

The Swiss Alp Watch was obviously a conversation starter. Did Apple respond? Was there any other particularly interesting dialogue?

There were hundreds of dialogues. Anything that is even a little provocative will have many criticising it, and many people will say that it’s genius. You need that, you need this tension if you want to stand out. You need to be on the edge—hopefully on the good side of the edge. And in that particular case, I think we did it right, and I think it was a strong statement, without attacking anyone. Some people said that we were attacking Apple. On the contrary, we were saying that there are beautiful designs out there. This is a different category, and let’s get inspired by it. We are not competing with each other. We believe for H. Moser—and other established traditional brands—that the best we can do is to continue to do what we know best and to try to do it even better, without closing our eyes about other categories, and maybe get inspired by them. And the response from the vast majority from our industry was extremely positive. People said that it was the best answer to all the criticism and speculation about the future of the Swiss watch industry. When it comes brands from the connected world, I know they’ve heard of us, and they were asking who H. Moser & Cie. were, but they never went any further than that, and there was never any reason to go any further than that.

What makes blue such a Moser favourite—purity funky, midnight, blue lagoon and so on—with fumé and solid hues?

Our team likes blue. Fumé is our signature dial and the first colour that we mastered with fumé was blue, and since then we’ve had many different blues, and we saw the success of it, and then we saw the entire industry going towards blue, and we had to do even better. We always try to bring out a better level of work. When you start being copied, you either discover something new or you do it better than anybody else. We bring new things too, such as the Vantablack for instance. But at the same time, when it comes to blue dials, we have some of the best blue dials out there. As you can see I’m wearing a blue watch. I personally like it too, as do many from my team. But we’re open to many other things. And we’re constantly trying and testing new colours, new concepts. The cosmic green has been a real success. Recently we launched a burgundy fumé, which is an amazing colour. I call it the ‘raspberry fumé’. It’s beautiful, and seeing the reaction we’ve had in the last few days, we’re confident about its success. We constantly develop and try new things, but blue is a core hue for us. Though I don’t think we’re the only one there.

Blue is a core hue for H. Moser, declares Meylan, saying, "We've had many different blues." Seen here is the Endeavour Centre Seconds Concept Blue Lagoon, a 50-piece limited edition in 18-karat red gold. The 40mm case houses an automatic calibre.

What makes the Vantablack so special?

It’s not a colour. That’s the key about it. It’s a material—manmade—actually developed by NASA to use in telescopes, to kill any reflection within. It’s a material that absorbs 99.98 percent of light that falls on it. VANTA stands for ‘vertically-aligned nanotube array’. With no reflection, there’s no colour. It’s the blackest black on earth. Put it next to anything black, and you’ll see that the contrast is incredible. And the human brain cannot capture the density of the Vantablack. It sees everything as a two-dimensional. It’s very complicated to create, that’s why we produce just about 25 to 30 Vantablack watches per year. As we continue with fumé dials, the Vantablack has given us another opportunity to have something unique. And we’re constantly looking for more.

"[Vantablack] absorbs 99.98 percent of light that falls on it," says Meylan. "It’s the blackest black on earth." Vantablack really forms the perfect backdrop for the stark look of this Concept watch.

Any light you see reflected here is bouncing off the glass, while the dial itself will remain the blackest of blacks even in appearance

How does Moser manage to create innovative products while staying true to its distinctive product guidelines?

I think you need to be clear about what your guidelines are. The most difficult part is establishing what Moser is, and what we want from every single watch. If we had decided we were only about fumé dials, we wouldn’t have done the Vantablack. Then it’s a question of how far you’re willing to go from those guidelines, to try and test things. I’m not saying that there is a strict line that we must stay within. I like to try things and go a little extreme. The reason why we did the Concept line is because one day we decided that since Moser is known for its minimal design, and understatement, let’s try to go to an extreme, so people can understand better what we stand for. We made one watch, which had nothing except for the hands. And we found it pretty cool. It even got a good response and visibility in the media. Now every time we launch a new Concept watch, it sells out within months.

The Concept line took Moser's minimalism to an extreme, doing away with the hands and indexes, as Meylan informs. Seen here is the Endeavour Concept Tourbillon

₹62,06,000

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This Concept watch in 42mm white gold, really allows the tourbillon cage to stand out on the cosmic green sunburst dial

₹62,06,000

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Housing an automatic calibre offering a three-day power reserve, this watch comes in a 50-piece limited edition

₹62,06,000

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Talk about how the new Swiss Alp minute repeater takes forward the ‘minimal’ statement.

I like to go to the essence of the functions. When we did the perpetual calendar, we removed everything that you didn’t need. There’s no moon phase, there’s no day, there’s no year; there’s the leap year, but at the back. It’s basically a comment on the minimum that you need to really appreciate the function, while it’s still as functional. Then we developed this minute repeater, and wondered how far we could go. We thought of the minute repeater as something that is made to listen to the time and not see it. At the same time, you should still be able to set the time, so we developed a system to set it using the crown. When we developed it, I was concerned that people wouldn’t understand it. And we knew that we would be criticised. “It’s stupid, why wouldn’t you have hands…blah, blah, blah!” It’s easy to criticise behind a computer. We actually launched it the night before the opening of SIHH 2019, and the next morning, I went for a run with my brother, as we normally did before going to the show. I met him in the lobby of the hotel, and he asked if I had seen the comments. I said I didn’t want to read the comments, saying that I would look at them in the evening. I didn’t want to have a bad day. Because you tend to take these things a little personally. He said that I should see them anyway, and about 95 percent of the comments were positive. It seemed like people really understood what we were doing. It was exciting to see that people got it.

Is the Swiss Alp series now a platform for more such statements with other complications and innovations?

Actually, no. The Swiss Alp Watch for me was for a particular time in the life of Moser. Part of the idea of creating the Swiss Alp Watch came from the fact that we already had rectangular movements as part of our inventory, and we didn’t know what to do with them, because they didn’t sell well. Then we created the design, and we’re actually now coming to the end of this inventory. So now if we have to go on with it, we need to develop new movements, or we stop making new Swiss Alp watches. And I think it’s part of this philosophy of being ‘very rare’, and protecting the value of our products that we’ve decided that we’ll stop this collection in the next few months. Even though it’s very successful, and selling really well. I think it’s time for something else. I want to make sure that anyone who owns a Swiss Alp Watch is proud to have it, because there are only about a few hundreds of them around the world.

Can you give us a hint of what you’re currently developing? What’s going to be the next cheese or nature watch from Moser?

Next year we have some amazing new products. We’re introducing a new line. We’ll have some new complications. We’re working on a lot of things, but I cannot say too much about it at this time. Let’s just say it will be different from what we’ve been doing. We most likely won’t do anything too provocative. I’ll just say that 2020 will be an amazing year for H. Moser & Cie.

Tell us about bringing Moser to India and why 2019 was the right time.

It’s been years since we’ve been discussing coming to India. The market has to be ready, and the brand has to be ready. We’ve seen in recent years that more and more Moser fans are from India, buying in other countries, and promoting the brand in India. And we felt, okay, now that we’ve seen success in other countries, and that there is a growing community of Moser fans, it’s a good time for us to come to India. The consumer is becoming more and more knowledgeable about independent watchmaking and traditional watchmaking, and not only the big brands. There are more people who understand well-crafted, amazing products made by small companies. Every market has its turn, and this is the time for India.

What advice would you give to aspiring watch collectors, or anyone who’s looking for a special product?

For me, the first thing is to look at what talks to you, what makes your heart beat. Take your time. Sometimes the thing you like at first sight isn’t always the thing that will last like that. I believe in taking a second look, getting a second level of understanding. When you look at a watch, look at the details, get a feeling, and put it on your wrist. Because sometimes, the things that take a bit more time to appreciate are the things that last forever. At least that’s the way it works with me.