Heritage Watch Manufactory – Interview of Christian Gütermann

During the Geneva Time Exhibition 2012, I had the chance to visit the Heritage Watch Manufactory booth and to to interview Christian Gütermann who is the co-founder of the brand and a member of the board.

The interview was very interesting and I believe that this brand has a good strategy and is producing a fantastic movement with a lot of attention to the details. The real constant force mechanism is obviously a breakthrough in the industry and it is showing everyone that it is still possible to innovate in traditional watchmaking.

Christian Gütermann interview

What is the brand story?

The company was created in 2010, it is now located in Neuchatel.

However Karsten Frässdorf, who is the watchmaker, was already developing the movement starting in 2006.

The story of him developing the movement is quite interesting because he owned his own repair shop of old watches back in Germany, and there was a family who was quite passionate about old watches and went to see him several times to have their watches served. And at some point of time he starting dreaming loudly saying

“If I had the chance to do something I would try to develop the ultimate precise watch, I know there is a constant force, everybody is claiming to have a constant force mechanism but this is never a constant force, I would like to do something, which is really a constant force.”

So that family said okay how can we help you? We are passionate about watches so why don’t we support you?

They supported him, so he finally succeeded to build the constant force mechanism and everyone was excited.  This family asked him if he could do the rest around this mechanism, the whole movement. So he started to develop his own movement and when the movement was finished the family said to him why don’t we try to sell it? This how the company was created in 2010.

We decided liberally not to go through retailers, not to go through distributors but to go through fans and mainly collectors’ dinners.

What we believe is that our movement is unique, especially constant force mechanism is unique and if there is one person that is able to explain it’s only him.

We are afraid of retailers shop where someone comes into the shop and says “I want to have a great watch” and the sales people will tell him “Okay buy a Rolex because it is a solid one!”

They are not going to explain to the client what our watch is all about.

We presented, during the GTE 2011, the Magnus, which features a strip down movement, and the Tensus, which is the one with the constant force mechanism.

So our reference watch is the Tensus with the constant force and for those who probably don’t have the means in order to buy a Tensus which is very complex, they can go for Magnus which has the same movement except the constant force mechanism.

In Basel last year we presented our third watch which we called the Chinese watch because Karsten is passionate about measuring time, and he said “History of measuring time is so old, let’s try to find out what other cultures and other countries did on measuring time.” And one of the oldest way of measuring time is the one in China where they cut the day into hundred of units so they don’t have twenty fours hours like us but a hundred units and those hundred units are cut into sixty or hundred sub units.

So that is the dedicated mechanism that we developed for the Chinese watch where we have our traditional time system and the old historic Chinese one. In the year 600 they also developed a second time system where they cut the day not into 24 hours but in 12 units.

At 9 o’clock you can see the system dedicated to the measurement of time according the 3000 years old Chinese system and underneath the 12 there is the Chinese symbol which is an immediate jumping hours but it is not jumping every hours but every second hours according to the 600 years old Chinese way of measuring time.

We also introduced the brand in Shanghai at the Belles Montres 2011 fair, and it was very interesting to see that some Chinese were really exited about the watch and somehow were a little astonished that a Swiss brand reintroduced this kind of time measurement system back into China, some people also had never heard of it and were surprised as well to learn about their own country.

What we have decided is to continue this kind of traditional way of measuring time, so this is the first watch in a row of others to come.

When we presented the watch in Basel, there was a guy from Mexico who told us that the Maya, a long time ago, had their own time system as well as the Indian who have their own time system also and we are going to develop that line of regional watches.

The other thing which we developed is that we have currently two lines of products the first is a very classical one with the Tensus with the flat dial and the constant force mechanism then we have the Magnus, it has also a flat dial and we have a watch with exactly the same movement. Then we have the Chinese one again with the flat dial.

The watch we introduced in the GTE 2012 is the new Viator and has this kind of curved dial and  additionally it has a second time zone which is also immediately jumping.

What we decided also based on the requests of our customers is that we will only deliver the most modern watches in steel version but we are going to deliver the classic ones only in gold. So the curved dial line is going to be our steel line and the classic dial line is going to be our gold line.

So this is the brief story of where we are today.

This year we introduced the Viator and put it into the Superwatch award competition and we will see how it will perform. We also put the Tensus with the constant force mechanism because this year there will be two awards one for the design the other for the mechanical part. The Tensus is going for the mechanical award and the Viator is going for the design award.

(author comment: The HMW Tensus won the movement SuperWatch Award)

What will be the big news of 2012?

For us watch is just not indicating time but it is a kind of precision instrument, which can be used as an instrument. I don’t want to say much about it because in Baselworld we are going to present a complex watch, which is a real instrument. You saw in our design that we are not a marketing company, we are really passionate about watchmaking some people already challenged us about the name Heritage Watch Manufactory. We believe it says very much about the company.

First of all Heritage means we inherited and we develop the spirit of traditional watchmaking from the last century, when you look at the concept of our watches each and every piece is developed by Karsten but our concept is something that you could already see in pocket watches in the last century. So what we are trying to do is to inherit and to bring forward the spirit of traditional watchmaking.

The same apply for the materials, you will not find any composite in our watches, it is pure steel. The inspiration is that in even 200 years of now a watchmaker will be able to rebuild the part of our watches without any technical support.

The manufactory is also a part of our concept, we only produce small quantities to assure that each and every constant force mechanism is assembled by Karsten himself so we don’t have any other guy, we don’t give to any other external guy to assemble it on our behalf. That is the reason I would say that we got the heritage and manufactory spirit because everything is done by hand and that is by the way also the reason why we selected this symbol for the brand.

The bow is trying to cover the spirit from the last century and the arrow is going to bring it forward.

Our concept is let’s stay small, let’s go for some collectors, we are not going for any retailers, we are not going for any distributors.

What is the official price of the Viator?

The Viator is modern style and is only available in steel and the price is 33 000€ excluding V.A.T.

What type of customers do you have?

They come from all over the world; we have central European, Russians, Canadians, Americans and a few in China.

We have very few customers in Japan and in Arabian countries, some clients are in the U.K. but no much in South America.

We need to further push our presence in China.  The participation to Shanghai Belles Montres was not exactly what we were looking for because I think that there were very little traditional watchmaking connoisseurs. What do I mean is for example we had a vitrine with the watch that can be seen from the front but also from the back. We showed the movement how it worked and some people came to see us and told us “Well it looks great but how can I read the time” and I would say “Sorry this is the back of the watch, the time is on the other side of the watch”.

So it is obvious that some of the visitors lacked some knowledge in traditional watchmaking.

We need to have a more direct and private approach where we met the people that do have the knowledge.

What other brands do you like or follow?

There are many watches that we do observe for several reasons, some are in the same market niche like us and some others have nice ideas. Even if it is not our concept, a fantastic watch I believe is the Opus Eleven from Harry Winston and Denis Giguet, this a pure collector watch which is about design, the way it shows the time, I think it has not much to do with traditional watchmaking but it is a fantastic watch.

Greubel & Forsey is also something in which we are quite interested as well.

Thank you very much for reading this interview, I will try to post some pictures and videos of the new collection of Heritage Watch Manufactory.