MB&F | A clear path

The art direction lesson

| Maximilian Büsser: never forget the child you've been.

Maximilian Büsser is to independent high-end watchmaking something like Karl Lagerfeld was to haute couture. He has reinvented the profession of artistic director and is revisiting all the codes of tradition. He personifies the successful entrepreneur, but his career has been built on failures. Above all, he is determined to defend his creative freedom and let his childlike soul wander.

Stéphane Gachet

The first time you speak to Maximilian Büsser, the first time you tell him how fascinated you are by watchmaking, he will no doubt be surprised by your enthusiasm. How can one be fascinated by watchmaking these days? How can this happen when the industry seriously lacks “love brands”. This is surprising as the sector is dominated by marketing. The little marketing bubble doesn’t recognise the hard work and mistakes industrial processes with craftsmanship and the slogans should thus be authentic. “One of the biggest dangers of this trade is to be saturated with discourse.”

He did quite the opposite. He veered off the marketing road while he was in full ascension in order to trace his own route: alone, in winter and without oxygen. Quite a sight as Maximilian Büsser has never been a solitary type. He has always been surrounded by “friends” (The “f” from MB&F), indeed his alter ego and associate Serge Kriknoff who has since the beginning, tightened all the bolts in highly complex productions. Serge Kriknoff is quite a figure himself, rarely in the limelight. He fell into watchmaking and worked for the Vendôme group under Alain-Dominique Perrin. He met Maximilian Büsser at Harry Winston, he later was managing G&F Châtelain and was manufacturing boxes for Chanel, where MB&F were clients.

Maximilian Büsser opened his branch in winter even though he did make the most of his prior success from Harry Winston where he had managed to multiply profits by ten in seven years: 8 million francs and losses when he arrived in 1998 and 80 million and extremely profitable when he left in 2005. A trajectory that led him straight to the pantheon of successful leaders. He would have even been awarded a bonus if he had stayed until January 2013 when the brand was acquired by Swatch Group for a billion francs.

“I wasn’t making watches that were speaking to me. I was making watches to please the market.” – Max Büsser, MB&F

But it’s well before all of this that he cuts off his oxygen supply, cuts ties and goes back to base. By conviction. By instinct. For reasons of passion. With only one idea in mind; not to die with regrets. “I wasn’t making watches that were speaking to me. I was making watches to please the market.” We are in 2005 and the next step, he will do for himself, for his loved-ones, his family, for the wife and children he doesn't yet have, for the retailers who trust him and allow him to create this first development by investing in him. However others have beaten him to it in this development. His creative vision for watchmaking has taken the industry by storm and others follow suit. While he is launching the backbone of his project in mid 2005, he has unknowingly opened found loophole in the imposing luxury watch industry. There were others before him; Urwerk, Richard Mille, De Bethune, Vianney Halter, Greubel Forsey. Max Büsser had just invented something new; something that went beyond technique, creation and even beyond the invention of the watch: he had managed to bring watchmaking into the contemporary era and he was going to become its central figure, its artistic director.

Just like in Parisian couture houses, he works in his own style, relaxed, smiling, polite and available. However behind his cool demeanour, he has the outward shell of an entrepreneur, in rigour and in self discipline. Peremptory sometimes, like the day in 1993 when Emmanuel Gueit, himself a designer, presents him a prototype from the Royal Oak Offshore (which led Audemars Piguet to a billion dollars affair) where Max states that the model is too large, unwearable and will never sell. The anecdote is widespread and Max has publicly stated his error and wrongdoing and has thus stated and restated the mantra “Even though I’m an atheist, I do believe in karma”.

“Even though I’m an atheist, I do believe in karma.” – Max Büsser, MB&F

2005, he launches his project. The first «Horological Machine» (HM, the wrist watches that tell the time) is launched in 2007. A statement piece whose fundamental task is to get rid of all references of luxury classical watchmaking. The only remnants from the traditional watch are the display and the mechanics. The piece is presented as one would present a luxury pair of binoculars from a sectional viewpoint. The hours and minutes are separated. Between both, a rotating cage. The second machine is even more extreme. The geometry is reduced to a simple rectangle but composed with technical complexity: instantaneous jumping hour, retrograde concentric minutes, retrograde date, two hemisphere moon phase and automatic re-assembly.

These first two creations are programmatic; they reiter everything that MB&F focus on specifically; thinking outside of traditional realms and to function as a hub where talent meets design (Eric Giroud, designer, WATCH AROUND 28), technique, Laurent Besse and Peter Speake-Marin for HM1 and Jean-Marc Wiederrecht for HM2. Soon the first capsules will appear; these collaborations between brand and creator very in vogue in the prêt-à-porter and other sectors, in watchmaking these are never thematised so directly.

Maximilian Büsser had already explored this area of expression when he was at Harry Winston, working on the Opus series, unbridled creations commissioned by independent watchmakers. A key stage in the ascension of the young entrepreneur, who left with the following answer: “I launched Opus to help a friend. I was in Basel, in 2000, I bump into François-Paul Journe, who had just launched his own brand. At the time, he is unknown to the public. I suggest we make a watch together. When we released it, nobody understood it, That’s when I brought in this rule: a single product is not enough to launch an idea, only after three products, do we start to understand the concept.”

“A single product is not enough to launch an idea, only after three products, do we start to understand the concept.” – Max Büsser, MB&F

At MB&F, they would need four to understand the concept. The small team launches the HM4 in pain. We are in 2010. The market is on its knees. Max too has spent much of 2009 on a plane, 260 days away to convince traumatised partners to stick around following the Lehman Brothers’ failure. The HM4 is madness. An integrated movement to the unreleased architecture and an off the cuff design- two parallel reactors with dials at one end and nozzle crowns at the other. In Basel, the model doesn’t take off. The team leaves the office with a book of almost empty orders and an already launched production. Suddenly the market wakes up; while the retailers weren’t interested in this watch, the end clients are. The exercise finishes with a happy turnaround: 143 watches are sold and the business is saved.

Maximilian Büsser has just successfully launched his brand and his project was becoming clear; he would need to revisit all the watchmaking codes. The H4 prototype was being launched, which would then be followed by an edition paying homage to cars, diving watches, classical watches from the XVIII century with all their complications (differential double pendulum watches, perpetual calendar, moon phases, etc) produced by Legacy Line Machine brand. Models are available in limited editions, different colours, finishes, materials and are then displayed in their little cases with an independent creators’ final touch before being released in the catalog. The avenues to explore are still numerous. MB&F has not yet approached the essential complication that is the chronograph, nor the women’s watch (scheduled for last January, and done yet)...

The HM4 also puts MB&F on the trajectory destined by its entrepreneur: the business was worth 15 million francs and producing 300 watches a year with 15 collaborators on board. The business has reached its peak. Indeed “The more a brand grows, the more the project becomes about marketing and more individuals are perceived as dangerous”. The threshold was nearly attained in 2013, definitively bringing the brand to the benchmark rank. This was the ultimate goal for the niche ultra-creative brand on the one hand, well inscribed in the general ranking and on the other, in a league of its own, in other words the brand was both a commercial success and an accomplished business despite the growth constraints. Every model released since has been a success and the average market price is increasing: “clients come to us for the crazier ideas to come”. The small brand has even reached the threshold reserved for the bigger brands: “demand surpasses production”.

“My luck is to have overcome colossal difficulties.” – Max Büsser, MB&F

Life is good for Maximilian Büsser: he marries, starts a family and moves to Dubai where he spends half his time. He launches his own boutique venture, the “MAD Gallery” in Geneva, where he becomes curator and exhibits artists he loves, crazy mechanics, sculptors, lamps, cars, photos, decoration. It is a commercial success that unravels all over the world. He launches a collection of objects in collaboration with local craftsmen (music boxes), Caran d’Ache (pens), L’Epée (table clocks). Again every new idea is a success from the very beginning.

Things seem light, amusing, creative, a treasure trove of toys for adults. We mustn’t forget that all this relies on hard work and discipline. Hard work in ideation, technical rigour and team rigour as one cannot get away with a toe out of line in a sector where reputation is everything. Everything also depends on taking risks all the time. R&D: in 13 years, MB&F developed 15 calibres with another 6 in the pipeline. Distribution: hyperconcentrated with only 25 points of sale in the world. Integration: assembly, quality control, customer success service and more recently, the integration of a production lab for teams to iterate their prototypes.

Looking back on his journey Maximilian Büsser starts by seeing the errors. His milestones are his failures: “My luck is to have overcome colossal difficulties.” His worst years go back to his entry at Harry Winston between 1998 and 1999. Hardly had he signed his contract and left Jaeger-LeCoultre, that he reads in the Herald Tribune that Harry Winston had just been sold and he hadn’t even been informed. Watchmaking activity and in particular losses are recorded and at the headquarters watchmaking is perceived as a burden, a trade that tarnishes the image of the group. Earlier in his career, when he was at Jaeger-LeCoultre, he was already familiar with the saying “17 million francs for 220 collaborators. The headquarters had no glamour, no money. We only had one Citroën Visa to represent the brand”.

At MB&F, he’s close to the worst in several instances. The business nearly didn’t make it. In 2005, he embarks on the MB&F adventure. He invests everything he has. Some retailers from the Harry Winston era follow him and pre-finance the production of HM1, the first Horological Machine, a mechanical thing telling the time. Everything finds its place. Until 2006, while his motion provider, STT is bought by Bovet. He finds himself back to square one, a toolkit full of watch parts and components in his hands, no one to assemble them and dried up accounts. First sequence of “friends”: The watchmaker Peter- Speake- Marin gets his entourage moving and starts up an assembly workshop. MB&F leaves on tour.

“Max told me not to come, that the business would fail.” – Serge Kriknoff, MB&F

There will also be the 2009 episode and his 260-day business trip. Serge Kriknoff, who was supposed to rejoin the business as a co-shareholder at this moment remembers: “Max told me not to come, that the business would fail.” He nevertheless joined the microteam and this in turn would become a success. Then came 2014 that marked the beginning of setbacks for the whole industry and could have been disastrous for MB&F that was caught in the web of overinvestment: four watch calibres had been developed over two years, heavy investments for teams, machines, a watch anniversary marking ten years of the brand’s project, the HMX sold to a zero margin profit. All spendings were frozen and the exercise was to pass to the ground level of the treasury. With this pride, everything was self-financed.

Listening to the entrepreneur, this setback has followed him everywhere. Even his engineering and micromechanics suffered setbacks as this field was not Maximilian Büsser’s dream. He wanted to be a designer and rejoined Art center, the prestigious school in Pasadena which had just opened a subsidiary in La Tour-de-Peilz, by Leman lake. The establishment specialised in car design and he had been set on this field since his childhood when a passion for automobiles grew from the pages of a large automobile encyclopedia that his father had given him. Alas, the Art Centre was not within budget and when he was 18 years old, Maximilian Büsser found himself at the polytechnic school in Lausanne (EPFL), studying microtechnique. He idly puts his head down and tried to beat off a growing depression in the self-catering cafeteria full of cartoon billboards and placards.

It was EPFL that would open the door to watchmaking, His classmate wears a watch: “What’s on your wrist? A Rolex? Is it mechanic? Is it expensive? 4700 francs!” For the student he was back then, it was a shock, madness, that was more money than he made in a year with all three jobs combined. Three years later he remembers the episode and decides to focus his career on luxury watchmaking in the backdrop of a seminar on the technique and the environment: “How is it possible that people spend ludicrous amounts of money on technologies that are way behind their time?” He writes to all directors: to Stephen Urquhart at Audemars Piguet, to Claude Daniel Proellochs at Vacheron Constantin, to Henry John Belmont at Jaeger-LeCoultre and Gérald Genta too. They all provide him with the same answer: “We know what we’re doing doesn’t make sense, but it’s just such a beautiful trade.”

“We know what we’re doing doesn’t make sense, but it’s just such a beautiful trade.” – Max Büsser. MB&F

Maximilian Büsser is impressed, but he will have to risk his life in order to launch his watchmaking career. He takes a gap year before he graduates. He starts building his army, he becomes a chauffeur, his vehicle rears up excitedly and is overturned. The worst is avoided. Six weeks of hospitalization. He goes out and buys himself a present: a stainless steel stopwatch Ebel El Primero that costs 2750 francs. He squeezes in another internship at Audemars Piguet and it is here that he runs into Emmanuel Gueit, the future creator of the Royal Oak Offshore.

Maximilian Büsser has been stung by the watchmaking bug, however he doesn’t yet admit it. He fights, Diploma in hand he sees himself in a large multinational. He ends up joining the small Jaeger- LeCoultre manufacturer, a watch house of “an extraordinary integrity and genuinity” that “gives clients everything”. At Jaeger-Le-Coultre, he would do more than simply learn the trade, he would find a mentor, practically a second father in Henry John Belmont who he can still hear say: “We are poor in communications.”

Maximilian Büsser will later understand that underneath this weakness was an important lesson: “What matters is the authenticity of the product.” This lesson would bring the young graduate on his journey to Harry Winston and will motivate the creation of MB&F: «I applied at Harry Winston everything that I learned at Jaeger-Le-Coultre and this is what brought the brand success. I was treated like a celebrity, but this depressed me and I felt ashamed for not feeling happy. I was making products that the market needed but I wasn’t a fan of them. The more the brand grew, the more I distanced myself from my own values. It was time to awaken the creative little boy in me that had been asleep for so long.”

“The more the brand grew, the more I distanced myself from my own values.” – Max Büsser. MB&F

He was extremely determined and little by little, Maximilian Büsser realises he’s not the only one who thinks this way. Starting with his associate, Serge Kriknoff, who was heading for a brilliant career leading large projects. Later, Charris Yadigaroglou, director of communications who too, had resigned from his job with a high salary and all the perks from a multinational. At 31 years old, the new commercial director too, did not find his place working in middle management for a prestigious brand.

Today, at 51 years old, he feels ready for new challenges and ready to overcome new defeats. One defeat in particular: “I love to create, but I don’t want to feel obliged to create. 10 years ago, there was no expectation. Now everyone will be fixated on all my new ideas. Success forces me to risk disappointing people. This is now part of his mantra: “Creating and loving are the only things that matter in life.” He even makes a pamphlet addressing the whole industry: “What makes me sad is that today brands pin everything on their creative teams, however these creations all came about disruptively. I would love if this trade would invest in ideas and watches that will not immediately sell. Not one CEO is willing to undertake this challenge, preferring to play it safe. A brand needs to be ready to flop occasionally.”

MB&F is placed away from the scramble. Not as a challenge nor as a cold gesture, but due to the very essence of the project. Maximilian Büsser has not only created completely original watches, he has also redefined the trade of the artistic director. Sort of like a Karl Lagerfeld in the watchmaking field, with a particular attention to detail to not cut himself off into a brand argument. He’s not trying to defend an old trade, but rather, he is universally opening up the sector. His creations distinguish themselves from others and go beyond the toys for posh boys dialogue. MB&F is a constructed language made up of references belonging to everyone, sometimes popular, sometimes more sophisticated. To name a few: Star Trek, Raymond Loewi, Zorglub, Delorean, Ferdinand Berthoud, Messerschmitt, Citroën Traction, Goldorak, Blade Runner, Antide Janvier, The Wild Wild West, Corvette Stingray, etc., etc. What work of art can be this difficult transition from individual to collective, distinguishing art from nature and transforming sometimes a little portrait made in a workshop to a masterpiece Mona Lisa. |

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