Different strokes: MB&F creates watches that are ahead of their time

The revolutionary watchmaker Maximilian Büsser has gone out of his way to create a company, MB&F, and timepieces that are as unconventional as they are extraordinary.

The HM4 Thunderbolt. Courtesy: MB&F

Maximilian Büsser is not your average watchmaker.

Your average watchmaker is not prone to saying things like this: “Let’s not forget that everything we do has absolutely no practical point. We are creating objects that are ten thousand times less precise than quartz, up to ten thousand times more expensive and probably a thousand times less reliable. There is no way anybody can get away with telling you that there is a point to what we do.”

Much less this: “There’s an incredible fact in my industry that nobody wants to talk about – that since 1870, we have virtually not created anything. The chronographs, the perpetual calendars, the minute repeaters, the tourbillons, you name it, everything that we are all boasting about was created between 1720 and 1870. And that’s pathetic.”

Or this: “More and more, my industry is taking the customer towards status. It takes years of research and engineering and artisanship to create these things, and then we tell customers they should wear them because some footballer is? That drives me crazy.”

But while the founder of the niche watchmaking brand MB&F may talk about his industry with a healthy dose of irreverence, few people can claim to be as committed to the actual art of watchmaking. For Büsser, a watch has little to do with necessity, much less timekeeping: it is a piece of kinetic sculpture. “I haven’t put together a team of the most incredible engineers and artisans, to work for three years on R&D and 18 months on production and two months on assembly, to give you time,” he says. “Why am I doing this? Because it’s a piece of art.”

The half-Swiss, half-Indian resident of Geneva is of solid horological stock. He was brought up through the ranks of Jaeger-LeCoultre, where he was part of the senior management team for seven years during the 1990s, and became the managing director of Harry Winston Rare Timepieces in 1998 at the age of 31. But nine years ago, he decided he’d had enough. “I decided that I wasn’t going to create any more products just to please clients. I spent 14 years looking at the market and saying this is what we should do because it will sell. At some point, I realised that I didn’t want that life; I wasn’t proud of it.”

So he set up MB&F. The F, incidentally, stands for friends. There is an almost revolutionary, anti-capitalist undertone to his approach. The company has no marketing budget, with a whopping 30 per cent of revenue invested back into R&D, and Büsser eschews the idea of celebrity endorsements (two famous figures from the sporting world recently approached him to discuss the idea of becoming brand ambassadors. He politely declined. “I’m not even going to give them a discount,” he laughs). In addition to only working with like-minded “friends”, many of whom took a significant pay cut when they joined the company, Büsser decided early on that he would keep his company small. In fact, it reached “ideal” size last year and production has now been capped at around 300 timepieces per year. “We are not going to grow any more. I can decide that because I am the owner and there are no shareholders pushing for double-digit growth every quarter.”

So what, if not growth, is his driving force? “Creativity. I’m just pushing my own boundaries. MB&F, as I often say, is a great life model but a terrible business model. But it’s my life decision.”

There is, and he will be the first to admit it, a certain self-indulgence to the whole endeavour. Büsser basically creates watches for himself; they are autobiographical markers of his own personal evolution. “In maybe 10 years time, you will put 20 of my pieces next to each other and you won’t see the trends of the market; it will be a personal autobiography. So that’s the driving force.”

The pieces, which cost up to Dh800,000, are, above all, polarising. They are highly technical but also three-dimensional, and defined by unexpected shapes and seemingly incongruous proportions. HM4 Thunderbolt (pictured on the previous page), for example, is inspired by Büsser’s childhood passion for model plane kits and looks like two mini rockets stationed side by side on your wrist. HM5, meanwhile, is inspired by the supercars of the 1970s and features a tapering wedge-shaped body and a vertical, forward-facing display. HM3 consists of two bulbous cones protruding from a complex asymmetrical case. When Boucheron created an haute joaillerie version of this piece, as seen on our cover this month, HM3 was transformed into a mesmerising, jewel-encrusted owl.

“When I created our first piece, HM1, it was super radical. But if I look at it today, I have a lot of fondness for it but I think it’s so tame. We’re radicalising ourselves. In the Horological Machines we are getting crazier and crazier. In November we are launching HM6, our ninth fully new product in nine years.”

The collection is split into the more outlandish Horological Machines and the nostalgic Legacy Machines, which, *shock horror*, are actually round. “If you had told me I would create a round watch at some point, I would have said no way. And then, in 2011, we come out with the Legacy Machine, because in the middle of all that I decided I wanted to create a tribute to the 19th century. I thought, actually, after so many years of rebellion, I’d like to create a classic watch again.”

So who is buying these things? MB&F owners around the world share commonalities, says Büsser. “What I’ve seen is that most of my clients are extremely assertive people. You need courage to wear an MB&F. You’re not a show off, you’re not about status. My clients are people who don’t care what people think of them. Which is amazing, really, because I don’t care what my clients think.”

Nonetheless, it must have been incredibly difficult for a small, niche company to establish itself in an industry that is brimming with brand awareness – and brand loyalty. This is an issue that is particularly pertinent in this part of the world, Büsser admits. “This is a region that is extremely open to new ideas, new shapes and new concepts, which is great for us, but at the same time, they are extremely brand conscious, which is terrible for us. If the only thing people are interested is in is a piece of status, they will never be interested in what we do, however crazy or cool it is.”

Even so, MB&F has ramped up sales efforts in the GCC over the last year and is now sold in Qatar and Saudi Arabia and by Al Manara International Jewellery in Abu Dhabi. In Dubai, the brand has a long-standing relationship with Ahmed Seddiqi and Sons. “The owners of Seddiqi are one of the six foundation retailers of the brand,” Büsser explains. “When I started the company, I had 900,000 francs, which is around Dh2.8 million. For a mere mortal that is a hell of a lot of money, but when you want to launch a watch company, especially one with complicated movements, it’s a drop in the ocean. You need Dh20 million. So I went around the world to see my best retailers from my Harry Winston days and said: ‘This is the design of my first watch, and this is a plastic representation of the piece. Are you interested in buying it? If you say yes, please can you pay me one third in advance now and, if you’re lucky, I’ll deliver in two years.’ Some of them said yes, some said no. The Seddiqis were one of the six that said: ‘OK. You’re crazy but we trust you.’”

Needless to say, Büsser does not have a 10-year plan. With production capped and demand on the rise, it seems highly likely that the secondary market for MB&F pieces will grow and transform Büsser’s creations into highly sought-after collectibles. Which, in turn, will mean that all those early buyers to whom the brand is so indebted could make themselves a very pretty penny. Büsser appears pleased with this little bit of karma.

One thing that is definitely on the agenda is the launch of more of the brand’s so-called MAD (Mechanical Art Devices) galleries, the first of which opened in Geneva in 2011. In addition to MB&F’s own timepieces, the galleries feature a carefully curated collection of weird and wonderful kinetic and mechanical items from around the world. These are items of extreme and rare beauty – the Birdfish guitar, an unlikely looking instrument carved from solid blocks of acoustically optimal aluminium, which is inspired by Leo Fender’s Stratocaster and rated among the best technical electric guitars in the world; custom-made motorcycles by the Japanese artist Chicara Nagata, who spends thousands of hours obsessively crafting his masterpieces, taking a vintage motorcycle engine and then adding up to 500 components that he has created himself; and kinetic sculptures by the 72-year-old, New York State-based artist Bob Potts who, in a one-man workshop built in the 1850s, creates minimalist works of moving art out of stainless steel, aluminium, brass, bronze, copper and wood.

The concept has proven incredibly successful – a second MAD Gallery was established in Taipei this year and there are concrete plans to open another in Dubai within the next 18 months.

In the interim, Büsser will be focusing on recalibrating the old work-life balance, which will involve a move to Dubai. “I decided that I was going to try to have a work-life balance that made sense. Work has been most of my life. When I met my wife I said to her, ‘I am divorced with no kids but it’s as if I have three kids. M, B and F.’ It has taken up an enormous part of my life. And I think the standard of living in the UAE is about 10 times higher than Europe. I’m not sure that that’s ever happened before – the owner of a Swiss watch brand coming to live here.”

Probably not. But Maximilian Büsser is not your average watchmaker. And his watches are not your average watches.