March 17, 2010
As we have had the prototype of the Minute Repeater since the GTE in January, we had the opportunity to ask fellow watchmakers to review our product and take all small imperfections out, and ask feedback from end consumers that have worn the proto-type watch for extended period of times. And yes, even if you think your product is the best in the world, this proces revealed some great feedback. See the latest adjustments to our launch model for Basel that we finalized a couple of hours ago, just in time for tomorrow’s grand opening:
 Grand Tourbillon Repetition Minute Royale - Carré d'Or Squelette - Changed the shape of the crown for easier handling.
- Changed the material (Ti) and the construction of the case back for better and louder sound.
- Sapphire crystals are driven in without the use of a joint or gasket to further improve the sound, while keeping water resistance.
- We increased the size of the gold centrifugal regulating weights to slow down the speed of the striking mechanism, making it easier to count the chimes.
- The Titanium activation slide at the 9 o’clock side of the case is hand-engraved with grip lines to make activation of the minute repeater easier.
Hope you get a change to see it for yourself in Basel…we might have a surprirse for you sur place…..
March 16, 2010
Since the introduction of our Ronde d’Or, we have noticed that the “attachment” of the strap triggered polarizing reactions. Although taste is subjective, we did not want to follow our initial thinking out of the window and started designing and experimenting with other prototypes. See the outcome in below picture. Personally, I believe the new one is better and makes the total overall look more balanced, but judge for yourself!
 The Ronde d'Or with new attachments Reference: dMc-TB-RRR-GN
Movement: Patented XP 1 minute Tourbillon
Automatic bi-directional winding
Curved chamfered and hand guilloche decoration on bridges
Hand engraved bi-colored solid gold 18K rotor
Silicium escape wheel and lever
Alternations 28800 beats/hour (4 Hz)
Custom-made hand engraving on Tourbillon cage
Sapphire Tourbillon bridge
Functions: Hour, minutes, small seconds (6 o’clock)
Case: Diameter 43 MM
Height 13.1 MM
31 parts overall
Ultra light Titanium core
Curved shaped 18K gold side panels
Brushed, polished and assembled by hand
See through case back
Front and back sapphire crystal
Multi-layered anti-reflection coating on sapphire crystal
Hand engraved case back, secured with 4 gold screws
Water resistant up to 3 ATM
Dial: Titanium tinted dial
Deep Sunray pattern engraving base
deMonaco formed index markers on hour ring
Applied hour index ring6 O’clock tourbillon opening
Hands: 18K gold hands
Strap: Ateliers deMonaco personalized hand stitched alligator strap
18K gold folding buckle, adjustable folding clasp lock finished with curved chamfered edges engraved Ateliers deMonaco
Edition: Limited to 18 pieces
March 13, 2010
The launch @ the midst of an economic crisis
Developing the total proposition – from the inventions of the technology to launching a brand – is a multi year and multi million journey, and the target was to be ready by summer 2009. Coming out of the booming beginning of the new century, it was judged that the biggest problem would be how to ramp up production without compromising the quality and individual bespoke attention for each and every customer. While the global crisis was heating up during the latter part of 2008 and the first part of 2009, the dilemma arose: Is this the right time to launch a brand selling time pieces that starts at €90K, or should we put everything on hold and wait for better times to come? And against what everybody advised, the brand launch was not postponed, but pulled forward. If we want to understand the true value of our idea, we need to be able to succeed even during the peak of a crisis. The brand never looked back, and is only more convinced that doing the counter intuitive, rarely is the easy way but often maximizes changes of success.
Mission & belief
We are an authentic independent Monegasque watch company dedicated to create the next generation of the world’s most desirable time pieces. Monaco’s contemporary Culture, Beauty and Imagination are what we are built on and inspired by, culminating into our commitment to create a legacy. What unites us is the belief that life is not only about luxury, but luxury sure is life!
What’s next
The clear intention is to make this into a long term success, and developing a brand is not a sprint but a carefully orchestrated marathon. We want our experiences to seduce people into a moment of indulgence for themselves, a statement to others and a degree of distraction from reality - a skill that unfortunately we often lose while growing up. The brand’s ambition is to be bespoke, which is why only a limited series is made of every edition before moving on to the next endeavour in the collection. No lofty sales targets are being chased, but instead there are strict quality and customer satisfaction targets: Every person owning an Ateliers deMonaco time piece needs to be convinced they bought something substantial for generations to come. And as one of founding principles of the company, expect continued innovation in the quest to leave a legacy.
 Robert
March 12, 2010
The dream
As so often in life, the desire to leave a legacy is a great motivation to achieve the unthinkable. And often during the late night and weekend sessions in the ateliers, discussion would focus on what leaving a legacy in the watch industry would mean these days. Was not almost everything already invented and designed? Yes and no was the conclusion. Great inventions had been made, but arguably their functionality was not always as good and consumer friendly as the original intend. For instance, despite the Tourbillon movement was invented to increase accuracy, yet most of these beautiful pieces of mechanical engineering and design, will actually not deliver on its original intend. The principle and functionality of a Perpetual Calendar is already designed, but if for whatever reason you need to adjust the calendar, it will easily cost you a lot of time and frustration to adjust, if at all you will be able to do so without causing damage to the complication. The fact that everything is designed yet does not only hold true for technology, but also goes for branding. When was the last time you’ve seen a brand that is proud to live in the here and now, and not fall into the temptation of abusing heritage as a seal of craftsmanship? And herein lies the nugget of the shared dream - creating a new high-end watch brand, designed for the generation that lives now— using a hybrid between the best of modern technology and traditional craftsmanship. As the nouvelle cuisine was trying to set a new standard and fresh impulse in cooking trends, so should this brand try to give a fresh impulse to Haute Horlogerie: let’s call it the ‘Nouvelle Horlogerie’.
Location & founding
As the intent of the new brand was not to copy the category conventions of the past decades, there were no limitations in the initial search. It needed to be a place that could provide enough inspiration for the people working for the brand, while also carry sufficient aspiration for those that the brand was designing for: Monaco and its surroundings. This place is not only one of the more appealing places on earth at the moment, but it has a long standing heritage of attracting some of the biggest innovators in several fields of expertise: painters like Picasso, Chagall, Matisse (or more recently like the Dutch sculptor Verkade); architects like Le Corbusier; poets and writers like Chekhov and Cocteau; and philosophers like Nietzsche. And importantly, these people did not only reside in this area, but delivered some of their best work while in the region. Of course, the breathtaking scenery of the Mediterranean against the startling rock formation of the Alps, and the warm blanket of the climate makes the combination picture perfect! After the location was determined, over a year went by to incorporate the company in Monaco and find the appropriate location for the Ateliers in the Princedom. It is important to be a genuine Monegasque company that is woven in to the local fabric of life. And all of this culminates in the brand proudly stating its origin on the final time pieces: Made in Monaco!
 Peter
March 8, 2010
AGAINST THE TIDE?
This outlines the story of the 3 musketeers who launched a new and exclusive alternative luxury watch brand at the peak of a global economic crisis. Call them passionate, crazy, brilliant or stupid. At least they are attempting to realize their dream and add a new chapter in the rich history of global watchmaking.
Introduction
Ateliers deMonaco is a new independent luxury watch manufacturer inspired by, designed for and made in Monaco. The brand targets a new generation with Nouvelle Horlogerie by creating iconic timepieces that are derived from their passion to challenge existing conventions to leave a legacy: “We have always dreamt about making a mechanical watch movement that is the most precise in the world and will keep generations of scientists busy trying to figure out how we did it !” All watches and their movements are completely in-house designed and manufactured, an unique capability that only few independent watch manufacturers still have to-date. The collection and innovations can be characterized as the ultimate collision between modern technology and classical craftsmanship, leaving a hybrid time piece that utilizes the best of both. To guarantee every watch gets its own unique character, every individual watch is hand-finished, -polished, -brushed and -engraved, which for some can take over 100 hours each. Each watch will be individually numbered and is only made available in very limited editions. And as a true Monegasque proposition, every watch that leaves our ateliers will have the iconic shield of Monaco hand-engraved in the heart of the movement.
The founders
Be it luck, faith or just mere coincidence, the three founders met through their mutual passion for Haute Horlogerie. Although their Dutch no-nonsense roots allowed them to connect well from the start, they cannot be more diverse in anything else.
Pim Koeslag (1981), the Benjamin of the three, attended watch-making school in Amsterdam after which he did several internships at some of the most renowned watch brands in the world. When offered employment at most of them, he decided to work for a small and lesser known watch company in Geneva that allowed him more freedom to experiment and develop new technologies: Frédérique Constant. With an age of only 28 springs young, there is a lot more we can expect from Pim! Pim is married and has two sons in the age between 0 and 3 years old.
Robert van Pappelendam (1969) finalized his law study at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, after which he changed course and started a marketing career at Procter & Gamble, a leading fast moving consumer goods company, lastly as a Global Brand Franchise Leader in their Haircare division. For this company, he worked in Rotterdam, Brussels, Cincinnati USA, Geneva Switzerland and Singapore. Since 2002 he has been active in the board of advisors of Frédérique Constant SA, Geneva. Robert is married and has 4 children in the ages between 3 and 9 years old.
Peter Stas (1963) studied Economy at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and after several internships, he started his professional career at Philips Electronics in the Netherlands. He moved to Asia to take a commercial leadership role for the consumer electronics division out of Hong Kong. In 1988, he was the initiator and founder of Frédérique Constant, currently one of the leading Swiss watch manufacturers in the affordable luxury segment. Peter is married and has 2 children aged between 10 and 15 years.
To be Continued…..
 Pim
March 7, 2010
Watchmaking anno 2010 – an art or a science?
Nowadays, a lot of innovation brought to the market are masterful pieces of engineering that do not always work as well. Double Tourbillon, triple axes…It sometimes feels that form has taken over from function. Although we do get excited by these master pieces of engineering, we can also still get very excited by a movement that actually works, and works very well and very precise. Function first! We got a lot of inspiration from Henry Royce that set out with a very similar vision when he created the foundation for the Rolls Royce brand as we know it today.
So when we are in technical meetings and people get overexcited by the solutions or new technical inventions, I often ask: “So what is the problem we are trying to solve with this new technology?”
Thus, when we were working on our Grand Tourbillon XP1, the issue at hand was clear. The TB is invented to deliver higher precision than a normal mechanical watch. However, the vertical positions have variations of amplitude and precision caused by the TB cage itself. But we felt there was an opportunity to minimize the force used for the escapement in the cage, and if we could eliminate oil or grease in the escapement with the use of modern materials, then this would be a plus as well.
We believe we have made a huge step forward in the precision of the TB movement. Key enablers for the step forward have been our Patented Perfect Balance Cage and the silicium escape wheel and lever with silicium oxide coating to avoid unnecessary power and efficiency loss. We can guarantee all our movements between 0-2 seconds/24hours, and we have already produced one that did much better!
Can we do better? The aim is to come as close to zero as possible, so we have a mechanical movement that is always accurate. Wouldn’t that be cool? We believe it is possible, and for sure it is a nice aim to pursue.
Personally, I believe our Ateliers deMonaco watches are pieces of art, that have embraced modern science to make them also functional as perfect as possible. Like the painter who studies his subjects for a long time before he can reach the highest level of perfection, our pieces feel they get better and more perfect with time as well. Let’s talk in 20 years to see how close to our dream we could come.
Pim
March 5, 2010
After closing out 2009 and having visibility over the first quarter of 2010, we can conclude that the business looks very strong. We are projected to sell as many watches in the first quarter of 2010 as in our launch year 2009, and we are only at the start of creating a global reach by the end of this calendar year and have high hopes that Baselworld will further catapult the brand into the world-stage. This is more than encouraging, as this allows us to let money flow back into the business to build the brand image and further invest in innovation. But, if we would have gotten $1 for all the advertising and sponsor requests that has hit our inbox, we would be rich by now!! Or said differently, there are many people that want to sell you something, yet only a few are able to help you achieve your goals or make a difference for you. And even the list of those people and activities that we believe are the right ones, is much longer than what we can afford.
So, how do we decide which one to thank for, and which once to consider?
We have been very strict in determining which key attributes are required for our brand to succeed in the market place. Any activity that helps achieve one or preferably a combination of these attributes, ranks higher on our priority list. The attributes are:
- Become rooted in Monaco: we want to be an integral part of the society we are part of. This as the inspiration for what we do as well as the social responsibility with which this comes;
- Build credibility in our watchmaking craftsmanship: we are working with some of the most talented people out of the industry, both within our own company as well as with the partners we have selected outside our company;
- Become the forbidden fruits for just a few: targeting, targeting, targeting…
Based on the above, we have been a proud participant in the Only Watch Auction to support the research into Duchenne muscular dystrophy, as well in GTE and Baselworld - the latter events clearly aimed at the watch ‘aficionado’. The hypothesis we have is that to become irresistible, we need to become the best kept secret of the luxury industry or a hidden treasure for people in the know. To achieve this, anything that smells mass is the kiss of death: exclusivity reigns and bespoke rules.
We’ll keep you updated what happens in Basel as of next week……
March 4, 2010
We are proud to announce a partnership with CNN Magazine, a luxury travel magazine produced for high-end business passengers.
With big events in the calendar like Baselworld in March and Top Marques Luxury Fair Monaco in April, we were looking for ways to unveil the brand in the context of today’s realities, contrasted with tomorrow’s (travel) aspirations, a duality that forms a key cornerstone of the brand’s positioning.
Collaborators are some of CNN favorites such as Richard Quest, Larry King, and Christiane Amanpour, and content of the magazine also covers groundbreaking and in-depth features about travel, social, and environmental issues from around the globe. Importantly, with over 680.000 high-end readers across the world, this helps us establish our brand image with the appropriate target consumers.
“We wanted to send a powerful message that we are committed to build this brand with the right A-list globally recognizable partners” says Elisabeth van Pappelendam, PR Manager of Ateliers deMonaco.
|
