The Fourth Wheel, Issue 98: Watches & Wonders Special
Revolution at Bremont, plus the best industry gossip and my favourite new watches of the fair
Hello and welcome to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that has been to Watches and Wonders and had a watchful, wonderful time. Thank you for waiting another day for the newsletter! I’ve met with about sixty brands in four and a half days, tried on dozens and dozens of watches, picked up a few very interesting stories and eaten far too much rich food. This is a very long edition of the newsletter, so do please open it in your browser for the full experience.
First a disclaimer. This is serious – well, ok, I’ll try my best not to be facetious about it, but I can’t promise anything. Watches and Wonders, organised by the FHH and the participating brands, paid for me to attend the fair. They paid for my flights and my hotel, and when you are at the event itself, there is free food and drink provided (for everyone, not just the journalists. That would be a bit weird). Some brands – not all, not by a long way – also gave journalists and other visitors gifts after their presentations. These ranged from boxes of chocolates to the already-infamous Hermes beach towel. If you think any of the above is going to affect what I write about what I’ve seen, you have not got the measure of The Fourth Wheel. Yes, it is a privileged position that I enjoy, and those around me will never want for scented candles or leather notebooks, but I’m not going to be persuaded that dull watches were interesting or that the entire kit and caboodle is a saintly, Elysian enterprise just because I didn’t have to pay for my own EasyJet ticket. Right: on with the show.
The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!
Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:
Roger Smith on British Watchmaking
Is Parmigiani Up For Sale? Who Would Buy It?
Where Are All The Risk-Takers?
What Was The Greatest Era Of Chronograph Watchmaking?
The Dying Art Of The CEO Interview
In the absence of a single watch that captured everyone’s attention at W&W, the assembled journalists and commentators needed another conversational opening to fall back on, and it was clear before I even landed in Geneva that “What do you think of Bremont this year?” was going to be the most-asked question of the week.
If you’re not a hundred percent clear on the story so far1, this is the background. Bremont, founded in 2002 by brothers Nick and Giles English, has grown into Britain’s most substantial watch brand and the closest thing this country has to a mainstream luxury tool watch brand2, in product offering and price bracket, if not quite in volume (Bremont produces between 5,000-10,000 watches a year).
In 2021 it moved into its current headquarters, a striking facility outside Henley-on-Thames called The Wing, and combined its previous efforts to machine components in the UK under one roof, acquiring a number of new, highly expensive, CNC milling machines. It launched a proprietary movement, the Calibre ENG300, in 2022 (the calibre is based on the THE+ K1 movement; this is the definitive explainer on the subject) in its most ambitious collection to date, the Supernova, an integrated bracelet design that was designed to compete with time-only core collection models from the likes of Panerai and IWC.
In January 2023 Bremont received a £48.4m investment from Bill Ackman and Hellcat Acquisitions LP. In May 2023 it appointed Davide Cerrato, formerly of Panerai, Tudor, Montblanc and briefly HYT, as CEO. Having announced it would exhibit at Watches and Wonders for the first time in 2024 (the brand exhibited at Baselworld up to and including the 2016 fair), it began to tease a significant re-brand and overhaul to its product line-up in the months before the show.
On Tuesday April 9th it officially launched a new collection, the Terra Nova3 and a significant update to the Supermarine collection. It explained that it would now be structuring its product lines along a simple ‘Air, Land and Sea’ framework, and was starting with Land and Sea. My understanding is that ‘Air’ will be overhauled perhaps as soon as next year, and the propellor logo will be phased out completely.
The Terra Nova comprises two-hand automatics, a three-hand auto with a prominent power reserve (one of my least favourite features in a watch, but this isn’t the point), a two-register chronograph, and a dual time tourbillon. You can bet we’ll be coming back to that. They start at £2,500, rise to £4,750 for the chronograph and £27,500 for the tourbillon. The Supermarine collection starts with a three-hand diver in blue or green with aluminium bezel (the choice not to use ceramic was presented to me as an advantage, for its colour and the fact it won’t chip) for £2,950, adds a date for £3,200 and a new steel bracelet for £3,400 (you can also have the no-date on a bracelet for £3,200, which is probably the best of the bunch). All of the above, apart from the tourbillon, are now cased in 904L stainless steel. Again with the exception of the tourbillon, they used Sellita-based movements4 and in another departure from Bremont’s history to date, are no longer chronometer-certified.
Those are the facts. Now for the analysis. Bremont’s new watches have, I think it’s reasonable to say, not been unilaterally praised. Opinions expressed privately would need censoring for a family audience. The reaction on social media has been giving flashbacks to the Audemars Piguet Code 11.59 – but it must be said, taking social comments as a barometer of true public opinion is a risky business; haters always shout louder than fans, and much louder than people who are merely nonplussed or perhaps too busy walking the dog or making dinner to be blurting criticism into Instagram.
It is hard to innovate in this sector, in terms of design. Really hard. Tool watches and field watches are simple concepts, and draw on a small number of original influences. Everyone and their aunt has had a go, and the number of brands with a direct lineage to the original pilot’s watches, field watches and dive watches is vastly outnumbered by the number of brands who’ve had to find a way to put their spin on someone else’s basic template. So I sympathise with Bremont when everyone piles on with their comparisons to Hamilton, Yema, Zenith, JeanRichard, IWC, Montblanc, and so on. But my sympathy evaporates a little when you remember that Bremont had just about – just about – established its own, legitimate visual identity in this world. Over twenty-two years it had created a case shape, dial language and wider brand aesthetic that gave its models at-a-glance recognition. These new models are a departure from that aesthetic.
In time, I think this will be looked upon as an interesting case study in change management, and communicating that change. It’s not hard to argue that Bremont probably hadn’t changed enough in the last five years but the remedy for that is not to suddenly release the handbrake and stamp on the gas. It’s incredibly common for new management to come in, tell everyone what a mess they’ve inherited and how they’re going to clean it up, but it needs to be handled diplomatically (especially when those responsible are still on the board). My thoughts on the watches themselves are below, but to me this is mostly about how you ready the ground for a big rebrand without rocking the boat. Taking over at Bremont isn’t like taking the reins at a long-established legacy brand, or even coming into a Swiss brand of equivalent age and volume; it has been on a pretty unique trajectory, has (for better or worse) been following a mission that’s fundamentally quite romantic, maybe even completely quixotic. Of course, that isn’t necessarily compatible with significant outside investment, but anyone coming in needs to understand that if you jettison that, you very quickly get right to the heart of the brand itself, and what it is that you were buying in the first place. The challenge is to preserve the company’s personality while turning it into a competitive, scaleable watchmaker.
Most worrying to me were the rumours that began to circulate on the jettisoning front. I heard from maybe half a dozen different people that Bremont was abandoning its commitment to making watch parts in the UK. It was suggested that some of the CNC machines were being sold, or that all of them were being sold, or – as the week went on, and the rumours intensified – they had already been sold, the entire company relocated to Switzerland and the Wing turned into an IKEA. Joking aside, this was a concerning notion and I think the reason it took hold so readily is that it chimed all too well with what people could see and deduce for themselves. Out with the old, in with the new! The English brothers were not in Geneva – fair enough, as it sends a bit of a mixed message having both a new CEO and the company co-founders still hanging around in the background – but it emphasised the sense of distance between everything they had done and the new rebrand. Bremont had not renewed its partnership with Williams F1, either. And granted, this was Watches and Wonders and not a scouting jamboree, but Bremont was suddenly slick and suited, with smooth marketeers and international executives (alongside Davide Cerrato, the brand has a new head of product development, Cos Hayret, formerly of Montblanc). Add that to the logo (enough has been done on social media already to, er, critically analyse the logo) and the typeface (likewise) and the watches themselves and you can see why long-time fans of the brand have been startled. At the press presentation for this once plucky, upstart British brand, we were played an advert starring new ambassador Jimmy Chin, an American climber, shot on location in America (Ohio, apparently), soundtracked with American music.
Here's the thing: much of this is fine. Experienced personnel in marketing and product development are a good thing. Breaking the US market is a good thing. Introducing a lower entry-level price segment is a good thing; let’s not forget that one of the most persistent complaints levelled at Bremont watches in the comments section is that they’re too expensive for what they are. Even the logo and typeface will probably be accepted in time – people always hate new logos. But the important – vital, actually – thing to remember when you’re introducing large, sweeping changes is that you have to go out of your way to reassure your loyal, established audience that you haven’t thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Bremont declined to comment on the rumours about the machinery; I’ve heard others say it’s untrue or at most, vastly exaggerated - although writing in the FT, Simon de Burton says that the machinery’s future is in doubt. I have also heard on the grapevine that the Trip-Tick case is not headed for the scrap heap, but that it may be streamlined a little; this, however, contradicts what Simon writes, so we will have to wait and see. Significant designs like the Martin Baker range are not being ditched overnight. I asked about the ENG300 movement and was told that more work would be needed to get it to a point where it’s not so expensive to produce5. That too is hard to argue with: my main criticism of those watches when they launched was that they were too expensive. I just don’t want to see that project – really, the apex of everything Bremont had achieved to date – mothballed in the name of safe, commercially appealing every-watches that sacrifice the brand’s hard-earned identity. Right now, I think that’s how a lot of people feel about what Bremont is doing.
Ironically I think Bremont’s biggest mis-step this week came about in the attempt to do what is definitely needed: launching a watch that’s cool and interesting for the fans. Retailers, from what I’ve heard, are nowhere near as negative about the Terra Nova and Supermarine collections; it is often the case that journalists and opinion-makers rhapsodise over watches that end up to be quite poor sellers, and it is to our snobbish dismay eternally true that retailers (and by implication the average consumers) are pleased by the watches we find less interesting. Money really does talk, and even shaving a few hundred pounds off Bremont’s entry-level price is music to retailers’ ears.
But I digress – we were talking about interesting watches. The real problem with the two collections that arrived this week to great fanfare from the brand, is that they’re quite vanilla. Ok, the outsized numerals and block luminova6 on the Terra Nova are a defining characteristic, but that’s about it. The Supermarine: blue, green and black, and a bi-metal in brown. Safe, solid choices. Would have been nice to have a couple more colours that kept pace with the offerings elsewhere. I’m not saying it has to be purple, but what about… a gradient, maybe grey/khaki/orange, or something with an interesting texture? The marketing presentation began by talking about dazzle camouflage – aha! Maybe a way to link to Bremont’s strong military presence? But no, the only place I actually saw this camo was on the goody bags people left with7. It’s all very well reassuring the retail market that you’re making easily-understood products, but there is such a thing as too safe. It’s worth knowing that we were also shown – not under embargo, but not currently online – new S500 dive watches with full ceramic cases, in green and black with neat Velcro straps. When they launch, that will improve the collection; the black one was the best watch I saw at Bremont this year. I will say that the new Supermarine bracelet is a high point; nice shape, good feel in the hand, interesting effect.
For now, Bremont chose as the high point of Watches & Wonders to launch a 30-piece limited edition tourbillon GMT, in black DLC-coated titanium, with a dial configuration that is indisputably similar to Montblanc’s Geosphere design. Tourbillons are not tool watches. End of discussion. Now Bremont has made watches that aren’t particularly toolish before – all the gold-cased limited editions with bits of English heritage inside – so there’s already room to do a high price-point piece without scaring the horses. But a tourbillon, at this juncture, was the cherry on the icing on the cake in terms of sending the wrong message. Do it in a year’s time, and you maybe get away with it, although I think, in all honesty, it’s still a risk; there might be 30 people in the world who would buy a Bremont tourbillon, but that still doesn’t make it the right move. However, the team were talking about having Bremont’s Henley-based watch technicians trained to assemble the tourbillon and that is good story. Upskilling British watchmaking talent is a great idea - and doesn’t it fit nicely with Bremont’s membership of the Alliance of British Watch and Clock Makers? Just… do it in a different watch, at a different time, and don’t tie it to the launch of a set of watches made for mountaineering and suchlike. A halo product was the right idea, but this wasn’t the right halo product.
I’ve said enough. You can see why it was the story of the show: time and time again watchmakers trot out the old line about ‘evolution, not revolution’, but for once, this was very much a revolution. The interesting thing to see now is how it’s received by those outside of the palace walls, away from the free champagne and smoked salmon sandwiches.
Here are some of the other most interesting things I heard at Watches and Wonders – and around Geneva - this year. It’s not all gossip, some of it’s just… fun facts. Some of it might even qualify as news.
MB&F’s MAD1 watches are so successful (they now account for 20-25 per cent of company revenue) they’re effectively being spun out – haha, yes – into a sub-brand, with a twice-yearly calendar of releases, and plans for MAD 2 and MAD 3 in the pipeline. They’ll be new models, from different designers, that go in very different directions to MAD 1 while still keeping price at relatively affordable levels. And as ever, the MAD 1 is internet-breakingly popular, with 15,000 registrations from the morning that the raffle was publicly opened for just under 500 pieces of the latest reference. I also understand that Stephen McDonnell is working on another ground-breaking project for MB&F to follow his perpetual calendar and chronograph, both of which took the complication to new heights. I’m hoping he’s applying his considerable intellect to the minute repeater.
Explaining why Lange doesn’t do skeletonised watches, Tony de Haas told our room of journalists that “it’s very loud and can look very cheap”. Your move, AP.
When Francois-Henry Bennahmias left Audemars Piguet, at the age of 59, speculation over his next move was rife. Was he being parachuted in to take over at Richard Mille? Would he go and work in the tech industry, or entertainment? His only remarks on the subject were that he never intended to work for anyone else again. This week I heard from a very well connected source that Bennahmias has been recruited to develop a new multi-brand luxury group from the ground-up, with a budget of between 20-40 billion euros for acquisitions. The money reportedly comes from Saudi Arabia. If you believe this, and combine it with the realistic assumption that Breitling is also targeting brand acquisition and a group structure, it could make for some seismic changes in the corporate landscape in the years to come.
One independent watchmaker exhibiting in the Carré des Horlogers section told me that it cost them roughly 5000 euros an hour to be at Watches and Wonders. Just hearing it in those terms does bring home the scale of the commitment. Imagine the sums of money spent at the biggest brands…
I was told by a well-placed source that Corum is on the verge of being shut down. No further details but it cannot come as the greatest surprise.
I learned that Angelus takes its name from a Catholic devotion, a practice of ringing the church bells three times a day to call worshippers to prayer. The brand founders were deeply religious and not only named the brand after this moment of prayer but gave it a bell for a logo AND went on to create a number of famous striking alarm clocks and watches. I also learned that the brand’s current lead designer used to be a dentist.
Only Watch update. I spoke to a few brands that have decided not to come back to the auction. None wanted to comment on the record or be quoted, which is understandable, but my sense of things following those conversations is as follows. Some brands can’t come back in because they’ve sold the watches privately since the sale was postponed. One told me it had nothing against Only Watch or Luc Pettavino but felt that the momentum had been lost. I got no comment from Tudor or the other big brand absentees, but my strong suspicion is that it is purely a wariness of anything that could prove to be a reputational risk. Several of these brands had their Only Watch watches available to show journalists – or at least, those who asked – and a couple suggested that they might sell them once the auction had happened. I imagine – purely my hypothesis – that the watches from bigger brands will just disappear into safes, written off as a drop in the ocean, or be repurposed into saleable stock. The mood towards the sale in general seemed mild; those that had anything to say about it at all were generally positive, but it wasn’t one of the most discussed topics. I think most people are waiting to see how the sale goes on May 10th before coming to any conclusions about the project’s future. Judging by the number of times I saw Luc Pettavino and team deep in conversation with the key figures at participating brands, all efforts are being made to ensure it’s a success.
My ten favourite watches of Watches and Wonders 2024, in alphabetical order.
Angelus Instrument de Vitesse
Lived up to my expectations; felt great, looked great, was super smooth to operate. Just a shame they’re only making 25 of each.
Cartier Tortue Monopussoir
Flawless re-edition with a shaped chronograph movement - that’s commitment. I wouldn’t wear it daily but it would be amazing to have in the mix.
Czapek Antarctique Meteor Green
A fantastic dial on a watch I’ve long praised for its size, height, feel and movement. Was I ever not going to like this?
Grand Seiko “White Birch”
Another smashing dial, but the real story is the movement; a high-beat hand-wound from Grand Seiko is a collector’s item in every sense of the phrase.
Hermes Cut
Quirky, stylish, perfectly sized once they equip it with longer straps for more masculine wrists. Maybe a bit pricy - the appeal of the H08 was partly how competitive it was in its base spec - but it’s cool. And can you put a price on cool?
Nomos Glashutte Tangente Colours
Oh, it turns out you can put a price on cool, and it’s less than a third of the cost of the Hermes Cut with (for my money) a better movement. These might just have been my favourite watches of the entire week.
Parmigiani Toric
I never liked the old Toric, but this is very smart. The movement is the most handsome I saw all week - for a time-only, hand-wound watch, it’s still a calibre you could really admire, and while I’m not completely sold on the PF logo, a clean dial is a clean dial.
Patek Philippe 5330G
Don’t come at me but I don’t hate the denim. In fact, a casual Patek is fine by me, and if you do hate the strap so what - just buy a replacement. You’re paying for a world timer from the master of world timers, with a hand made of solid glass for the date.
Raymond Weil Millesime
What a turnaround for Raymond Weil: off the back of last year’s GPHG win, the Millesime collection is flying. I liked nearly all of it (not the PVD gold ones) but this green number, for less than £2,000, is all kinds of nice. It’s thin, there’s good texture on the dial, the bracelet’s got a good feel to it8; I’m in.
TAG Heuer Carrera
I gave last year’s Carrera reboot plenty of time to settle, but never really got over the date window placement on either blue or black. This silver panda solves the issue (although take away the date and you’re one step closer to perfection) and works really well on the bracelet too.
That’s it! What a marathon. Back to normal next week, with recommended reading, random silliness and everything else you know and love. Thanks for making it this far.
Chris
One thing I realised this week is the surprising number of people active in the watch world who really don’t know much about Bremont at all
Yes, this is a bit of a contradiction in terms, but you know what I mean - IWC, Omega, Breitling, they’re all luxury brands whose core products began as tool watches.
See what they did there?
The tourbillon calibre, given the roots of Bremont’s ENG300, might be related to Horage’s tourbillon, but I don’t know for sure.
Also in the FT story, it is claimed that the ENG300 will only be rolled out for niche limited editions so… maybe it is the end of that road after all.
Hello Vertex! (Yes, I know, Vertex wasn’t the first to do block lume either but still…)
I saw the bags, but I couldn’t tell how fast they were moving or in which direction. This is the joke I’m most proud of this week - could you tell?
I realise this picture does not show the bracelet: Raymond Weil hasn’t got the new watches on its own website which is INSANE in this day and age, so I had to use the only pic I could find (my own pics being far too messy).
I'd be very keen to point out .. there's no such thing as 'haters'. You have fans ... and fans that are VERY displeased.
Brushing off negatives comments as haters is false economy at best. As I stated on the Bremont facebook groups .. what you are witnessing is 'the passion of fans'. And one thing true fans don't do is just simply 'cope' when something less than satisfying lands in front of them.
Just ask Disney how calling fans of Star Wars 'haters' is working out for them.
If you loved the football world cup and it was suddenly replaced with 'Lesbian Pro Tiddlywinks' .. would you call the football fans 'haters' for protesting that the thing they loved has been turned into something unrecogonizable?
And be sure of this ... the changes at Bremont are that severe. This is no longer the same company .. at all! The fact that they changed the logo, the construction, booted out most of the old staff and sent Nick and Giles up north to the farm ... say's everything. The company that fans of this brand fell in love with is gone!
Will their watches be any good? Maybe, in time. But I have to say that the current offerings are not a pinch of the original collection.
The watches were masculine, clean, technical, futuristic, original and brutalist. Now .. they are derivative, bland and generic. People have compared the new models to Certina and Yema .. and not without good reason.
I may have to publish my own youtube video on my thoughts on all this. But to say I'm bitterly dissappointed is an understatement.
Bremont telling everyone that the ENG movement and trip-rock cases cost too much to make but then produce a god-awful looking tourbillion for a mere $40,000 CAD?!?!! .. that’s just a slap in the face and a “You gonna cry?”
Not keen on the Bremont rebrand. Oddly the new typeface and logo look fine in print or on screen but the place they look positively cheap is on the dial of a watch. Which, you know, isn't great if you're a watch company.