August 2019 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 31Maximillian Büsser,
founder, Maximilian Büsser and Friends"WHEN YOU FOUNDED
A COMPANY YOURSELF, ALL
ALONE IN YOUR LITTLE FLAT, AND
YOU’VE DONE EVERYTHING FOR
IT, AND YOU’VE MICROMANAGED
EVERY-SINGLE THING, YOU HAVE
TO LET GO AT SOME POINT.."
CARVING YOUR OWN IDENTITY | MAXIMILLIAN BÜSSER>>>
T
o rebel against many aspects of
the traditional watchmaking in-
dustry and start an independent
brand right out of your living
room is brave; and then to not
fail at it, but 15 years later, be
praised for a creative approach
to watchmaking, is noteworthy.
Key to this, as explained by Maximillian
Büsser, founder of Maximilian Büsser and
Friends’ (MB&F), dubbed the world’s first
horological concept brand, is not having
it any other way. “Making sure that I’m
free, creatively, financially, and in any
other way, has been all I’ve been doing for
14 years,” says Büsser. “I think that brings
a lot of envy but a positive envy from big
players who, I have to say, have always
been very kind to us. Because we’re not
competitors, we’re not taking sales off
them, and, as they can see, it hasn’t been
snowballing.”
Büsser is talking about how his indepen-
dently-owned company has managed to
survive in a landscape dominated by the
“big boys” of the world’s watchmaking in-
dustry. He founded MB&F, also described
as the world’s first horological laboratory,
in 2005 in his Geneva flat in Switzerland,
dreaming of developing radical horologi-
cal concepts by working in small, hyper-
creative groups, and that was it– there
has been no revenue target added to his
goal ever since. “We’ve got a very bipolar
industry today, meaning that the very big
boys are enormous now, and they’re all
marketing-driven companies, concerned
about how to ensure growth, and how to
come up with products that please a great-
er number of people. Therefore, it causes