August 2019 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 33MB&F M.A.D. GalleryMB&F Horological Machine N ̄9 Flow (HM9)CARVING YOUR OWN IDENTITY | MAXIMILLIAN BÜSSER>>>
work goes from one gallery to another.
What’s important is that the galleries buy
directly from the artists. We don’t mingle
in that, we don’t make any money, it’s just
a curation platform.”
Before we delve into why Büsser has
chosen to make Dubai a home for his
family, despite the company with all of
its 25-member staff still being located
in Geneva, we talk about a turning point
that led to him establishing MB&F in
the first place. Perhaps not surprisingly,
there was an earlier career, and there were
struggles, many of them. Büsser’s love for
high-end horology was nurtured by his
first employer, Jaeger-LeCoultre, where he
spent seven years in senior management
positions, and in 1998, aged 31 at the time,
he was appointed Managing Director of
Harry Winston Rare Timepieces in Geneva
for another seven years. The results were
a 900% increase in turnover, and the
positioning of Harry Winston as one of the
leaders in this very competitive segment.
However, to everyone’s surprise, Büsser
declined a generous new contract from
Harry Winston, opting instead to follow
his dreams. Here’s why: “The higher you
get into positions of power, the more you
get into power struggles,” he says. “It’s as
if people come to work in the morning, and
put their coat of ethics on a hanger. This
dogfight where it’s okay to lie, it’s okay to
backstab, it’s okay to do politics, it’s okay
to manipulate, because you want to make
money. So, when the grail is money, you
have all these deviate social behaviors. I
came from no money, I made money, and
then I realized that having money in those
sorts of circumstances was the worst
thing ever, so I realized that money was
absolutely not what was going to make me
happy, but being proud and trying to abide
by the values my parents had.”
Born in Italy, growing up in Switzer-
land, and now being a resident of Dubai,
Büsser has developed a cross-cultural,
broad-based approach to life and to
business. Even more because he grew
up in a multi-cultural environment and
family– his father was a Swiss diplomat
who met his mother, an Indian national,
in Mumbai. “She was a Zoroastrian, and
Zoroastrians abide by three simple rules
-good thoughts, words, and deeds- and my
mom was the epitome of that,” he says.
“But, when you try to do that in business,
you get massacred. So, I just wanted to
put myself in a situation where I could
keep those values.” Therefore, in 2005,with CHF900,000 of personal savings,
Büsser started out by working alone in
his flat for the first two years. However,
he got six retailers on board, all of them
agreeing to pay him in advance one-third
of the price for his first watch line, the
Horological Machine (HM1), which he
would deliver two years later. One of those
clients was Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons, the
Dubai-born family business that’s today
the largest retailer of Swiss brand watches