WATCHES Bloomberg Pursuits October 30, 2017E
ven if you’re small, you have a voice,”
says Edouard Meylan, the chief exec-
utive officer of Swiss luxury watch-
maker H. Moser & Cie.
For Meylan, “small” means running a
family-owned company that makes about
1,500 watches a year with an average price
of about 33,500 Swiss francs ($34,327). An
analyst at Bank Vontobel AG puts the com-
pany’s 2016 revenue at 14 million francs—a
tidy business but a mere drop in the Swiss
milk bucket compared with the estimated
4.7 billion francs Rolex SA raked in during
the same year.
Yet the 40-year-old has played an
outsize role in a heated debate over the
Swiss watchmaking industry, a fusty métier
that’s been upended in recent years by cur-
rency fluctuations, changing tastes, and
competition from Apple, Google, Garmin,
Fitbit, and other smart device makers. “He
is applying a very disruptive and intrigu-
ing communication— and social media—
presence, which is quite unusual for such
a small artisan,” says Jean-Claude Biver,
president of LVMH’s watch division andCEO of megabrand TAG Heuer. “He attracts
much more attention than his turnover and
dimension would suggest.”
In a reserved society such as Switz-
erland, sometimes just speaking up is
enough to get yourself heard. And with
stunts like making a watch out of Swiss
cheese and selling a mechanical version
of Apple’s smartwatch, Meylan has earned
himself a reputation as the prankster in the
jewelry shop.I
n January 2015, the Swiss National Bank
roiled international financial markets
when it abolished the three-year cur-
rency cap that had prevented the franc
from appreciating beyond 1.20 per euro.
Immediately upon its release, the franc
soared as much as 41 percent, reaching its
strongest level on record. The Swiss stock
market plummeted, and luxury goods
exporters saw prices for their wares unin-
tentionally increase around the world. It
was a serious blow to the watch industry,
already dealing with the second year of a
slowdown caused by a strict crackdownon political gifting in China. Swiss watch
exports slipped for the first time since the
U.S. financial crisis in 2008 curbed global
consumption. (They are just now showing
signs of recovery.)
At the time, Moser was on the way to
profitability, and the news sent Meylan
racing back to Zurich from a ski trip in the
Valais Mountains. Unlike most of his com-
petitors, who were part of larger watch
groups such as Richemont and LVMH,
Meylan would have to withstand these ill
winds alone. It would be devastating. He
pulled over alongside Lake Lucerne and
typed an open letter to the president of
the Swiss National Bank.
“Over 95 percent of our watches are
sold to people outside of Switzerland,
and the first retailers called the same day
to cancel orders,” he wrote, warning that
small businesses like his would be encour-
aged to leave the country. “Why not just
move 2 kilometers into Germany and con-
tinue business as usual in the EU?”
Meylan smiles proudly as he retells
the story at Moser’s headquarters in
Neuhausen am Rheinfall, a five- minute
drive from Europe’s largest waterfall.
Cleanshaven and elegantly dressed, he
wears a prototype watch called Endeavour
that goes on sale in November. The watch
features a tour billon, a hard-to-produce
watch complication the brand makes
in-house. As with all Mosers, the watch has
a distinctive, slightly audacious, colorful
look. Like Meylan, the timepieces tend to
make a statement.
Moser was founded in St. Petersburg,
Russia, in 1828 by Swiss native Heinrich
Moser. It quickly grew to be the domi-
nant force in Russia’s watch trade but
moved to Switzerland after the October
Revolution in 1917. The company
traded hands a few times during the
20th century, and the Meylans bought it
in 2012 from dental- implant billionaire
Thomas Straumann.
The brand’s tag line is “Very rare,” a
nod to its small production numbers and
its practice of finishing every timepiece
by hand. A Moser hallmark is a fumé dial,
with a bright center and darker outer
edges, that often lacks numerals. It’s a
simple, striking visual effect. The brand’s
54,000-franc Endeavour Perpetual
Calendar won the Geneva Watchmaking
Grand Prix in 2006. Moser has sold time-
pieces for 1 million francs, but its core
collection ranges from 11,900 francs to
100,000 francs.68 Many Moser watches feature a distinctive shaded fumé dial