The Business of Watches [019] Greubel Forsey CEO Michel Nydegger

27:13we don't have that I personally think it's much easier but that's you know that's just a personal preference but then to just have an inline display day date month you're not going to find that you know every other day so while some brands focus on one specific development I feel that for the perpetual or even for our grandsonary it's about you know kind of checking all of the boxes all at the same time. And that was kind of the real challenge. So if it were just about having that one crown, that would have been a lot easier than to have the one crown and the inline display and the security mechanisms and all of that.

27:52Michel Nydegger:Right. And let's talk about your journey and time here at Grubel 4C. Talk about when you joined, what kind of jobs that you've done over the years. And then we'll talk about how you ended up being the chief executive officer, which is a role you've been in for just, you know, almost a couple of years now. But yeah, I mean, how did you come to Grubel 4C in the first place? By accident, actually. So Robert Grubel is my stepdad. And I was always kind of part of the conversation, but it was at the kitchen table and there was no official involvement. And actually in the beginning, I would probably never have wanted to work for Global Force just because I felt like, you know, I wanted to deserve my place at whatever company I work at.

28:45I did kind of start just due to the fact that no one seemed to speak English here in La Schuette Fall. So, that was some translation, some social media. I think for the art piece where we were working with Willard Wiggin, who's a British artist. I went to translate, basically. That was that. And then I guess one thing led to the other. I started doing PR also for that reason. And then I kind of did almost everything you could imagine doing, except from actual, you know, watchmaking. And yeah, I would say one thing led to another. and now it's been 10 years, you know, officially. And today I cannot imagine being, you know, working anywhere else.

29:31So it's, you know, in the beginning it might have been a job, now it is my life basically and I honestly couldn't be happier.

29:39Michel Nydegger:And yeah, I mean, you're not a watchmaker by training, but you grew up in Switzerland. I know you did some schooling elsewhere at certain points, but yeah, I mean... I mean, I did get a chance to spend some time at the workbench with Robert that I'm really happy about because I don't think a lot of people, you know, are able to do that. But it's something that I would love to pursue, you know, once I have more time, if I should have more time, because I really did enjoy it quite a bit because it let me, you know, my brain was focused on one thing and one thing only. And I found that to be strangely therapeutic.

30:15Of course, I don't have to, you know, I'm not on, I wasn't on a deadline. I didn't have to deliver. So, And it's easy to say, just to say, I don't have any formal education in watchmaking, but I have a pretty deep appreciation for the work that's going on here every day.

30:29Michel Nydegger:And a fairly good understanding. And so, yeah, you know, I've just been walking through the manufacturer here and the facility. I've been here before, but it's been a while. You know, talk about, you know, we're here in La Chaux-de-Fonds in a, there is a very old building that one walks into. and there's this much more modern, quite open space with lots of windows. How many people do you have here? What are they doing every day? What's coming out of this place? Okay, so we're 130 people. And we have this one location. We're renting some space close by, but everything that we do, we do it here.

31:05And we're almost fully integrated now, not by choice, or that was never the plan, but it was more of a necessity. so we found that there's very few suppliers that you know want to work with us just because the the quantities that we need are extremely low and the quality is extremely high so it doesn't really make a lot of sense for suppliers to work with us so same thing one thing kind of led to the other and we ended up with what i feel is a massive infrastructure considering the fact that we only make 200 timepieces a year now. So even the CNC machines that you saw, they don't run most of the time, which is kind of contradictory to what it's supposed to be doing.

31:48But the only reason we use them is that we have full control over the geometry of the components. And then by having that, you have control over the architecture of the movement, which is something which is important for us, given that we don't really have full dials. So we like to showcase the movement and the depth of the movement. and then in turn that allows us to showcase hand finishing so the 130 people I would say almost everyone is dedicated to watchmaking in some form or another so our marketing communications department is one person sales is two plus two back office so four people one HR one person finance one controlling so you know people are not directly involved it's very it's very limited and that kind of What's interesting is that everyone kind of does everything.

32:37So we're still in this kind of startup mentality. But again, every other resource is dedicated to watchmaking. So 20 hand finishers, 20 people just for R &D. Our handmade department is eight people now, I believe, dedicated only to machining parts by hand and so on and so forth.

32:58Michel Nydegger:And, you know, you showed me a machine that was a CNC machine that was fairly new to you that you told me, you know, you can actually make your own cases now, not perhaps all the cases you need, but like, so yeah, I mean, why are you taking on a machine like that when, you know, this part of the world is full of case makers and companies that could theoretically supply you? Why do you have a CNC machine now that could make cases, for example? So there's a number of reasons. And we've had this with a case maker that we used to work with quite a lot who did a big part of our cases. And the person that was in charge of that retired and no one knew how to do our cases anymore because of the level of skill required, which is true for cases and for a lot of other parts.

33:51so if we don't have at least part of the know-how ourselves we run the risk of losing part of that know-how which is generally an issue for us in the industry that's why with time young foundation the idea is also to preserve safeguard and transmit certain skills which are necessary for us and which more often than not depend on the skill of the engineer so it's not about the machine it's about the person behind the machine. So that was one part. And then given the instability sometimes on the market, you know, if there's a supplier that should be suffering, it has a direct impact on us. And what was funny was during COVID or just after COVID, everyone was super busy, right?

34:34And so they said, well, you know, we don't really have time to do stuff for you because we have so much going on. And now it's like, oh, we can't do anything for you because we don't, we're out of work. And so we just basically want to make sure that what we're doing is as sustainable as it could be. But just to say our case maker is absolutely fantastic. So we don't plan on making our own cases, but it's just nice to know that you can if you need to.

35:02Michel Nydegger:So, you know, when you're making that a kind of investment, because CNC machines cost hundreds of thousands of francs, As you well know, I mean, how are you finding that balance in terms of investment and production and figuring out your costs? Because that's not the model for which, you know, much of the industry is operating under. I mean, you know, how much do Google 4C watches cost and how has that price sort of changed over the past five years or so? So our entry level, if you will, is today at 170, even though we are... 170 ,000 francs. Yes, correct, yeah. We are working on something to go a little bit lower, but we're not sure if we can succeed.

35:53Because even 170 is already, you know, we're not making any money with it, to be perfectly honest with you. But we're still trying. There's different ways that we're looking at it now. So it's between 170 and our grandsonary, which was 11 years of development, is 1 ,250 ,000 Swiss. So the range is quite broad, but average would be around 300, 350. Okay.

36:18Michel Nydegger:And, you know, before you were in this role, there was someone else who was the CEO. I think they were in that role for a couple of years. I mean, their public declaration was that they were going to ramp up production to maybe 500 watches per year, bring down the average price. So I think it was 200, 250 ,000. You know, what's changed in terms of the strategy under your leadership now? So the objective of making 500 watches is one of the first things that was just abandoned. While we did for many years, we made 100 a year. I want to say that was not a great situation either, because if you have 100, 130 people only making 100 watches and you have this significant investment in R &D and general infrastructure, then, you know, it was a bit tight for a while.

37:10so I think increasing from 1 to 200 was really good actually that helped us quite a bit but I don't think like you know if we should be able to make 250 one day that's great but no one is asking us to and we don't really see a reason why we should because that's not what we're you know excited about we're excited about developing new movements and finding new solutions for all the problems and that's kind of what we try to do So the production numbers are generally kind of a consequence of whatever timepieces we choose to do that given year. And then honestly, in terms of price range or a price segment for every given model, it just depends on how much it costs us.

37:58So it would be great to say, hey, we made a handmade watch and let's say we can offer it for$100 ,000, which people would appreciate. but it costs us way more than a hundred thousand to actually make it so the prices today they're more of a consequence of what our investment is big part of the value always being um man hours mostly for hand finishing where that's always kind of been the bottleneck and i feel like a you know at least for now it's going to remain a bottleneck because there's just not that many people out there and you cannot really accelerate the process or gain any kind of efficiency with it So I want to say there is no specific strategy in terms of pricing, apart from the fact that, yes, we would love to have a new entry level, which would be closer to 120.

38:48Maybe we were talking even about being closer to 100. We want to be able to offer that, but we'll only see if it works once we've built the first watch.

38:58Michel Nydegger:Realistically, how far away are you from something that it is a plan that you'd really like to get to? It would be for next year, yeah. Interesting. Of course, it wouldn't be a quadruple tourbillon. And there's not that many things we can change in order to achieve that. Because as you know, for example, the finishing on an entry level or on the very high end is the same. So there's no two different qualities for our finishing. The only thing you can do is say, okay, if we reduce the number of components, you reduce the number of surfaces that you have to finish, and hopefully you can gain a little bit more, you know, you can do it a little bit quicker, and then we would be able to offer it at a lower price point.

39:41But honestly, today, it's something that we would love to do, but I can't confirm whether or not we're going to succeed.

39:46Michel Nydegger:Right, so you're trying to get there. Now, I guess the last time I saw an analyst estimate in terms of your revenue or sales was Morgan Stanley in, I think, for the year 2023, around 50 million Swiss francs. They suggested the next year. It was close to that, but maybe it declined a bit. What does your revenue and sales look like in the past couple of years? And then, you know, how much can you talk about on the profitability side and how that's looking these days with the various cost pressures and changes we've had with the Swiss franc? Obviously, the price of precious metals, gold in particular.

40:27So in terms of the Morgan Stanley report, that's all about right. But to give you an example for last year, it was actually the first time that we bought back stock from retailers. So we bought back for, I believe,$8 million. So that could have been, you know, we could have had that money, but we decided to reinvest it because we want to have a very healthy situation with retailers. In terms of sell in, sell out, and stock for them.

40:55Michel Nydegger:Yeah. So there was a number of pieces which had been with retailers for many years for different reasons. Some weren't as active anymore as they used to be, but they still held on to their stock. Others, I would say, were also overstocked. And the consequence of that was that discounting was always an issue. And then in turn, the secondary market value is, while I will say it's actually better than most people would expect and better than I thought, at least from the auctions, I feel like it should be even better. So that was an additional investment that we made. So in terms of revenue, it wasn't as high as it could have been.

41:32But we feel like it's important to do this now. and we're going to continue this year and invest even more actually because at the end of the day if you have a collector and enthusiast spending let's say 500 grand on a watch even if the secondary market value should be 10 % below retail which I feel would be totally fine it's still 10 % of 500 grand it's still a big number so if it were a watch for 5 grand it doesn't really hurt you as much so with this we're kind of tackling the symptoms of the problem but at the same time in terms of our production also why we didn't increase further let's say if there's a timepiece where there's a demand for or we want to make let's say 20 but there's a demand for 10 we will only deliver 10 to try to avoid in the future again to overstock the market and this is a kind of a new way of looking at it, which I know it's normal for most people and most brands, but it's just not the way we saw it.

42:36We were more concerned about, you know, making the most beautiful timepieces we could. And so, you know, the hard part, Robert and Steven, they, you know, they built the atelier, they assembled this fantastic team, but there's just this sort of last link in the chain, I guess, which I feel hasn't deserved as much attention as it should have. And that would be the top priority for us here now in 2026.

43:00Michel Nydegger:Interesting. And so how will we see that sort of playing out in terms of, you know, trying to have an impact and improve valuations on the secondary market? Will we see you buying back more stock from retailers? Not from auctions, because we don't want to, you know, have people think that the value is somewhere where it isn't, but from retailers, definitely. And then from end clients as well, We did some of that because if they are the type of collector who wants to kind of rotate their collection and move on to something else, then I feel we are responsible and it's a nice service that we can say, hey, we're here and you can sell that back to us.

43:43So we've been doing some of that and then mostly with retailers as well.

43:47Michel Nydegger:So your clients, if they do want to potentially move on from one of your pieces that they've had before to upgrade or try something new from you. So, I mean, you know, we do see other brands do that. I mean, MB &F does something like that. I mean, are you looking to some of these brands as sort of models for that? Not necessarily. We feel that it's just in everyone's best interest for us to do that. So even like for 2026, and actually you also asked how is business going right now, so I haven't answered it. I'll do that right now. Who we can get around to. We have now allocated our entire production for the year.

44:27And we have around 50 additional requests. And we're moving all of this to 2027. So we want to work on an 18-month rotating budget, basically. So it's really not about making as much money as we can in any given fiscal year. We would love to be as stable as possible. And so while we probably should have had wait lists since the very beginning, It turns out we didn't necessarily have that. But now for the handmade timepieces, for example, the next one, if someone would like to order one today, will be for 2030. And that's obviously very limited production. So we're going to do three handmade twos and one handmade one in 2026.

45:10So, yeah, the idea is to have the healthiest possible situation. And even if that's, you know, sometimes it's frustrating. So, you know, if you have a client request for a specific piece, we could just produce it and sell it. But we prefer to buy one back if there's one still with any retailer and then ship it to another retailer. So it's not making us any money, but we feel that it's important. It's an important thing to do.

45:38Michel Nydegger:In terms of having the right amount of supply out there in the market to meet demand. And talk about how, you know, sort of you talked about stability. I mean, obviously, it's been very much in the news. And we wrote about it recently that Stephen Forsy, who is obviously a co-founder of the brand, had been still involved and on the board, has now resigned from the board. Basically made some comments in social media that obviously there's disagreements about certain things. I mean, what can you tell us in terms of what happened there and how that relationship, you know, went the way it did and how that's going to impact the brand going forward?

46:22I suppose, I mean, that's kind of my personal take on it. It's not the official story or whatnot, but I feel that, you know, if we work together for 25 years closely, that's kind of like a marriage. And then there's a lot of emotion, obviously, involved in all of that. I was disappointed to see the, you know, the thing on social media and all that. I didn't see that coming. For me, if, you know, if they should have me 20 years from now, in 20 years, I will still be talking about Stephen Forsey. Because when I started, I was fortunate enough to spend four years basically learning from him.

46:58Michel Nydegger:You worked directly with Stephen when you started in 2016. Yes, for the PR part. So that was fantastic for me personally. But then generally, you know, he will always have founded the brand. and his values and robbers' values, they will always be linked to the brand. That's something where we don't even want to compromise on it. And I was asked the question, actually, if we're going to call ourselves just Grable from now on. And I was like, well, no, because their identity and their values are closely linked. So in any case, for the next, you know, for as long as everyone's going to have me here, I want to show my respect and appreciation for Stephen, who is someone that I will always continue to admire.

47:41In terms of changes, there won't be any because it's true that Stephen has been less and less involved in day-to-day operations over the past five or six years, which was kind of the point. A few years back, Robert and Stephen, they wanted for the brand to become independent of its founders or actually even just to build a brand because that was never the objective, right? So that would have been the consequence of that anyway. So I don't see any reason to shift any kind of strategy whatsoever. And I will say this also, because you started the podcast talking about the GPHG, where we submitted the nano food round, which was our 37.9 millimeter case.

48:30So that's, you know, it's kind of a side thing. But people's like, oh, you know, you have a new strategy. You're doing smaller watches now. And I said, well, that was defined in 2014. And this is now like the consequence of a decision which was taken 10 years ago. So whatever you see tomorrow or the day after tomorrow is never going to be a strategy shift. It's just something we started working on years ago. And it just so happens that it's coming out now. And in the same way, if CMU is no longer involved today, it's not going to change anything about what we do tomorrow. And if I should not be involved anymore tomorrow, it's not going to change what we're going to do the day after tomorrow.

49:10So I see my job as helping everyone achieve their wildest dreams internally to kind of create a space where this sort of artistic expression can flourish with watchmakers, hand finishers, and implementing a notion of like methodology and processes so that this can go on regardless of who's in charge, basically. Sure. Does that make any sense?

49:38Michel Nydegger:Absolutely makes sense. And then obviously, you know, we know that Robert Grubel owns, I believe, 51 % of the shares. Stephen Forsyne owns 49%. There have been some suggestions that the brand is looking for investors or is up for sale. What's your understanding of what that situation is? Well, I can be quite blunt about that. No, we're not looking for investors. We're not looking to sell. I guess this always kind of comes up. And I understand because I think there's probably quite, there's very few brands who are completely independent. And we're one of them. I don't know who else would be. At one point, Richemont owned, I believe, 20 % of Google 4C.

50:23Michel Nydegger:Yes, we bought that back. So actually, we're more in the process of acquiring than in the process of selling. So this is not something that's on our radar at all. We're not having these conversations and we're not looking to start such conversations neither. Financially, you know, I feel like we're very fortunate to be in a fantastically good place. Despite, you know, complicated circumstances, you mentioned the Swiss franc as compared to the dollar, and there was a tariffs as well. And what I found over the last year and a half is, you know, if you had asked me a year and a half, I would have said, well, this is not a business model.

51:04It makes no sense to work the way we do. But more and more, I'm starting to kind of see that it's surprisingly resilient and more than others. So, you know, just as a sign of the tariff thing, it really didn't impact us at all. And we can, you know, we're small enough to maintain high degree flexibility. So it's not, you know, this huge machine that takes some months to stop and to put on a different track. So these kinds of things are helpful. So I don't see a situation where we would be in a position where we need investment coming in in order to do our business.

51:45Michel Nydegger:Okay. Can you give us a sense in terms of profitability? I mean, you know, say for a few big names, the industry has certainly been under pressure lately. You know, I've just walked through the facility. You have some very expensive machines. You have a lot of people here. You're actually much busier than a lot of watch manufacturers that I visit in my time lately. So, yeah, what does profitability look like? And where do you see that revenue and sales number sort of heading in the short term? So, we have a weird concept of profitability. Whatever money we do make, we just reinvest it into R &D.

52:29so as an example we have I believe 68 patents and then plus the inventions of course

52:37Michel Nydegger:68 patents which I feel is an insane amount and we did that comparison there's like there's a very few and the ones who have are usually they have a 200 year old history but we've only ever used half of all of those just because you know it needs investment so like the one of the inventions is the Balencire Spiral Binum So it's a diamond balance wheel, a hairspring system. The only reason we didn't deploy is just that it was super expensive to actually build. And so when I'm talking about profitability, it's just going to fuel more of our ambitions and dreams. But it's not, the goal isn't really to make money.

53:19I mean, just enough to, but we're all pretty humble people, I would say, just to, you know, live your life normally. but it's about, again, adding something significant to watchmaking, which we're luckily in a position where we can. Take the handmade, for example. If you're, I would assume, if you're in a sort of a big group situation, you're not even going to start doing anything like this because, you know, you have to show quarterly results and you have to show growth. But again, we're independent, so we don't have to do that. So we can try to fulfill our wildest dreams.

53:54Michel Nydegger:Interesting. I mean, you know, you talked about the handmade. Obviously, there was a great moment of public recognition for Grubel 4C, I guess, over a year ago now, when Mark Zuckerberg, the chairman and founder of Meta Facebook, happened to be wearing a handmade. And you were the first one that wrote about it. I remember that. Maybe at the time, indeed. That's true. Yes. And we told the world about that. and you know um that would talk to me about what if anything that did for group before i mean did it did it move the needle did it do anything does it matter you know what interestingly it did but not in the way i expected so from from from what i saw is that a lot of our um existing collectors which were always kind of under the radar they were not public with with their global 4c collection there was never a sense of community so it was just like you know we have collectors all over the world but they're like individuals and the fact that they saw mark zuckerberg they're like oh you know i'm not the only one and there's you know there's more you know insane people like me out there who appreciate um what we have to offer and actually due to that fact we figured you know we should actually start to build that community uh which is something that that we started doing now to bring Gribble 4C collectors together.

55:19It's not supposed to be a marketing tool or you know, a thing where we send newsletters about things that we want to sell. It's more about being kind of in the circle. We call it the Gribble 4C family, by the way, being part of the family and to have more attention from us to them while we still sell through our retail network. I feel it's quite interesting that the connection to the brand is valued to such an extent. So I think part of the reason why we just developed this now and we're going to roll it out over the next few weeks was to see that more and more people kind of came out of the woodwork and were like, hey, you know, I have this collection of 25 growables or of 30.

56:00And we're like, you know, we didn't know you existed, but, you know, welcome to the family, right? So I think it was more reassuring than anything else that there's more people like me out there.

56:13Michel Nydegger:So will there be events? Will there be get-togethers? You saw this before. We got a portable workbench delivered, and we want to travel with it and take care of our personal Krivel 4C collections. We sent out books, like our 20th anniversary books, and then, of course, we have gifts and goodies like everyone else does. we just started WhatsApp group as well with our first members. And we just want to, you know, there's no objective necessarily, but we just want to be closer and listen. And we get a lot of valuable feedback that we probably wouldn't have gotten otherwise. So again, like I said before, there's almost everything which has been built perfectly by Robert and Steven.

56:59But there's just this last link in the chain, like customer service, which is, in my opinion, super important, but it was just never on anyone's radar, and we really want to do as much as we can.

57:13Michel Nydegger:And are you doing anything more with client outreach? I don't know, visits, trips, sort of that kind of activation, engagement? And will anything be changing about distribution or retail, or are you comfortable with the way that, you know, your watches are available to people now? So, yeah, we want to do a whole lot of stuff. But as I mentioned before, there's one person for marketing, two for sales. You know, we're just a small team. And I still do a lot of, like, I write our press releases today, for example, which is not a normal thing to do. Usually the CEO doesn't write the press releases.

57:55Yeah, I think that's how that usually works. But I've been doing that for years. I was like, yeah, I might as well. it's a sufficient way to go about doing that. So we do want to walk before we run. Like we don't want to make promises that we can't deliver on. So step by step, we want to start, you know, building this community organically. In terms of distribution, I don't see any major changes. The only thing that we've started doing is to be a little bit more, how should I say that, attentive to what's actually going on. So, for example, that we found out that there was a timepiece, which was actually in high demand, where I had quite a few people on the wait list.

58:36And a retailer chose to discount to a degree, which I wouldn't agree with, because I don't know if it was a cash flow situation or what the problem was. For them. And so basically we canceled the entire back order for the year. And that's something we hadn't done in the past because we weren't able to afford to do that. But I'm hoping that people realize that it's in everyone's best interest to, you know, work in a proper, respectful way. So I guess a few changes like that, but nothing, no like major strategic shifts or whatsoever. Today we have a, I feel like a pretty nicely balanced distribution where there's no market or region which has a lot more allocation than any other.

59:24and that gives us the flexibility that we talked about. You know, if there should be a problem in XYZ, we can shift, you know, deliveries elsewhere so that we're not, you know, dependent on, let's say, only the U.S. or only Japan or only, so.

59:38Michel Nydegger:What does that look like? I mean, yeah, I think of you as, you know, big in Japan, to use the cliche, Middle East, U.S. Yeah, how should I think about where your markets? I mean, basically it's 25 % North and South America. 25 % Europe, 25 % Middle East, and 25 % Southeast Asia. And Japan. Japan included in that. Do you have much exposure in China? Mainland China, no. So we do have a presence in Hong Kong, which is pretty good. But mainland China is huge. We only make 200 pieces, and that's a tricky one for us to handle. What we've seen is India being more and more important. There's a lot of demand coming out of India, and it's increasing actually quite rapidly.

1:00:29So we're happy about that, but we don't have a presence, an official presence in India. So, you know, it might go for, you know, when they travel to Dubai or to the UK or so. So, again, that would probably, like strategically, that would probably be a big next step, because in the past there was not a lot of attention given to India, but the demand wasn't as high as it is now. So that would be the next thing that we want to look at.

1:00:55Michel Nydegger:And what does, you know, every executive, particularly in this industry, needs things. What's the most pressing sort of need for Grubel 4C at the moment? I mean, is it more skilled workers? Is it investment? do you need you know financing or do you need something else i'd need a full day to be 48 hours instead of just 24 to be perfectly honest with you um because there's just a gazillion projects that we're doing all like in parallel and those are things which you know could have been done before, but again, the focus was elsewhere. So it's just a lot all at the same time. But then in terms of like a tangible like need, let me think for a second.

1:01:52Michel Nydegger:I mean, yeah, because I mean, there's lots of, you know, for a long time, it's been difficult to find good people. You know, this industry in some ways, and you know, it's hard to find sometimes good suppliers, good components makers. Indeed, this industry is sort of chronically underfunded at certain times. And I think some people are feeling that at the moment. Yeah. Other than more time, we'd all like more time in the day. But you're right, like skilled people, that has always been the thing. So it was never about the machines or anything like that. It's really about people. but we've kind of, especially for watchmakers who are all basically in their early 20s, it's kind of like an informal internal training program.

1:02:41So instead of having to find people and retrain them, you just kind of, you know, we tend to work with kind of top of their class, straight out of watchmaking school, who want to improve their skills, and what better place to do that than Gribble 4C, right? The price you pay for that every once in a while is that the person then, you know, does his own brand or, you know, is so skillful that he or she can do whatever. But actually more often than not, people do choose to stay or even leave and then come back like three months later. When they see that, you know, it's not as cool as it is here and some other places.

1:03:19But yeah, people are always, you know, kind of the cornerstone of everything. So also to people who we know are going to retire in a few years, we're making an active effort now to try to have them train someone. Or even if there's no one person that can do all of what that person retiring can do, maybe it's a small team. So it's something that we pay close attention to.

1:03:47Michel Nydegger:No doubt. No doubt. So, as I said, we're in sort of mid-February. The Watches and Wonders season or time of the year is fast approaching. You're not at Watches. Remind me, are you at Watches and Wonders proper? No, no, no. Like most of the other brands, you're around that. What should we expect from Grubal Force, say, you know, amid the challenges that exist right now in terms of new releases, in terms of, you know, what we should expect from existing model lines and product and, you know, what to expect? So we're not actually planning on launching anything during Watches and Wonders itself, reason being that there's so many things going on.

1:04:35And we kind of have a hard time following this whole, you know, what's your novelty? What's your da-da-da? Because when we have something new, it's usually a new movement. And every year we're like, you know, oh, it's the same, but now it's green. We do have different versions of a specific model, so to kind of fit different tastes. but we can't really follow that cycle of having to have new things all the time. So just to say maybe not specifically for Watches and Wonders although we will announce a new project within the Taimion Foundation which was kind of not as active as it could have been for a while there but now we have a fantastic project that we're going to be able to announce the start of and then it's going to take a few years to complete but we're pretty happy that we can reactivate the foundation.

1:05:23Michel Nydegger:Talk about the Tamian Foundation and what it is for those who might not be aware of it. Sure. So it was, again, started with Robert and Stephen, I believe, back in 2006, when they did notice that, as we were talking about, a lot of skills necessary to do certain things had disappeared completely or were disappearing. And schools today, they have a responsibility to teach their students skills which they will use in their professional careers. But if there's no brand out there who's actually using these skills, like, you know, for our handmade program, for example, then the only people who still know how to do that are the ones who learned 50 years ago.

1:06:07And you have to do something about that. So the goal of the foundation is to preserve safeguard and then transmit these skills. And there was a first project, which was called the Naissance du Montre 1, where the idea was Grebbel Forsey and Philippe Diffour. They taught, his name is Michel Boulanger, who was a watchmaking teacher, certain skills. And he made his watch, including these skills. So I guess as a bit of a teaser, Naissance du Montre 4 will be done with one of the pupils of Michel Boulanger, who was inspired by that very first project. and now it kind of, it continues, which I think is very beautiful.

1:06:44And I guess it validates the approach only like 10 years later, but that was always the point. So we're going to do that within the foundation. And then in terms of our creations, we do expect to have around three new movements every year for the next six, seven years. So those are all planned, which is maybe a little bit excessive, but at least that's what we're working on. and then if we launch them or not, that's a different thing. 2026 generally will be the year where we still make the last double balanciers, the last balanciers twos, the last architectures, given that we promised people that they're going to be in production for five years only.

1:07:27These five years are now here, so we're now transitioning basically into an entirely new collection, almost entirely. and the first example of that is hopefully going to be towards the end of this year where we did put a lot of effort into having Gribble 4C basically in a smaller diameter. So we're looking at a 39.5 millimeter convex case for example and that was one of the things that we heard quite a lot where people like oh my god Gribble 4C is amazing I love everything about it I just don't have the risk for it. So we want to have an offering in diameters which are smaller than what we've been known for making in the past.

1:08:08Michel Nydegger:Interesting. That's great. Last question. Sure. You are not wearing a watch right now. You're right. And I rarely interview CEOs who aren't wearing a watch and usually their watch brand. Why are you not wearing a watch, Michel? It's a good question. I feel that it's something that I need to deserve. So when I see our clients, you know, they acquire Global 4C to celebrate selling their company or to celebrate, you know, big milestones in their life. And it's a big investment. And for me, just because I have access to the watches doesn't necessarily give me the right to pretend to be a Global 4C owner.

1:08:56so I feel like at some point you know if there's a big milestone in my life I would love to buy a Grable 4C at the full retail price because you know otherwise it would be kind of an unfair advantage for me if you will so I guess I'll have to wait a little while longer but I think it's something that I enjoy waiting for as well and I don't want to just you know rock a Grable 4C casually Of course, during events and all that, you know, I kind of have to. And I enjoy it every time I do. But to actually wear a Gribble 4C every day, I haven't deserved that yet.

1:09:37Michel Nydegger:Well, Michel, we will leave it there. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Andy.

1:09:46Michel Nydegger:And that's the business of watches for this episode. We hope you enjoyed. please head on over to hodinky.com where you can join the discussion and leave any comments or questions about this episode or the business of watches in general who knows we might even answer your question on a future episode thanks for listening and see you next time

1:10:21Bye.