Watchmaking special: Aera and highlights from Geneva Watch Days

0:11Hello and welcome to The Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. Today's programme is a watchmaking special. First, we'll catch up with our friends at Aira to hear how business has been ticking along since we last welcomed them to the show. It does take time to really make something and beautiful things, they don't just appear, they get made and it takes time to do that. But we know at the end of it that we're going to have something pretty fantastic. And a little later in the programme, to continue on a similar theme, I'll be joined by our own Brenda Toohey.

0:48Welcome, Brenda. What are you going to be talking to us about? I'm going to take you to Switzerland, where I visited Geneva Watch Days. This is The Entrepreneurs, with me, Tom Edwards.

1:07You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Jas Minas and Olaf Larsson are the founders of Aira, the boutique watch company built on friendship, passion and meticulous design. Now, regular listeners to this programme will remember Jas's previous appearances on the show, but I'm delighted to say this time Olaf was able to join him here at Midori House. Together, the long-time friends have turned what was a pretty personal dream into a brand that's winning over collectors and really reimagining what a modern watch company can be. I began by asking Jas how it feels when he receives powerful and positive feedback from Aero's fast-growing customer base.

1:47You know, when we started this company, we actually decided to make these watches for ourselves. We're watch collectors, but we're also watch enthusiasts. And it's kind of the passion that goes into this and the love. And really, it was everything from the way it fitted to the quality, the engineering. I mean, these are really hard watches to make at the price point that we do. It's everything from the steel, which is very, very hard to mill. It's, you know, from the dial shape. It's literally, you know, I would say the tolerances are so, so small to really get the end result that we want. Very, very hard indeed.

2:24You see this really in the upper echelon brands. Really, as I said, at our price point, very difficult to do. But we persevered. You know, we were told many a time that things couldn't be done. That's antagonism for you, isn't it? It really is. You know, again, another cliche, where there's a will, there's a way. And we battled through it. It's been very difficult. We've had lots of setbacks. And, you know, since we last met in 2023, we did take, I would probably say, 18 to 20 months to really develop a whole product lineup. And for us, it was also changing some of the engineering. It was really rethinking, you know, how we made products, but without taking away the core essence of why we started in the first place and also the look, the feel, the weight of the timepieces that we make.

3:11Well, look, let's talk about product line expansion and subscribers to Monocle or purchase of the magazine will be able to even see a beautiful M1 Blackbird in the July, August issue of the magazine, for example, if your interest is piqued. But talk to me a little bit, Olof, about how you grow and develop a product line. Because one of the challenges actually lots of entrepreneurs talk to us on this program about is being patient and allowing things to take time, not rushing all sorts of voices saying, well, grow, grow, grow. How did you go about adding the new lines and making sure that you were doing stuff at a pace that felt right for the business?

3:44We've been adding it very, very carefully because we've been into so much details. so instead of rushing in and just trying to conquer the whole range of all the watches immediately we've been taking it slowly and slowly just to be able to get every product exactly right as we wanted to have them it's been interesting watching again how you've you've certainly engaged with lots of different collaborations and to meet customers partnerships particularly retail settings all over the place i'm not too far from here in london of course tell me a bit about that and how that has helped to build the kind of relationships that you want and that you value with your customers well with the collaborations it's mainly amongst the friends of ours friends of our brands who who wanted to develop unique pieces together with us and we're very proud of the collaboration that we do and just it's funny you've got i think a permanent sort of home in london now is that right around at richard james and also in your sort of one of your other motherlands up in Birmingham as well, another site.

4:48Tell me a little bit about that, because these are, well, they're storied names, well, but in sort of, you know, watches and jewelry, but also in fine tailoring, a London name. It must be great to kind of strike up those kind of relationships or build on relationships that you had already. It really is, Tom. You know, we are a DTC brand, you know, first and foremost, and that was really something we agreed at the onset of starting the business. But, you know, going along, these are tactile products, they're things that need to be, they're instruments that need to be felt and worn. Going back to what Olof said about the reaction that we get.

5:22And so, you know, I want to touch upon also the collaborations. The collaborations have primarily come from friends, people that we actually have a personal relationship with, that actually really loved what we were doing, and we loved what they're doing. And really, it's the kind of the, I would say, the detail to craft, contemporary design, but also contemporary pricing. And this is where, you know, you may look at Rensport, who are the, you know, the world famous mod restoration specialists, and you look at the price of their cars and you think, well, these are really expensive. But for what you actually get, it's actually a really great value for money.

5:59And so we found that collaborations now, we have a few coming up later on this year and some lined up for next year, which are, you know within the worlds of motorsport they are in the worlds of style and if it's commas fashion but but you know we really feel that you know for us our our audience our future customers you know do have their own style to them we feel that our watches do offer we are a watch company a orology company an instrument making company but we feel that we have a little bit of flavor and so I know I've slightly digressed but moving on to retailers we found that our customers were asking is there any way we can go and actually try these on in the flesh and so our friends at Richard James were very happy we did a couple of pop-ups there in 2022 and 2024 we decided that what a great space again sharing the same principles as brands and then really moving on from to our friends at Riddell in Birmingham, very old family friends and one of the most well-respected independent jewellers in the country that approached us and really asked us about whether they could stock ERA.

7:14I may have prompted them to start the conversation. You invited them to start a conversation. I think that's your start. There you have it, Tom. And, you know, it's beautiful because of the brands that we are now sitting next to, you know, really have, and, you know, we feel very, very rewarded that actually they felt that Aero would sit alongside these other brands. And that for us is, you know, validation that we know that the products that we are creating, you know, are of a, I would say, elevated nature. It's very hard to tell from a picture, from, you know, e-commerce or even lifestyle images, what that really means until you actually get something in your hands.

7:54and we're also very very blessed that through one of Olaf's stores because he's in the retail watch business in Stockholm and so again our products now sitting within those environments it feels like it's a natural fit and customers are coming in and actually seeing that it or don't feel that it's out of place and so you know we do believe that it's going to be an important part of our business, not without its challenges. We were set up as a direct consumer business. So, of course, we're trying to maneuver that, but we do feel that we are going to move in that direction in more of a way because we're actually being approached to actually do that.

8:36And that's both in the UK and the United States right now. So, watch this space. Another pun, inadvertently. Tell me a bit about that because Jas mentioned this before, and I think you said it as well, your watch enthusiasts, collectors, you're passionate about almost the concept of fine horology. When you see AeroSat in retail outlets or as you mentioned earlier, a customer saying, oh, is it a Patek day or an Aero day? Just tell me a little bit about what that is like as the entrepreneur behind the business. You've said already you're proud of it, but it must be, is it hard to believe? It feels a little bit like you're having a kid and he's graduating from high school and you're standing there as a proud father releasing him into the world.

9:22It's sort of that kind of feeling. But did you, I don't know, did you know it was going to work? I mean, because we often talk about what the sort of risk appetite is for entrepreneurs and I guess you go into any enterprise and there's all kinds of attendant jeopardy. Things could work, things couldn't. It's very personal. You're working with a friend. Did you just, was this one of those businesses where you had that conviction, that knowledge, that confidence that it was going to... I think we both knew that the design was absolutely fabulous and fantastic. I think that was enough for us. You know, you can't change people's opinion very easily in this way, but we just made a product that we would be very proud of.

10:05And then to see that this was also a similar feeling for a lot of people and clients was very profound. And yeah, it was a very, very great feeling for us. Just tell me about focus as a successful entrepreneur. You mentioned a serial entrepreneur in this instance. How do you ensure that you are avoiding the white noise, but listening to the people whose views can actually move the needle? Might be friends, it could be a new acquaintance you don't know who just happened to have a really great insight. How do you calibrate yourself to know when to kind of let that external messages in and when to shut it out and keep focus?

10:43Because that's presumably one of the challenges of leading any business, particularly if it's something that's so personal. Totally. One of the first things I did was move to the countryside into a house which had very poor mobile reception. But jokes aside, it really is. It's all about choosing the people around you, people to choose advice that you respect. Really, it's having people around you that truly care, not only about you, but also about what you're doing. You know, there's advice is everywhere. It's up to you whose advice you choose to take on board. And that, at the beginning, right at the offset, once we actually decided to launch the company, we actually picked those people.

11:26I have to also say that they also chose us because, you know, we did approach them and they could have easily have said, well, you know, no. and along the way we've also managed to really find other people that whether it's actually purchase of our watches and actually have said to us and they are have created businesses themselves been very successful and have you know become very well known in their own fields and then actually offering us their advice you know on general business not necessarily the watches themselves but and that in itself and I think that having people from the watch world horology world but also having people from the design world, having people from the business world, having that triangulation has really helped us to stay focused.

12:07Because if it was left to Olaf and I, yeah, we probably would have been on about our 10th different watch model by now. But no, I think that defining really also what the brand stood for at the beginning and knowing that for us it was really about exploring technology. technology in a sense not in i don't mean in the kind of digital sense but but in terms of you know for us we said that for us it's about pushing the boundaries in the world of design and you know my background is also i've you know been very blessed to have worked with a lot of industrial designers and and really that for us and materials which you'll you'll see starting from this year we are actually bringing out some pretty special watches that they're really you know moving away from uh 904 stainless steel so um again all challenging but all very very exciting well just quickly let's talk a little bit about products so now the range is as we said it's grown we've got the the black bird and others all of do you have a i shouldn't make you choose do you have a current a current favorite i can ask you for your current favorite well my current favorite is probably going to be the kronz special edition that's going to be released in the end of this year it was developed with the stuff from the Kronz.

13:24And I'm very proud of the design. It was absolutely fantastic. Just dare I ask you for a current favorite? You can... Of course, you traitor. You told me it was the same as my favorite, which was the C1 Cloud, which is our chronograph. But it's okay. He's forgiven because Kronz is his baby. It's his store in Stockholm that we actually have partnered with. but no the chronograph was something that again took us about two and a half years to actually to actually develop going back to our previous conversation the original models the p1 and the d1 the pilot and the diver took us about three years but that was very much so because of the case shape and really the fit once we'd got that it took us a it was a little bit easier i would say to to create the dial the dial was also of course no no of course the dial was also it was very, very hard to do.

14:19But, you know, we found that, you know, every watch has to be designed from scratch. It all starts with the movement, the choice of movement, and then really building around it. And, you know, when it came to the chronograph, we were looking at whether we produced a 42 millimeter watch or a 41 millimeter watch. But that one millimeter difference really turned this watch, the 41 millimeter looked like a potato. And that was one millimeter difference that really changes the entire ergonomics of the case design. So, yes, it has to be the... It's a complicated process. Let me just ask you both, and this is, I guess, a little bit of a personal question as well as things are entrepreneurial question broadly.

14:55As I know, we've spoke a little bit about this before. Neither of you are what I would call patient men, right? You're impatient. Next idea. You just want to get going. You've got an idea. You want to realize it. How do you deal then with a two and a half year timeline to develop something? presumably it pays off because it satisfies that control freakery the need for everything to be perfect but is that is that tricky olaf because you just do you sometimes want to just race to the the end how do you have to it's about discipline to try not it's very tricky i mean we designed it we draw it on the computer and as long as you're done then we go like yeah this this is this is the way this is this is how we're gonna have it then you sort of want to have the watch 30 minutes later in your hand wearing it and you know yeah it's gonna it's gonna take a year a year and a half before you you know you're gonna hold it in your hand so it's sort of teaching you to become more humble and more patient i love that and how do you how do you deal with that just you have to kind of tap into sort of bit of a i don't know you have to get a bit zen and i don't know how do you And my first question to you is, so you know us both pretty well.

16:11Have you been speaking to my brother or some of my family members? But no, it is. We are, you know, we are, we love what we do. And so, you know, what comes with that is, yes, it is the passion that we've said again and again. And really the attention to detail. But, you know, again, not another pun, but, you know, all things come to those who wait. and that it does take time to really make something. And beautiful things aren't just, they don't just appear, they get made. And it takes time to do that. And I think that the beauty of that is also as you start developing something and creating and having these other people around us and showing them that what happens is that slowly you start making tweaks, which can only happen because if we signed off that first design and then once you go into development and you know the angles, the lugs maybe have to change and you have to go through multiple prototypes that in itself actually satisfies and really kind of makes us feel that okay it's taking a long time but we know at the end of it that we're going to have something pretty fantastic so it's difficult but it's part of the process and it's interesting isn't it because you can get a great outcome from that sort of iterative approach the slowness but it doesn't mean you're compromising on the purity of the original idea.

17:29Do you see what I mean? I guess some people might find there's a tension between the adherence to the idea and then allowing that learning process to happen. But I guess that is where you get great products from is by incorporating all of those different values, right? Totally. And, you know, one of the first things that we, when we first, when we launched the company, we said that we were going to make sure, firstly, that these watches were super comfy. And this is not to say that other watch brands do not have, We are owners of lots of other watch brands from the wide spectrum. But at the same time, the fit was something that for us, we just would not compromise on.

18:04And so when you go from a 44 mil watch and a 43 mil watch, when we first, as I said earlier, did the pilot and the diver, it took us three years to get that right. It took us another two and a half years because getting this new movement, different case size, being 42 mil, and then going through those iterations once again of the curvature and the fit and the weight of the straps and also making improvements, you know, to what we'd learned from the first development cycle. It is, you know, and time does fly. You know, two years, you know, those two, two and a half years went really quickly. And then suddenly it's like, OK, now we've got to figure out how to sell these things.

18:41And, you know, we've sold out of our pilots and our divers. You know, we make them in editions of 300. And that's not to make them limited editions. But actually, the idea was always to create them in editions so that when we made the next edition, it would be pretty much, you know, visually it would look the same as the edition before, but there would be improvements, whether it was to technology, whether it was to the movement. And so we are excited now, you know, that we will be bringing out a new pilot and a new diver. We're very, very blessed that we're asked every week, you know, if those watches are coming back.

19:14And we've got some pretty, pretty cool designs coming out. That was Jas Minas and Ola Floss and the co-founders of AERA. and you might catch a glimpse of a new limited edition in the forthcoming October issue of Monocle magazine. Or you can find out about all the latest from Jas, Olof and team by heading over to era.co.

19:44You are listening to The Entrepreneurs here on Monocle Radio. Well, I'm delighted to say I'm joined now by Monocle's Luxury Markets editor, Brenda Toohey. Hi, Brenda. Hi. Hi, Tom. Great to have you with us. Now, tell me all about Geneva Watch Days. Where does this sit in the sort of the annual watch, watchers calendar? Well, it sits very nicely at the end of August or beginning of September, typically. It's a little less crazy than Watches and Wonders. It's a smaller affair. There are maybe 60 brands taking part, and it's spread out all over Geneva. There's a big tent on the lake, but you can also visit watch brands in some of the fancy hotels, the Beau Rivage, etc.

20:31At many of the finest properties in the beautiful Genève. And before we get into some of the kind of industry watching stuff, what about general moods, Brenda? Because sometimes it's almost palpable, isn't it? When you attend these big events, you can tell whether people are feeling confident. Sometimes you get that quite arresting contrast between people who are from APAC who've flown in and people from, say, the other side of the pond. What was the mood like? Some of the chats you had, how were people feeling? I mean, the mood was a little subdued because the weather was so shocking. That doesn't help off.

21:00It was so wet on the Thursday and I was just there for two days. But people are buoyant. There was a really lovely Geneva Watch Days opening party that was really very oversubscribed. It was gorgeous and a wonderful rainbow appeared as the torrential rain stopped. Oh, a naturally occurring rainbow. I thought they'd stayed much there. And people were rushing out of the hall to take pictures of it like they'd never seen a rainbow before. At one point, we thought the rain would never stop. But I think things are buoyant. I think now you can say that there really are three types of watches. There are the big watches.

21:41There are the sports watches. And then there has been a big turn up for the books in that women are being considered as a completely separate entity, which we haven't seen for many years. You know, we had unisex watches. And now we've got a watch that can be truly feminine in its form. watches not just as jewelry, but watches that are gentler, more slender, smaller. So that is a definite trend that I've seen now for a couple of years, and it's staying. I think watchmakers are going to invest more in that. Blancpain, for example, have said that they're going to re-evaluate, relaunch, create a new series of their Lady Bird watches worn most famously by Marilyn Monroe.

22:28It was a gift from her then husband, Arthur Miller. He gifted her a wonderful Art Deco Diamond Blancpain Lady Bird watch, and she wore it all the time. And Blancpain are taking this beautiful watch as the theme to create a series of watches that will be launched next year. So they are really focusing on women, and women with buying power who want to buy beautiful watches. Well, and this is really interesting, of course, because this ties into one of these broader secular shifts we see in society, which is that women will be controlling the majority of the world's wealth by 2050. So for any ultra luxury or premium sector, whether that's in fashion, whether that's in jewellery, whether that's in watchmaking, ignore that fast growing sector at your peril.

23:17Yes, absolutely. Exactly. Piaget, who always have a magnificent stable of watches on view at any time, anywhere, also were harking back to their vintage watches from the 1960s and 1970s. And they had a beautiful display of archive watches, really with the finest goldsmiths, wonderful hard stones or opal faces, turquoise, really beautiful things. But what they are creating now really looks back to that era. And I tell you, they are so desirable. People really, really want them. Even the satois, you know, a watch at the end of a chain, they've brought back and they're just flying off the shelves.

24:03Well, for people who have a lot of money because they're high jewel pieces as opposed to something that I could afford. Well, let me ask you a bit more about that, Brenda, because I always find this super interesting. And actually, we see it again across the sort of luxury ferment, whether we're talking about automotive or interiors or watches and fine jewellery, which is the skill with which the Maison, the various Maisons, look back to look forward. They love to hark back to forgotten times, whether that's an era, a style, an individual style. You mentioned a watch that's so associated with Marilyn Monroe, but yet bringing in cutting edge innovation and things like that.

24:37How's that balance? It sounds from what you say, like these houses are doing a great job. But is that a balance that they continue to strike, do you think, broadly in their day-to-day? Watchmaking is always about innovation as well, isn't it? It's not just the outside. It's not just the case. It's what's happening inside. And Tag Heuer had a carbon breakthrough. They have been working on creating a ceramic, a carbon spiral spring for the last decade, and they finally created it. And this tiny little microscopic spring that you can only see under a microscope has changed the face of watchmaking for them.

25:18It means that your watch, when you wear it, can never ever be controlled by anything, you know, magnetic fields or anything like that, that it will continue to tell the time perfectly with this little teeny, tiny spring. Their watch that they unveiled during Geneva Watch days is called the Carrera Astronomer. And this little patented spiral spring was groundbreaking. I mean, the gentleman who was there, who had created it, was, you know, beside himself. The devil is in the detail, Brenda, as they always say. It really is. And, you know, he invited me to look in the microscope to see, you know, the tiny little spiral.

26:00Looks like a spiral. But I mean, watchmakers are fascinating. I myself would not have that kind of focus that is required. You do surprise me, Brenda. To look through a microscope for more than eight hours a day, I suppose. But isn't it wonderful that it still exists, that we're just as excited about watchmaking now as we were in the late 1700s when the French flocked to the valleys of Switzerland and set up the watchmaking society there. Well, and it's instructive, Brenda, isn't it? That amidst all the glitz and glamour and rainbows and parties and all the rest of that palaver, one memory that stays with you is absolutely about the epitome of craft, detail.

26:41This guy's dedicated a decade to refining this tiny, tiny piece of watchmaking technology. And yet it's a game changer and it's a memory that will stay with you. But Tom, he's devoted all this huge chunk of his life to creating something that We don't even see. It's on the inside of the watch. Well, what a privilege to be there and to gaze through his microscope. Brenda, another thing that strikes me always as interesting is collabs. Now, obviously, when we're on the streets, it's very in-your-face. People like to celebrate, whether it's, you know, a kind of a celebrity designer or whatever it might be.

27:15Slightly more nuanced, but tell me about the collabs. Anything jump up that grabbed your eye whilst you were in Geneva? No, this one was really fun because it's Zenith watches with USM. And we are big fans of USM here at Monocle. And Zenith are too. Zenith's CEO asked USM to come in and take a little look at their HQ and see how they could refurbish it. And out of that, a fabulous collaboration was born. So they got together. They've created four incredible watches. They're called the Defy Skyline Skeleton USM Edition. The colors are orange, yellow, green, and blue. They're limited to an edition of 50.

27:57They work out at about 10 ,900 Swiss francs. And with the special limited edition, you get this beautiful USM blue watch box. And when you open it, it has three little drawers inside, you know, the orange, the yellow, and the green. And, of course, it's made with that wonderful tubular spheres at the corners of the boxes, allowing you to connect it, if you so wished, to another USM piece of furniture. So I thought that was really cool. It sounds beautifully elegant. It was the collaboration that should have... It feels like it's one of these ones that should exist, which is the mark of a really good one, I guess.

28:38Yeah, I think so. Too much of a pop of colour for you, Brenda, or would you go for one? I would absolutely go for one. Any of them. They were just really fun day watches. They were fantastic. but I think though if I was really going for one I might have to go for one of the Piaget jewellery watches good choice big gold chunky affairs Brenda, fab to get your take thanks so much for your intrepid journey to Genève, braving the rain and for chatting to us about it today thank you