There is a question every founder gets asked, and it usually arrives with a raised eyebrow: why on earth would you start a new watch brand? The market is already crowded. Most microbrands don't survive their first few years. Trying to win market presence next to big established brands with near-infinite marketing budgets is almost impossible. And let's be honest: does the world even need another watch?
All true. And yet here I am. Let me try to answer the question from my point of view.
The itch to build something of my own
For more than ten years I have been a collector. I know the ritual well: researching obscure vintage references or new releases at any given time during the day. The small ceremony of choosing which watch to wear each day, only to swap it out a few more times during the same day. The daily routine of winding your watch every morning (more on that later!). But I reached a point many collectors probably never will: I was content with my collection.
There was no next watch I was hunting. But I knew I still wanted something more. My focus shifted more towards the business side of the watch world; it turned from buying watches to the industry itself: maybe I should work for a brand, maybe sell watches professionally, anything to stay close to the craft.
After a while I realised it was mostly my creative side talking, urging the rational part of my brain to go and create something.
Where to begin?
A watch brand starts with little more than a notebook, some sketches and a name nobody has heard of. Every decision after that — the length of a lug, the weight of a crown, the typeface on the dial — is yours to get right or wrong. In a professional life spent working within large, slow-moving institutions, that kind of total ownership is rare.
So, the seed was planted, but many questions were still unanswered. What type of watch would I create? Where would I draw inspiration from? Who would my clients be? My first instinct was to make a modern version of a vintage wristwatch. Many before me have done it with great success; the design language is already there and it's easier than starting from nothing.
It seems the inspiration was hiding in plain sight: the city of Brussels, where I have been living for the better part of 6 years. But more on that in a later article, where we explore the design for the launch model.
Everything you suddenly need
Here is what they don't tell you: designing the watch itself is only a fraction of the work. The moment you decide to build a brand; a list unfolds that never seems to end.
You need a name that survives a trademark search and can be pronounced in most languages. A logo and/or wordmark that still look right at three millimetres tall on a dial. A website, product photography, legal terms, a company structure, contracts with designers and suppliers. And before everything else, you need funding. I put it last on the list, but it's the item that decides whether the rest is real or a fantasy.
If you want to stick around for the long run, you'll need a design language coherent enough that multiple models can be created and recognised immediately.
This is a real fork in the road. The fast — and probably most popular one — route is off-the-shelf: manufacturers offer catalogues of existing cases, dials and hands, and you assemble a watch from parts a dozen other brands also use. It's cheaper, quicker and lower-risk — and it's why so many new releases look interchangeable. You can send a drawing made on the back of a beer coaster to a factory, and they'll make your watch.
The slow route is building your own design language from scratch, where almost every component is drawn for your brand and nobody else's. It costs more in every way, but it's the only route where a second and third model strengthen the first instead of starting from zero. We took the slow route; but I'll go in way more depth in a future article — stay tuned!
The price question
Before you make decisions on anything, you have to answer one difficult question: in which price bracket should your watch sit?
Everything follows from that number. It dictates your movement, your case manufacturing, your finishing, your margins, and who your customer is. It also dictates your brand, the language you're using or even the font you're writing articles in.
Price it too low and you're competing with mass-produced pieces on volume you'll never match. Price it too high and you're asking people to pay heritage prices for a brand with no heritage yet.
For our first watch, we wanted a price high enough to allow some bold creative decisions in the design, but low enough to compete with the entry-level models of bigger brands. It's the territory where a genuinely Swiss-made, mechanical, thoughtfully designed watch can exist without cutting corners — and where we 100% justify what every euro (we'll also accept other currencies!) pays for.
From passion to business
Naturally, there is a strong romantic element to building a product from scratch. But the most important element is found elsewhere, in spreadsheets.
A watch is a brutally capital-intensive product. Suppliers ask for deposits long before you hold a finished watch, tooling for a custom case is — at least — a four-figure line item on its own, and minimum order quantities mean you commit to hundreds of pieces before selling one. All in, bringing a serious first watch to market is not a small thing. From that point on, it's cash-flow planning, supplier negotiations and a business plan solid enough to convince a bank.
That transition — from enthusiast to entrepreneur — is the hardest part of the whole journey. The watch you love as a collector and the watch that works as a business are not necessarily the same watch. Of course I am creating something I can fully stand behind, but in every business, you'll need to kill some of your darlings.
Which brings us to the question every new brand faces: how do you finance production?
A commonly used method is Kickstarter. It has launched hundreds of microbrands and proven that it works. We decided against it, deliberately. A crowdfunding page frames your watch as a project seeking validation. Perceived value is fragile for a young brand: a watch first seen next to a funding thermometer and an early-bird discount is hard to reposition later as a piece worth its full price.
And the perception of the platform itself has changed. By now, plenty of watch campaigns have never delivered, and backers have noticed. What once signalled creativity and independence now, fairly or not, carries a hint of risk.
Instead, Kobus will launch with a pre-sale: a limited number of pieces offered first to the people who have followed the brand from the beginning, at preferential terms, before general availability. It serves the same honest purpose — proving demand before committing fully to production — but on our own terms, on our own site, with a direct relationship to every early owner.
I'll leave it here for now and hope to have at least piqued your interest on the start of this journey. As these articles are published slightly retroactively, there's already plenty more where this came from. In the meantime, do not hesitate to reach out for any questions, comments or advice. Kobus is just me for now, so when you e-mail the brand, you'll get me.
The first Kobus watch is well on its way! In the next posts, I'll take you deeper into the design, the production, and everything we learn along the way.
— Mathieu, founder of Kobus