Unlike most consumer goods, watches are seldom, if ever, sold generically. The market is saturated with timepiece brands, many of which honor the luminaries of Swiss watchmaking past.
But new brands without a shred of history come to market often — sometimes it seems like there is at least one a week.
In April, for example, Michael Altieri, the 22-year-old son of the vintage watch dealer Paul Altieri of Bob’s Watches fame debuted Luxana. He built the versatile line of quartz-based chronographs that retail for less than $200 from his dorm room at Boston College, where he is a senior majoring in communications.
“I was looking for the perfect everyday timepiece on an undergraduate’s budget and I couldn’t find one, so I thought I’d make my own,” he said.
And he is just one of many entrepreneurs creating their own opportunities in the watch space, many of which were born on Kickstarter. Since the crowdfunding platform was founded in 2009, it has hosted approximately 1,300 successful watch-related projects — both traditional analog styles and smartwatches — that raised a collective $150 million, said Kate Bernyk, the platform’s director of communications.
Currently, the platform is home to 55 watch-related campaigns, among them a brand called Riskers.
The brainchild of Pierre Guerrier, a former Richemont executive, and his business partner, Thomas Noël, a serial entrepreneur, Riskers initially plans to introduce four timepieces. Each model was inspired by historic or modern day risk takers, and a portion of profits is to go to matching charities.
A starting point for Mr. Guerrier was World War I. He said he had been thinking about France’s soldiers who fought and died in the conflict for six years before he embarked on Riskers in January 2018.
“They were ordinary people, not prepared for war at all and they had to adapt themselves,” he said. “If they wanted to survive, they had to create groups of friends who helped each other.
“Behind this story of men, you also have a watch,” said Mr. Guerrier, who lives and works in Annecy, France, about a 45-minute drive south of Geneva.
He was alluding to the development of the wristwatch during the war. But he may as well have been describing his own philosophy of branding, which places a premium on authentic storytelling. “Everyone takes risks — to change a job, buy a house,” Mr. Guerrier said. “The story is strong enough even without products.”
Initially, however, Mr. Guerrier and Mr. Noël needed a brand name. They spent five months agreeing on titles only to discover every name they liked already had been taken.
They settled on Riskers in May 2018 because it was “international, not too connected to the past and large enough to express every kind of risk,” Mr. Guerrier said.
The next month, the founders hired Malo le Bot, formerly a designer at Vacheron Constantin, as artistic director. He created a logo: The “k” in Riskers is oversized, just as a leader would stand out in a group, Mr. le Bot said. And he began executing the founders’ unconventional visual strategy of using illustrated portraits of the brand’s founders and major backers, drawn by Maÿlis Rangheard.
“It breaks with routine, enabling one to escape reality and enter into our story,” Mr. le Bot wrote in an email.
In May, Mr. Guerrier and Mr. Noël finalized that story. They selected their four main inspirations, which they describe as brand ambassadors: Pierre Müller, an emergency room doctor who volunteers with the French nonprofit organization Douleur Sans Frontières (Pain Without Borders); Guillaume D’Aboville, director general of Enfants du Mékong (Children of the Mekong), a French nongovernmental organization that helps provide access to education and health care to children in Southeast Asia; the 27th Mountain Infantry Brigade, a division of the French Army; and Albert Roche, a highly decorated — and long deceased — French soldier who fought in World War I.
The watches themselves actually came last. Mr. le Bot began designing a case based on a pocket watch in December 2018. Technical development kicked off in April, when the Swiss engineer contracted to produce Riskers’ watches received the files. And three of the four dial designs were finalized in May.
On Nov. 1, the brand went live on Kickstarter, accepting preorders for the four references: two Swiss-made automatic models (called Prolog 1 and Chapter 1) powered by a STP1-11 movement manufactured by Swiss Technology Production, which retail for 1,190 euros (about $1,310); and two quartz models (called Chapter 2 and Chapter 3) assembled in Asia but equipped with Swiss-made Ronda movements, which retail for 490 euros.
“We were limited in terms of price positioning because you can’t be a brand celebrating anonymous people taking risks for others and at the same time be very expensive,” Mr. Guerrier said.
Once the Kickstarter campaign ends on Dec. 1, the Riskers website will be equipped for e-commerce so it can accept preorders, and Mr. Guerrier and Mr. Noël will begin searching for retail partners — beginning at trade fairs such as Baselworld.
The first watches are scheduled to be delivered in 2020.
While there is no formula for creating a brand, Fabrice Paget, a former Cartier executive and founder of the London-based Luxury Brand Agency, said the effort requires “a compelling, aspirational story” that can be expressed very simply.
“Think of Panerai,” Mr. Paget said. “The story is ‘watches from Italian Navy commandos’ — that sounds sexy and cool.”
From a branding perspective, Mr. Paget dismissed the need to obsess over a logo (“Nobody’s going to buy your brand because of a logo,” he said), but he stressed the importance of creating a visual identity: “It’s the first thing people will see when they go to your website or your social media and it has to carry the story.”
The only factor that truly speaks volumes about a brand’s prospects should be obvious: money. By mid-November, Riskers had raised $101,469 on Kickstarter, nearly four times its $27,559 goal, though Mr. Guerrier estimated he needs at least $220,000 to get the first watches out the door.
Mr. Paget, however, estimated that beginning a watch brand costs a minimum of $3 million. “You have to expect you’re not going to sell very much for two to three years,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the brand or product. It has to do with the industry and customers being conservative. So patience is probably something you need as well.”
Indeed, Fred Levin, chief executive of Troverie.com, an authorized online retailer of 18 high-end watch brands, emphasized the long view.
“You don’t build a brand until you’ve been out there with consumers for a minimum of five years,” he said.
Mr. Levin singled out just two relatively new brands in the United States that sell watches starting at $500 “and have crossed the $10 million-in-sales threshold for three to four years in a row”: Shinola and Michele.
“Whether you’re talking about 50 years ago or today, launching a watch brand is about as risky a proposition as ever,” Mr. Levin said.
Nevertheless, Mr. Guerrier is philosophical about the time, money and passion he has invested in Riskers.
“Once you are sure that the people you care about are with you, the only risk is not to follow what you feel you have to do,” he said. “Because in 20 years, it will be too late.”
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