LUNCH IN DUBAI / Max Busser MB&F

LUNCH WITH MAX BÜSSER

The M.A.D 1 Red

It had taken 15 years to have lunch with Max Büsser. It’s not that he’s a difficult man to reach, it’s just that we had missed each other in various Cities over that time.

I first reached out to Max when I launched Billionaire 500 back in 2005. He had just recently started MB&F and his artwork watch pieces were already starting to make waves and I saw his ideas as being a perfect fit to promote on my web portal, designed for the world’s 500 billionaires, (hence Billionaire 500).

Amazing to think that back in 2005 there were only 500 billionaires, where today it’s getting close to 3,000. (Some of you might now have a better idea where the title of this magazine comes from as ‘b500’). A simple title nod to my past as founder of the first online portal for billionaires…

But I digress…

I had been in Geneva when Max was in Dubai, and I’d been in Dubai when Max was in Geneva, and so it went on, until last month the planets aligned…or did they. My original trip to Dubai was planned and then as I reached back out to Max he replied that my dates were the exact dates he would be back in Geneva. (I was starting to get a complex).

We finally decided between us, if I could squeeze an extra day in Dubai at the end of my visit, and he could get back to Dubai a day earlier than planned, those pesky planets would be so confused, it might actually happen!

And it did.

I had already scoped out Max’s M.A.D Gallery in the vastness of the Dubai Mall, a week or so earlier and which needed a sit down in a very fancy coffee shop close to his gallery, having walked miles in a circle to end up back where I started, 50m from his doorway! (With a total internal floor area of 5.9 million sq ft, The Dubai Mall has 3.77 million sq ft of gross leasable space and over 1,200 retail stores, two anchor department stores and more than 200 food and beverage outlets).

Having finally found the gallery, I made a mental note which entrance to arrive at, and which escalator to take and which coffee shop was close by. (To be honest I took pictures on my iPhone). A week or so later and our lunch day had arrived and I was instructing my UBER driver which entrance I needed to be dropped at and then proceeded to refer to my phone images and within a couple of minutes I was right on time for our lunch appointment. We finally met and Max showed me around a few of the key signature pieces in the gallery, and then we headed off to lunch. A fabulous restaurant overlooking the now famous Dubai Fountain display.

Standing for Mechanical Art Devices and originally founded in Geneva, Max opened the first M.A.D.Gallery in 2011 on Rue Verdaine, a stone’s throw from his MB&F’s offices and atelier in the heart of the city’s old town. A second M.A.D.Gallery opened in Taipei in 2014, a third one in Dubai in January 2016 and a fourth one in Hong Kong in October 2018.

The MB&F M.A.D.Gallery is a captivating universe of kinetic art where Horological Machines and Mechanical Art Devices reign supreme. Inside the galleries, not only will you find the complete range of MB&F Horological Machines and Legacy Machines, but you’ll also have the pleasure of discovering carefullycurated Mechanical Art Devices – from around the world, each one as entertaining as it is unique.

Much has been written about Max’s MB&F brand and where at the start he struggled to find buyers, just like any new brand starting out, but nowadays there’s a 10 year waiting list for his horological machines. But I’m not having lunch with Max to talk about his ‘fiercely unconventional timekeeping machines’. No I’m here to talk about his (some might say) equally unconventional ‘thank you’ watch, the M.A.D Edition 1 and the most recent “commercial” version, the M.A.D 1 Red.

The M.A.D 1 was the debut piece back in 2021 from Max’s new brand: M.A.D Edition. Priced at a fraction of his normal horological machines (at under $3,000), but here’s the shocker. This watch was not available to the masses. It was only offered to friends of MB&F, (including suppliers and partners), as well as existing owners of MB&F watches. Sad then to see in my research that many were immediately put up for grabs on E Bay. If I were Max I would use the term ‘friends’ carefully.

But now here we are a year later and with an all new idea from Max to continue the idea, but this time with proper availability. (Well, sort of). The response through social media to M.A.D 1 was a mixture of utter excitement, followed by many by utter frustration that essentially it still wasn’t for sale.

Max was overwhelmed with the response to the first watch, and so much that now a year or so later RED 2 is being made more readily available and still at just around the $3k mark. The first pieces have been offered to those people who contacted MB&F directly since the first launch, with remaining pieces allocated via a lottery system via MB&F’s online store.

Having waited 20 years for lunch, it was worth the wait and to be honest I could have stayed all day listening to how Max and his brand has developed since 2005 into so many amazing ideas, but alas he was away after our lunch to another interview, then another and another.