Watches Wonderworld 2020

WATCHES WONDERWORLD In almost a century of covering the watch industry, Europa Star has taken pride in unveiling some of the most innovative and original new players in the field.

In 2020 we’re continuing to innovate, with features on the most promising new watch brands. They come from all around the world, and are active at all price points. We’re choosing to showcase them in a special April edition, meant as a "print watch fair" following the cancellation of both Baselworld and Watches & Wonders.

Please take a look at the indicative list of eligible brands for this partner folio*. We need a critical mass of participants to make it happen, but ultimately, everyone will benefit.

You can introduce your model with an image and supporting text. The guide will be published in print and online, and you will also benefit from a banner ad on our websites, as well as a dedicated newsletter. Choose from the following sizes and options (see examples on the following pages): 1 page: CHF 3,600 ½ page: CHF 1,800 ¼ page: CHF 900 Contact us directly at: press@europastar.com Sincerely yours, Europa Star *See attached document

HIGHLIGHT Sponsored content

TRILOBE

A CHANGE OF REFERENCE “Love to be different”, “overturn concepts”, “take time”… These are all precepts – or pieces of advice – that could well be applied to Trilobe’s approach to watchmaking.

The Trilobe watch is proof of this. It tells the time in an unmistakeably different way. It effectively overturns concepts, because it is no longer the hands that move over fixed time markers, but time which rotates endlessly around itself. Lastly, it takes time with a pinch of salt, because absolute accuracy is not its holy Grail. While it is accurate (you can depend on the chronometric know-how of Jean-François Mojon, who designed the movement, for that), even so it takes its time. Time, indeed, is shown by three rings which rotate, each at their own pace, opposite the three “trilobes” that indicate the passage of the hours, minutes and seconds.

www.trilobewatches.com

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CYRUS

“BUILDING A CONTEMPORARY BRAND” The man behind Cyrus is Jean-François Mojon (co-owner of the brand together with “a wealthy Swiss family”), an innovative and expert movement manufacturer and watchmaker who won a top award at the 2010 GPHG in the independent watchmaker category and whose list of creations with his Le Locle-based manufacture, Chronode, (same co-owners) reads like a Who’s Who of contemporary haute horlogerie. (…)

www.cyrus-watches.ch.com

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LYTT LABS

THE FOUNTAINS OF SINGAPORE Founded in 2014 by Edwin Seah, an industrial entrepreneur working in hardware and a keen watch collector, together with a partner, Lytt Labs aims to offer very urban-style timepieces at affordable prices for city dwellers with an affinity for traditional watchmaking, but still firmly grounded in their own time. No nostalgia for things vintage here: instead, a determination to assert their contemporaneity. (‌)

www.lyttlabs.com

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TOTAL IMMERSION IN THE 1960s The new brand Laventure appeared on Kickstarter in July 2017 with a debut collection of 150 watches called Laventure Marine. In 48 hours, 120 contributors helped it raise CHF 201,400. A resoundingly successful operation, thanks no doubt to the quality of this contemporary reinterpretation of the marine watches of the 1960s, right in line with millennial tastes.

Clément Gaud, the man behind Laventure, is a Neuchâtel-based designer who, after five years in a watch design agency, decided to take the plunge.

After this first success, he is back this year with Laventure Sous-Marine, a new limited series immaculately designed and built from start to finish in La Chaux-de-Fonds. (…)

www.laventure.swiss

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LAVENTURE

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CULEM

SOLD ON GMT Launched in May 2019 by Matthew Cule, “passionate about travel [he writes a travel blog] and fine watches”, Culem quite logically devotes its first collections – Portal, Lights and Frame – exclusively to GMT watches.

The dial features a three-dimensional world map, while on the back are engraved 24 destinations in GMT and BST zones. The watch is powered by the inevitable automatic ETA 2893-2 and encased beneath a sapphire crystal in an elegant and sober 40mm stainless steel case.

www.culem.com 6

“FABRIQUÉ EN FRANCE” Clément Meynir, originally from the French Jura region and a graduate of the Arts et Métiers science and technology school, launched Depancel in 2018. A contraction of Delage, Panhard and Facel Vega, famous French cars no longer in production today, the name says everything about his inspirations: cars and the industrial vision, and expertise “made in France”.

And he provides a perfect demonstration of these with Renaissance, an “anti-conformist” collection, the case of which echoes the superb grille of the Delage DB-120 of 1936. It is crafted, assembled, regulated and decorated in France. The movement is the excellent Miyota automatic calibre 9120. €499 if pre-ordered, retail price €649.

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DEPANCEL

www.depancel.com

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GENUS

This timepiece is surprising to say the least, and at first sight you scratch your head, wondering how on earth it can fulfil its basic task of telling the time.

It was born, probably during a sleepless night, in the head of Sébastien Billières, a master watchmaker described as an “original talent”, who has his own peculiar way of designing 3D movements “in his mind”, as Catherine Henry, the young entrepreneur and co-founder of Genus, explains. Fascinated by the symbolism contained in the figure 8 – eternity, but also the analemma, the ‘8’ shape traced by the sun during the course of a year as seen from a fixed point at the same time – and eager to see a mechanical component moving freely around a watch, when horology is traditionally based on fixed components driven by moving gears, he dreamed up and produced his Genus (from the Latin meaning type, family, but also zero position, departure point). www.genuswatches.swiss Sponsored content

HIGHLIGHT

THE NEVER-ENDING CATERPILLAR OF TIME

PETERMANN BEDAT DEAD SECONDS TO START WITH

Quartz watches beat dead seconds quite naturally, so to speak: the seconds hand jumps neatly in 1-second intervals. Contrary to this, in mechanical watches the seconds hand seems to glide. Making it jump forward by one second may seem simple to the uninitiated. And yet it is a genuine – and rather rare – complication. Dead-seconds hands were found in the regulator clocks in watch workshops because of the precision they provided, but they were driven by the pendulum movement. In a wristwatch, it is quite another matter. www.petermann-bedat.ch

DE TOURNEMIRE A HEART OF STONE

ALCHEMISTS THE ALCHEMY OF THE CUPRUM 479

At the last Baselworld, three Alchemists presented their highly ambitious project and an astonishing watch. One is Hervé Schlüchter, a maker of complications until he became general manager of the Dimier manufacture (Bovet) before founding his own creative brand. Another is Fabrice Thüler, a natural leader, the creator of Swiss Finest and a bar-turner of renown, who is also capable of “developing, rendering accurate and producing a watch calibre from start to finish”. More surprisingly, the third is Denis Vipret, a “magnetiser and healer” whose reputation extends far beyond the family farm where he practises his art. The holders of the “secret” are a handful of people in the region between Fribourg and the Jura. He is the one who created the “secret recipe” of Cuprum 479. Fabrice Thüler developed it and Hervé Schlüchter gave it shape. www.alchemists.swiss

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The fine jewellery workshop of the Marteau family is renowned among connoisseurs far beyond the confines of Place Vendôme. Under its protective shade, three generations of jewellery makers have discreetly succeeded one another. Swarms of “necklaces, tiaras, mystery boxes, pendants…” created by the Marteau family for more than 60 years have left this place for destinations all over the world.

Jean-Jérôme, 31, who grew up within the walls of this family workshop, has carefully transposed this high-end jewellery-maker’s know-how to haute horlogerie. www.detournemire.com

NORQAIN

ALL ABOUT ADVENTURE, FREEDOM & INDEPENDENCE

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HIGHLIGHT

Norqain, founded by Ben Küffer in Nidau (Biel) not far from Tavannes, where the family has worked in watchmaking through four generations, had a formidable sponsor in Ben’s father, Marc Küffer, CEO of Roventa Henex, a major manufacturer of private-label, Swiss-made watches from 1988 to 2012.

This accumulated know-how, a well-filled address book and large production capacity have enabled Norqain to offer from the outset three collections of contemporary watches, for men and for women, all assembled inhouse at Tavannes and exclusively mechanical, priced from CHF 1,500 to 4,500. The names say it all: Adventure Sport, Freedom 60 and, at the top, Independence, a limited, COSC-certified edition showcased at this year’s Baselworld. www.norqain.com

FOB PARIS

RADICALISM WITH ROOTS Three young qualified engineers, Sari, Laurent and Aurélien, who were also childhood friends, fell under the watchmaking spell when one of their friends inherited a pocket watch from his grandfather. Fascinated both by the technical aspects and the aesthetics, they founded FOB Paris back in 2012. They made the reinterpretation of this pocket watch the signature product of their “French watchmaking studio”. And they insist on the “French” epithet, stressing that “everything is made in France and assembled in Besançon in a family workshop where four generations of watchmakers work”.

With a self-winding or solar-powered movement, made in PVD-coated stainless steel and equipped with sapphire crystals, their watches display a somewhat radical aesthetic, minimalist but not without emotion, rigorously geometrical and stripped to the essential in a wholly contemporary style. FOB Paris is already present in a large number of countries from France to Japan, as well as Russia, London and the Middle East. www.fob-paris.com

DAVID RUTTEN THE ANTIDOTE TO NEO-VINTAGE

SINGER

RECONSTRUCTING THE CHRONOGRAPH Singer was born of an encounter between Rob Dickinson, the founder of Singer Vehicle Design, and Marco Borracino, a watchmaker-designer, joined by Jean-Marc Wiederrecht of Agenhor. This master watchmaker supplied the AgenGraphe, a revolutionary chronograph with indications of extraordinary legibility and outstanding features. No more subdials: the chronograph function is now displayed by three central hands, while the hours and minutes indicators are relegated to the dial periphery and take the form of two rotating discs and a pointer at 6 o’clock. All 477 components of this very beautiful movement are visible through the sapphire on the watch back, as the central position of the chronograph left enough room to place the rotor on the dial side. (…) www.singerreimagined.com

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Born in Brussels in 1974, David Rutten was quite naturally inspired by Art Deco, the city of his birth being a centre of that movement. Like many others of his generation he was also influenced by Japanese sci-fi anime films – Cobra, Ulysses 31 and Albator. Having graduated from La Cambre design school after producing a portfolio based on a collection of watches inclined at 15°, he was looking to produce a “total oeuvre”: in his words, to “perfect every aspect of a watchmaking project, from the storytelling and the philosophy to the style, shape, ergonomics, graphic universe and also the typography and packaging”.

The result of this “total” dream, the DR01 Streamline, is intended as a manifesto of his approach to watchmaking: “a brand entirely based on cases made of a material virtually unexploited in this context: the metal meteorite.” www.davidrutten.com

LARUZE

Laruze first saw the light of day on 1 September 2015 after a modest, but “400% successful”, international crowdfunding campaign (€37,216) by Audrey and Cindy, two project creators who work for a fashion communications agency in Paris. In June 2019 they launched their first signature collection, the elegant Totem, comprising a three-hander automatic plus date, and an automatic chronograph, both powered by Seiko. But what really catches the eye is the interesting 40mm faceted steel case with a domed sapphire crystal. Rounding out the watch is an interchangeable strap system. Retail price: €495. www.laruze.com Sponsored content

HIGHLIGHT

TOTEM CARRIES IT OFF

RICHARDT & MEJER NORDIC BEAUTY

Born of a friendship and a shared passion, Richardt & Mejer was founded in Copenhagen in 2015. As its two founders say: “We make watches without any pretentions but are uncompromising as to their geometry, craftsmanship and design.” A wholly Scandinavian attitude and aesthetic.

Of this, The Lineup, their first collection, is a textbook example. Take the Automatisk / Moss, (Swiss-made calibre STP1-11) and its dual-layer dial in moss green, both matte and with sunray brushing. The case design is impeccably balanced in its Nordic simplicity. A great achievement, for sale on the site by subscription at $656. Future retail price $875. www.richardtandmejer.com

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SEQUENT

THE TESLA AUTOMATIC OF SMARTWATCHES

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HIGHLIGHT

A genuine Swiss star on Kickstarter, having raised more than 1.2 million dollars in pre-orders in 2017, crowned this year with a Red Dot Design Award and already delivered to 135 countries, Sequent can pride itself on being the sole smartwatch to have a battery powered by an automatic movement. It converts the kinetic energy of your wrist to electrical power. Designed and perfected by the Zurich-based start-up Sequent, a leading smart-tech enterprise in the consumer health sector, the Sequent-SuperCharger2 explores the path of hybrid technology and solves – ecologically, brilliantly and tastefully, because the smart watch is simple and beautiful – the thorny problem of battery autonomy. A new and highly innovative sector that could also turn into a lifeline for the struggling segment of mass-produced mechanical watches. Price: from $179. www.sequent.com

TEMPORE LUX VINTAGE FROM MAJORCA

Based in Majorca, David Ramirez ran an online watch boutique for ten years before throwing in the towel and launching his own brand which, thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, will be kicking off in November 2019. Still online though, because you have to “remove all the costly intermediaries who are often responsible for the fact that product quality is not as high as the price. I know what I’m talking about”. His first collection, The Vintage One, is a robust diving watch (down to 300m) with a steel cushion case, sapphire crystal and a rotating ceramic bezel. It comes in two versions: a three-hander plus date and a chronograph. Both are equipped with a Seiko or, for a supplementary charge, Sellita automatic movement. From €349. www.temporelux.com

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GENUS

THE CREATIVE BREATH OF KUALA LUMPUR

THE NEVER-ENDING CATERPILLAR OF TIME

Behind the name Ming is a “watchmaker collective” of six “enthusiasts” of diverse origins led by the photographer, business strategist and watch geek Ming Thein from Kuala Lumpur. “We don’t claim to have a history and we are not weighed down by one. (…) www.ming.watch

This timepiece is surprising to say the least, and at first sight you scratch your head, wondering how on earth it can fulfil its basic task of telling the time.

It was born, probably during a sleepless night, in the head of Sébastien Billières, (…) www.genuswatches.swiss

SYLVAIN PINAUD

TRILOBE

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HIGHLIGHT

MING

AND HIS CHRONOGRAPHE MONOPOUSSOIR

A CHANGE OF REFERENCE

Sylvain Pinaud was one of the more exciting discoveries to be made at this year’s Baselworld, in the “Incubator” section.As he himself states in his own simple, transparent way: “I love this timepiece, I think it’s beautiful…” (…) www.sylvain-pinaud.com

“Love to be different”, “overturn concepts”, “take time”…

These are all precepts – or pieces of advice – that could well be applied to Trilobe’s approach to watchmaking.

The Trilobe watch is proof of this. It tells the time in an unmistakeably different way. (…) www.trilobewatches.com

MENINTIME

BEAUREGARD

“My debut watch – the Paon – is neither completely round nor completely oval. It’s a new shape. The strap is made up of 55 links, each individually cut and assembled. You’ve never seen a crown, dial or hands like these before; they’re unique!” (…) www.menintime.com

Offering 65 hours of power reserve, the self-winding movement is equipped with two barrels and a bi-directional, ball-bearing-mounted rotor. A highly refined arrangement of open-worked bridges and a hand-polished rotor segment echo the floral richness (…) www.beauregard.ch

HEGID

LAVENTURE

NOT REVOLUTIONARY, EVOLUTIONARY

TOTAL IMMERSION IN THE 1960s

How do you make an object, intended from the moment of its creation to be unchanging, evolve? The French startup Hegid has developed a concept of watch heads which combine with a series of different casebands and straps. (…) www.hegid.com

The new brand Laventure appeared on Kickstarter in July 2017 with a debut collection of 150 watches called Laventure Marine. In 48 hours, 120 contributors helped it raise CHF 201,400. A resoundingly successful operation, thanks no doubt to the quality (…) www.laventure.swiss

HIGHLIGHT

DAHLIA C1

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UNDERSTATED ELEGANCE

JW WATCH

WITH THE SUPPORT OF NASA

THE JW-EX, STANDING FOR “EXAGGERATION”

In August 2019, Xeric, San Francisco, announced that its timepiece, the NASA Trappist-1 had received the support of 17,974 contributors, which made it the most popular watchmaking project on Kickstarter, with 5.4 million US dollars raised. (…) www.xeric.com

JW Watch was founded in Hong Kong by Jason Chan, a watchmaker-designer, and William Shun, the founder of Memorigin, a brand specialising in tourbillons, and a shareholder in a major manufacturing outfit that “has produced mechanical movements (…) www.jwwatchl.com

TEMPORE LUX

SEQUENT

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HIGHLIGHT

XERIC

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VINTAGE FROM MAJORCA

THE TESLA AUTOMATIC OF SMARTWATCHES

Based in Majorca, David Ramirez ran an online watch boutique for ten years before throwing in the towel and launching his own brand which, thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, will be kicking off in November 2019. Still online though, (…) www.temporelux.com

A genuine Swiss star on Kickstarter, having raised more than 1.2 million dollars in pre-orders in 2017, crowned this year with a Red Dot Design Award and already delivered to 135 countries, Sequent can pride itself on being the sole smartwatch to have a battery (…) www.sequent.com

LARUZE

TOTEM CARRIES IT OFF

Born of a friendship and a shared passion, Richardt & Mejer was founded in Copenhagen in 2015. As its two founders say: “We make watches without any pretentions but are uncompromising as to their geometry, craftsmanship and design.”. (…) www.richardtandmejer.com

Laruze first saw the light of day on 1 September 2015 after a modest, but “400% successful”, international crowdfunding campaign (€37,216) by Audrey and Cindy, two project creators who work for a fashion communications agency in Paris. (…) www.laruze.com

CULEM

DEPANCEL

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NORDIC BEAUTY

HIGHLIGHT

RICHARDT & MEJER

SOLD ON GMT

“FABRIQUÉ EN FRANCE”

Launched in May 2019 by Matthew Cule, “passionate about travel [he writes a travel blog] and fine watches”, Culem quite logically devotes its first collections – Portal, Lights and Frame – exclusively to GMT watches. The dial features a three-dimensional world map, (…) www.culem.com

Clément Meynir, originally from the French Jura region and a graduate of the Arts et Métiers science and technology school, launched Depancel in 2018. A contraction of Delage, Panhard and Facel Vega, famous French cars no longer in production today, (…) www.depancel.com

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