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An Interview with Bremont

written by A.Morgan - 27th Apr 2011

We met up with Giles and Nick English, co-founders of Bremont, to talk about the brand and the people behind it. What followed was a conversation about pea fields, engineering and Facebook…

TWM: To start, could you tell us how Bremont got its name?

GE: Obviously my surname is English, but we would never get a trademark for English on a watch, so it all came from an experience two years after dad died. We were in an old biplane flying down through France, it was shit weather and we shouldn’t have been flying anyway. In England, when you land in someone’s field because of a problem you give the farmer a bottle of whiskey and say sorry. In France they impound your aircraft and make you take the wings off, ship it to an airfield; it’s the biggest nightmare!

So we landed in this farmer’s pea field, thinking this was a five grand bill coming our way and the end of the holiday, and this farmer came out and said, come, push your plane into this big old hay barn, so we did that and stayed with him for a few days. He turned out to be a second world war pilot and this wonderful mechanic. He had old clocks and old bikes in his workshop and we just built up a friendship with him. He really reminded us of our dad. His name was Antoine Bremont. So a number years later, we needed this name and we thought Bremont was a lovely sounding name; we could get the trademark and it meant something to us.

TWM: Do you still keep in contact with Antoine?

GE: Sadly he died; he saw what we were doing, but he died just before we launched. He just thought we were mad Englishmen and wondered what the hell we were doing!

TWM: You strike me as a very adventurous and hands-on sort of person; where does this trait come from?

GE: I think it’s a sort of British thing. I don’t think it’s just me! Growing up as a kid, rather than going out with mates I’d go and sit in the workshop with dad making things, so it sort of came from that. My father was a PHD student of aeronautical engineering in Cambridge and did a short time in the RAF. He was big into his planes and restored vintage aircraft, so from a young age we used to go and fly with him at air displays. He was into his cars too, and we lived on a boat for six months as kids that he’d built and sailed round the world. He was a quirky individual and passionate about the stuff that he did.

Another thing that he was into was clocks and vintage watches; he had a big collection of all the old classics, and that’s where our love for watches came from. After the flying accident we thought sod this, let’s go and do something we really want to do. We felt that, mechanically, we could build something as good as anyone else out there, and we felt we could put that English style into it too.

TWM: So you’ve always been taking things apart and putting them back together?

GE: Yeah; although not particularly successful at putting them back together again! For us, whether it’s an old motor in a Second World War plane, a movement in a watch, or a gearbox in a car, it’s all just gears really. It’s definitely a passion. So, like when our original watches were being tested, the standard steel finish was looking really knackered and scratched – it took us about two years to find a company that could do all the hardening on the cases. They happened to be in England, so all of our cases go from Switzerland to the UK and get fired up in a kiln which is used predominantly for Rolls-Royce turbine blades. You basically surface harden by heating the case up and infusing it with carbon and you can get it very scratch resistant – all our watches are two thousand Vickers.

Now, when you buy the watch you would have no idea, and for us, cost wise, it adds 30-40% to the case price to do it. All those little elements were very important for us when building the watch, and were part of the fun of doing it.

TWM: We’ve just had a massive recession that has brought established companies to their knees; as quite a young business, how did you survive?

GE: We’re still pulling through! In a recession people go to established brands because they feel that you buy Rolex, you buy Patek, and it’s going to hold its value. We’re ticking a little bit of a box in peoples mind. We’re making 3,500 watches a year, so it’s tiny in numbers but it’s a chronometer tested watch, we think they’re very good value for what they are. We’re putting a lot into our watches. In the Martin-Baker watch, the rota-click bezel – you turn the bezel and it goes click-click-click – to make is nigh on impossible, and most of the brands have canned it. We spent years trying to get it right so the minute clicks using four ball bearings that won’t wear over time.

It’s that sort of detail that we think will pull us through. We’re also one of a few companies that give a three year warrantee on our watches. I think the history of British watchmaking is so damn good as well; there are four hundred Swiss watch brands, and there are only a couple that do anything in the UK, and we’re one of those. I don’t know if you’ve seen the ship’s clock that we built; that was a complete thing of passion. The box we made for it with a company called Silver Lining is alone costing us about seven or eight grand to make because it’s beautiful. We don’t know of another clock of that size which has such a long power reserve, and 100% of that is being made in the UK.

TWM: What is the power reserve on the Marine Clock?

Giles tells us about his Marine Clock

GE: Forty days, with three time-zones and a ninety day chronograph – it’s a play on the tax year, so you know when you’ve been away for the ninety days! And it’s fully waterproof. This was a nightmare because with the average clock you just open the front and you change the time normally, but on superyachts the problem is salt fog; it just kills anything, so the time is altered from the back so it’s all sealed up.

But, you know, why do you do that? It’s cost us an absolute fortune to do and we could probably only ever make five to ten a year, but for us it’s saying, look, technically we can do it, and hopefully people will see what we have done. A big part for us is our technical director, a chap called Peter Roberts. He has done thirty years with Rolex and IWC and he taught Stephen Forsey and Peter Speake-Marin at Hackney Watch School, so he’s been there and done it; we’re lucky to get him on board. You try and do these things differently by putting that level of detail into it. We’re not a mainstream brand, but we hope people like what we’re doing. Sadly we don’t having the marketing bucks!

TWM: Does it frustrate you that despite all the engineering details that go into your watches, thus adding to the cost, people still demand an in-house movement?

GE: Also, what some people don’t realise is that you can have a Valjoux movement and you can have a Valjoux movement, and depending on the spec of that movement, cost-wise it’s completely different. You can have a very cheap watch with an off-the-shelf case that you just go and buy from China, and standard crystals that will just mark whenever you knock them. If you’re not in the industry it’s very difficult to say whether it’s good value or not because you just don’t know the detail.

In our price point and with the number of watches we’re making, I can pretty much put my hand on my heart and say we really are at the top of quality. But, some people don’t value the effort you put in; the little elements like our three-piece cases and such. I’d love to create an in-house movement, I’d love to create it in the UK and do something very special. What we’ve tried to do with things like the Marine Clock is say, technically, we’re able to do it – it just comes down to do people want to pay twice the price? Will it work for Breitling? They’ve suddenly got an in-house movement at double the price point – I honestly think that, apart from a small percentage, people don’t really care.

Is it going to work as well is another thing. I always use the aircraft analogy; you go and buy a Wildcat or a Bearcat or something, and they both have Pratt and Whitney engines in them. You buy it because you want it to work, you want to be able to get parts, and you just don’t want it to go wrong. You come up with something unique, and it may be more efficient, but is it going to really last, what are the problems and costs associated with it.

It shouldn’t be done for vanity – it should be done because you can make it a better watch. We’d love to do it, and the watches we do it for will have to double in price. We’ve got some little things we’d love to do within a movement, which is a good halfway house, and I want to do it in England. We’ll bring more and more manufacturing over into the UK, so soon we’ll be making our cases in the UK, rather than just doing the finishing here.

TWM: Speaking of the three-piece case, it’s a very novel idea; how did that come about?

GE: What we wanted was a pretty classic looking face but also to modernise it. If you look at standard stamp casing, you can’t do anything with it, whereas the barrel gives you the shapes and contrast and different materials you can use, but keeping it classic. You can tell I’m not into fashion, so we’re never going to be good at designing fashion watches, but it’s our little bit of DNA in a watch. It’s bloody difficult to do!

It’s brilliant because you can use aluminium with the Martin-Baker, you can do titanium, you can do gold if you wanted to; you can change that material around and still keep the strength. And if you whack the top bezel, you can just replace it rather than the whole case, so it gives you quite a lot of flexibility, although it does cost a lot more for us to build.

TWM: On the Martin-Baker, the knurled barrel is reminiscent of a quick release harness; is that coincidence or intentional?

GE: All these effects all come from parts of the ejector seats, and all the colours. You look around and you just get inspired by it; that knurling is a typical engineered finish. What we did on the Martin-Baker and the Supermarine as well was put in this Faraday cage. Now this was a nightmare; I spent all my time and money developing a Faraday cage that we think really works, and then people say they can’t see the movement! It’s a real dilemma – the average guy on the street just wants to see the movement.

Most people just use the dial as the front of the cage; they cup it and put a lid on the back, whereas this goes completely round the movement so it makes it more effective. The Milgauss is one of the others that do it, but most other people don’t. You do all of that, and no one ever sees it, so it just doesn’t mean anything to your average guy in the shop, but you hope that the guys that do know about it talk about it and it goes from there – but whether that works I don’t know!

TWM: It must have been pretty cool doing the tests with Martin-Baker…

GE: Yeah; the vibration testing was the best. What they do is get this computerised manikin with new boots, the whole lot, and they put him in this ejector seat, and they shake it. They can do the equivalent of thirty years of flight testing in four hours, so you come back and his shoes are worn through as though he’s been using them for thirty years! It is amazing to see. What they then do is heat it up so they can simulate the aircraft operating in the Sahara, then they put it in a big fridge as if it’s in Siberia, and then they shoot salt fog at it, the equivalent of sitting for six months on a carrier deck.

So they had all these facilities and they said, ‘look guys, what do you want to do?’ So they had a lab guy associated to the watch and we were finding that, with the vibration, the same three screws would fall out of the mechanism after about ten years use. So we put this vibration ring in and it doubles the life in it. Does it stop a watch from breaking? Well, if you bang it really hard it may not do, but it’s going to help.

The problem is, a lot of watches break when dropped not because of the movement, but because the case clamps shear off and fall into the movement. If you take away any need for case clamps because it’s all encased in rubber, then you don’t have that issue. Also on the Martin-Baker, we don’t have a lock down crown because as soon as you screw a crown in, it’s not quite as flexible. You can design the seals inside the case with modern materials so you don’t need a locking crown, and if you don’t have to lock it in, you never have the problem of it leaking.

TWM: What developments are you currently working on?

GE: The U2 spy plane squadron wanted the Martin-Baker tested to certify it to 100,000 feet. Most watches are obviously tested for going down, but when they go up it can just pop the crystal out, so, Martin-Baker pressure tested it up to 100,000 feet. They also needed it certified at minus forty as well – it’s great because the rubberised vibration mount also acts as a good insulator for the movement.

The U2 is just great because they pay us to supply them with the watches, but, for us, it’s the free marketing – they’re up there taking photos of their watches at eighty thousand feet, on the edge of space; the sort of stuff that any other watch firm would have to pay hundreds of thousands for – but they get it and Facebook it to us!

TWM: You’ve had quite a few air force squadrons come and ask for your watches, haven’t you?

GE: Yeah, they just call us up… For them they want something a bit different, they see what we’re doing with stuff like the Martin-Baker, and they like it. It’s luck really! We’ll say, look, we’ll certify this watch through an aviation company for your use, so that appeals. There are a few other squadrons we’re working on which are quite exciting as well.

TWM: What does the future hold for the Bremont range?

GE: It’s a long old game this, and you’re not going to have success overnight, but I honestly think what we are creating is pretty good. You’ve got to keep believing and you’ve got to keep improving, constantly be looking at new ways of doing things whilst keeping your classic look.

So do you do a Panerai and make everything limited edition, do you keep cancelling old models when bringing in new ones – it’s very difficult. Do you just keep to one style, or do you try to broaden your collection? We had a lot of criticism as to why we were doing a dive watch when it came out – well, yes and no, but I just like dive watches really! You constantly get criticism for various stuff – it’s just the nature of what you do. You put yourself up there, people are going to like it, people are going to not like it. You can’t appease everyone.

TWM: You’ve been involved in some interesting projects – what do you want to do next?

GE: We are inspired by lots of old things, whether it’s cars or planes, and new projects we get involved in are things we have a genuine passion about. Things like the Jaguar clock – clocks in cars in my mind are so ridiculously boring and bad, and, talking to the car companies, they agree!

Basically it’s the last thing that’s ever thought about, and it has to be cheap, and we said, actually, let’s do something a bit different here. So the C-X75 dashboard clock you could pick up and use as a desk clock as well, so it’s about doing things in a slightly different way. Things like these one-off projects, that’s fun, things like the ship’s clock. These guys that have got £250,000 Pateks, yet on the wall in their superyacht they’ve got £30 quartz clocks – if you think you’re into watches, then you have to appreciate clocks. You take that Marine Clock and take the back off that, it’s the most beautiful, handmade thing you could possibly have.

We’re going completely against the grain of the rest of the market, but I strongly believe that clocks will come back into fashion. Part of the reason they haven’t is just because they’re too traditional looking. Standard clocks are the sort of things you see on your grandmother’s shelf, an heirloom passed down, whereas with this clock, each one’s bespoke, so you can make the dial pink leather if you want. Especially with the history of clock making in the UK – Harrison is such a hero of mine – the world has completely forgotten about it. We’re putting our flag in the ground for British watch and clock making.

With thanks to Giles and Nick English for their time