Now, a few minutes with Raphael Ickler, founder of Defakto Watches.
James Henderson: What was your first watch, was it a gift? Is there a story behind it?
Raphael Ickler: The first “real” watch I got was a birthday present from my father. It was a special edition with an old Junghans movement in celebration of 80-year anniversary of the Ickler watch company. The titanium watch cases had a running number, as it was my 18th birthday I got No. 18!
J: When you were a boy, what did you want to be “when you grew up”?
RI: I never had being some big sport star or the typical truck driver or fire fighter cliche as an idea of what I wanted to do. I think I was just satisfied with what I was. I still don`t have this feeling now. I think things always happen in a different way – there is nothing which can be planed for sure.
J: Your family owns Ickler, Limes and Archimede? What was it like growing up in the Ickler company?
RI: As you might guess, when you are a child everything your parents do is normal. In my case my father was producing watches, there was nothing special about it. I remember the big factory and the fascinating atmosphere, the sounds of the machines and the smell of oil and electricity there. It was a great place for playing and running around. I only started realizing how much work is involved in one timepiece as I grow older. This became clear to me when I started to think about creating my own watch. You have to think about the concept, the design, the technical engineering, and later on you have to communicate and sell your product. Therefore I have real respect for small watchmakers and their companies, doing everything on their own. They are entrepreneurs who have to be multi talented in many fields.
J: Growing up in the watch industry many people would think that you had always planned of joining the family business – but maybe you thought/dreamed of doing something else?
RI: Within the next few years I will do my own thing. Having studied Marketing & Communications I am going to work in a completely different field than our technical based factory offers. I think it is important for everyone`s personal development to not jump directly into pre determined lines (even if they are lucrative). Creating and working with Defakto for nearly two years now this business has given me my best insights into how things work within the watch industry. It has also taught me a great deal about working on and building up brands in general. And as you might guess it is a lot of fun!
J: Pforzheim has become a bit of a contender with Glashutte for watch making in Germany. To what do you owe the success of Pforzheim?
RI: Pforzheim has a long watch and jewelery making history. In fact it is also called Goldstadt (Goldtown) Pforzheim. Due to that long relationship with these industries we still have many skilled and creative, mostly family based watchmaking enterprises here, which are producing high quality watches for a growing international demand. Just as Glashütte, Made in Pforzheim is a trademark for high quality timepieces.
J: How did Defakto come to be and was the idea behind this?
RI: Knowing that I grew up with watches, it might be funny to hear that I had never heard about one hand watches before I started thinking about a new way of telling time. My main goal was to reduce things to the max. Within this process I had the sudden inspiration of just killing the minute and second hand in the illustration in my sketch book. To make this idea work I reduced the four indexes between the hours to three 15 minute markers. I was amazed. I thought this is it! As I talked to my father about this historic invention I had just created, he told me not only that this concept is still on the market, but also that this idea was used in the first pocket watches! But still, Defakto is unique. There are other one hand watches on the market but they try to be as exact as their three hand competitors – and fail. We have our own way scaling time.
J: Let’s talk about Defakto – is there any significance to the name?
RI: The meaning of the latin word “de Facto” is, in essence the current situation. Our very pure design follows this ideology. I have tried to reduce everything as much as possible, with the focus on creating a pure and eyemazing time keeper which serves the understated lifestyle of our customers.
But there is a second aspect: these days most people are hard workers and always on the run. Seconds rule their world. Defakto stands for a new way of dealing with time. When you are wearing a Defakto time is not your enemy. Just because our watches are using a bigger, lets call it “circa” time scales doesn’t mean that you are late. You might be there just on time because you plan your events more intuitively without putting tasks on the last second. Looking to one of our watches time goes easily while being handled easy. This is an interesting paradox in contrast to the brand name that I liked to play with.
J: Where do you see Defakto in the next five years?
RI: Defakto is definitely not a watch for everyone. But I have the belief that there are many individuals who will love the philosophy and the design of our watches. My goal is to find them. This takes some time while looking at my small marketing budget. But using the technology of the internet, spreading our message around the world is not as cost intensive as it was in the analog decades.
J: What is next for Defakto after the one handed watch?
RI: There will be a slightly minimalized design with finer indexes and a different watch hand, following up the same timescale principe than the watches have we made up to now. As there are some time addicts outside screaming for a “beginners edition” Defakto, there might be the possibility of adding some 5 minute indexes between the clock face and the sapphire crystal for more conservative readability.
J: If you weren’t doing this, what do you think you might be doing?
RI: I would construct spaceships.
J: What is a typical “day in the life” of Raphael Ickler?
RI: I wake up, then I eat, I put on my Defakto: for the next 10 hours I can only remember a good feeling, then I eat and sleep. This circle goes on and on.
J: Defakto at the moment appears to have its distribution solely via the internet. Do you see a potential for a brick and mortar presence?
RI: Absolutly! But there are some problems as we decided to keep the prices as low as possible to give the customer the best value for the money as possible. Therefore the conditions we can give the distributors are not that sexy as other mainstream companies do offer, which effects in boring shop or jeweler displays.
J: What do you like to do in your down time?
RI: When I have stopped looking at my watch a half second before, down time is on demand and possible everywhere. If things are bad because my watch is not around, I like to listen to good music while cooking exotic dishes and drinking a good red wine with my beautiful girlfriend.
Visit Raphael and the folks at DEFAKTO –www.defakto-uhren.de
