In my tireless and never-ending quest to provide you with the pinnacle of watch news and coverage—unrivaled by other outlets, undreamt of by the founders of The Internet itself—I’m always on the lookout for new brands and new watches. When this year’s Inhorgenta trade show took place in Munich, I scoped out the exhibitors list. There, buried amongst peddlers of gemstones, engagement rings, and pendant earrings, was a brand I hadn’t heard of: Belchengruppe.
I was taken by the angular cases and the stark, simplified designs of the dials. A few emails later and I was scheduling an interview with founder and owner Christoph Schnee. Schnee is a designer by trade and has a full-time job in communications but set about making his own watch about 15 years ago. Why did it take so long to finally get going? And why did he bother making his own watch in the first place? Read on to find out.
Mike Razak: Tell me about how this all got started?
Christoph Schnee: About 14-15 years ago I was looking for a watch. I wanted to buy a watch, an automatic watch, and I didn’t find one that I liked. So, I thought, “Oh, I’m a designer, I should do it for myself.” Then I went to Basel and to the heart of the watch industry and thought, “Ok, if I do not do it now, I will never do it.” So, I started a journey 10 years ago, and 4 months before COVID, we launched our brand—that’s the reason why you didn’t hear about it.
We started with a collection of 6 different watches. As you see the case is always the same, but the finishes are different, and we have two dials. The idea was not to make something new or something that doesn’t exist, but something that is playing with archetypes and forms you know.
MR: I’m looking at them here and I love them—and I’m not just saying that. What’s really taking me–and I don’t know if this was the intent, you tell me–on the Visuren, it’s got this kind of hyperspace motif.
CS: What we love is that there are many interpretations you can make with this. Hyperspace is one, but the other is the sun. It’s a cooperation of designers who make these watches. The case was designed by me and a friend from Munich, who also made the 120° dial. The Visuren dial is made by the graphic designer who made the logo and all my corporate stuff. This graphic designer has an artistic approach—he came from OpArt, art stuff from the 70s. So, this was his idea in his mind, and he then thought of the sun, but then of hyperspace.
What was important for us was to make it always a little different in showing the time. As you see on the Visuren dial, we do not indicate the complete hour, but the half hours on the outer ring. The second ring are the hours. It doesn’t depend on seeing the time or reading the time, because you can do that with the hands. It’s exact, but less than on other dials. On the 120°, it’s a really normal dial, but we have three indicators, at 20 minutes, instead of 4 at 15 minutes. It’s all about the perception of time, that’s the idea of everything. In my opinion, 20 minute is a better amount of time to do something. “In 15 minutes a meeting starts,” and so on.
MR: I’m reminded, too, of MeisterSinger and Slow, these single-hand brands that are also thinking about how we look at and conceive of time. MeisterSinger forces you to have a more relaxed relationship with time because you cannot be to the minute with those watches.
CS: It’s a little bit the same with my brand: we didn’t make the hands pointed, so the time is more indistinct. If you want that exact, you have a cell phone.
MR: I’m also seeing with the Visuren, it’s a sunburst effect that strikes the balance between suggesting texture and pattern while also being designed, and I like the simplicity. And it works so well with the angular case, having these sharp lines—I’m Fawning over your watches, to your face!
CS: I don’t have a problem with that!
MR- So, you said it was 15 years ago that you went looking for a watch, and admittedly the watch landscape was a lot different back then. There weren’t a lot of people making their own watches. And I’ve heard your story before: when asked why did you make a watch, others have said, “I couldn’t find the one I wanted.” Most people settle, but there are those few like yourself who say, “No, I’ll design my own.” But tell me about the 10-12 year gap.
CS: First, I had this idea to make my own. But then you think about, “Oh, I do not know anything about watches,” you just see them in the store. So, for me the first part was to learn something about mechanical watches. A friend of mine is a watchmaker—300 years in his family of watchmakers. I made a little internship with him and learned how a watch works. “OK it’s not that complicated.” And then I got the idea to make my own complication for a watch. I went that way looking for someone with whom I can make a never-before-seen complication, and then I went to Basel and said, “Ok, now I have some idea how to make this.” I was talking to some firms and companies in Switzerland and talking to them about if it’s possible and so on. And no—it’s possible, but so expensive I couldn’t do it. But it was part of the journey because I learned how the watch industry in Switzerland works, how they interact. I thought, “Ok, I had to learn something about it.” I’m a German and don’t speak French as well, and I in another kind of business than the watchmaking industry. They have another mood—it’s ok, but you have to learn this.
So, I said, “Ok, it’s not possible to do my own mechanical complication,” and that was a bit of a bummer.
Most brands care about watches, not about time.
MR: What was the complication?
CS: A kind of timer, with a 5-minute timer where it goes down and rings, with a sound.
MR: Ah, a countdown timer with an alarm!
CS: Yes! But I tried, and perhaps in time it will come–because it’s all about time.
So, then we had three years where I didn’t know how to make a new start at it. I founded another corporation for the creative industry here in Basel. Then I thought, “Ok, I have to start with this project again and figure out how to motivate myself,” because it’s all about motivation. So, I met with Pete—the designer that makes the logo—and we started with the logo. We started to design the brand, because if you do this, you don’t have to have ideas about watchmaking. But if you have this approach, you can be highly motivated. He sent me an image and photoshopped the log onto an old omega I liked, as a surprise. And then I said, “Oh, I want this!” Then we designed the case, but we didn’t understand how to design a watch. We just designed it, knowing that we will find someone who can construct it.
MR: You designed what you wanted it to look like, but you didn’t understand the internal technical part. Is the case you ended up with what you had in mind when you started looking for watches?
CS: I don’t know. All I knew is I couldn’t find the watch I wanted, and I knew what I didn’t like. For example, there are so many fonts, the design of the logo and typography is always another font. And so, these are details, but as a designer, I hate it. So, I had the luck that we could make our own font.
MR: I appreciate that. I appreciate too that on the case back you have just the logo and some numbering. You know, I always complain about this in my reviews, and I know it may be silly, but brands always put every detail about the watch on the back: “Oh, this is made of steel, this is an automatic movement.” In a way it doesn’t suggest trust in the person wearing the watch.
CS: Yes, and we have some space for individual engravings if the customer wanted. And we didn’t have a glass back.
MR: Glass backs send a message of a more serious watch. There are two types of watches with glass backs: F.P. Journe, you want to see craftsmanship and he wants to show it to you. The others are lower end, think about Seikos. And I’ve spoken to people who aren’t into watches and they say “Oh I like the spinny thing;” at that level, people want to see the mgic.
CS: People are asking about it, they want the glass caseback, but we would have to finish the Sellita movement, which costs more. And it doesn’t’ make sense for a watch for me. It’s against the wrist.
MR: It’s like getting a tattoo on your ass—who is that for?
CS: Ha! Right! Who do you show it to?
MR: So, when it came to it and you’d launched the brand, were you using manufacturers in Switzerland?
CS: I wanted to use factories in Switzerland only, but now I use a manufacturer that has an office in Switzerland and a factory in Asia, so I can communicate with them, but it’s made there. This is because of the finishing. I asked some Swiss and German manufacturers, but because of the straight edges, they have a problem making it without it being too expensive. They said it had to be handmade, the finishing, and you can’t do it in Switzerland. The tolerances are too low.
MR: I think maybe 20-30 years ago, you would’ve been dealing with serious quality issues, but China realized that and said, “We need to do this better, better than them, and faster and cheaper.” And they did all those things, so for me I don’t care where a case is made.
CS: As I live in Basel, I have the chance to make a Swiss-made watch. So, I bought a movement from Sellita. To me there was no thought to make a watch with a non-Swiss movement. For me it was all about having the decision-making power. I wanted to make every decision. I don’t have any investors, because if you have investors or a bank, they say, “I want my money back,” and you have to decide in a direction that more people may like so we can sell more. It was all about having my own decision.
MR: One of the reasons I like independent brands like yourself is that it is a purer manifestation of the individual or individuals behind the brand.
So, what’s next for Belchengruppe?
CS: When I started, the idea was to present the brand to some customers, learn how they see them and react to them, then find some dealers. And then came COVID, and all those relationships were not possible to build. For me, Inhorgenta—I tried to start that again, but there were no dealers, no one came. For now, I’m looking what can happen, maybe finding 10 dealers in the German-speaking market. People’s reactions are different to the photos than when they see them in person. They are able to understand in person how the dimensions are; it’s very brutal-shaped but you can wear it well because of the shaping. That’s why I want places where people can wear the watch. So, on the marketing side, that’s our focus.
The journey designing and producing the watch ended in 2019, and now starts the next journey: how to bring it to the market. This is the part I can start, and we are also thinking about new dials in October to extend our range. But we haven’t decided yet, because we want to see how the market develops. We have two other cases that are like this one that are ready to go, perhaps next year. We hope that the money goes in, but we need to see what happens.
You can find out more about Belchengruppe watches at the brand’s website (which is in German). Also, keep an eye out for our hands-on review of the Belchengruppe 1247!