Nicholas Bowman-Scargill, the fourth Managing Director of Fears Watch Company, is an affable British gentleman. He is well-spoken, dapper, and erudite. More than anything, though, he is passionate about the things he has, and none more so than his watch brand. He relaunched his family’s now 176-year-old company in 2016 and after 6 years, has six staff and two locations.
We sat down with Nicholas with the aim of discussing Fears—which just released the brilliant Garrick—but ended up learning about the man behind the brand’s rebirth, including what his first watches were, why he left a stable job at Rolex, and what his views are on homages and…shoelaces.
Tempus Fugit: What’s your story with watches, what was your first watch?
Nicholas Bowman-Scargill: The very first watch. Well, it was a gift in that I didn’t purchase it, but it wasn’t given to me for a birthday or Christmas. This would’ve been when I was 6 or 7 years old and my parents bought me a Timex, in the early 1990s. This was for kids, it was really small, maybe 20mm. I always remember distinctly there were two strap options: you either got the one on the blue plastic strap or a red plastic strap. I’m very grateful that my parents got me the one with the blue plastic strap; it was superior because it was quartz, whereas the one on the red plastic strap was cheaper and was mechanical. I always remember thinking, “Why are they still making this outdated technology? Of course, you’d have a battery in a watch, why wouldn’t you?”
And I loved that watch. I properly loved it. I even scratched my name on the back with a compass. So that was my first ever watch.
But! It was followed when I was 10, in 1997, by a Casio, analog with a digital screen on it, plastic case [you can check out Nicholas’ Casio here]. The significance was that I picked out that watch and I picked it out because I was a “big boy,” I was no longer a little kid, so I needed a bigger watch. Though, on reflection, I think the reason I picked it out at 10 wasn’t just because “Oh, you’re a kid what would you like?” I think most kids at ten would pick a Star Wars watch or a Thunderbirds watch. But I was adamant that it was very…adult, it looked like a proper watch. I was quite a serious child; my interests were things most kids wouldn’t be interested in until their 30s.
When I was 13, I’d go through my father’s copy of “How to Spend It” in the Financial Times and I would read articles and see the adverts. I remember seeing the advert for the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso, and I remember thinking, “What a fabulous art deco watch!” with the Arabic numerals and the case, and because it was a photo, I didn’t even know it flipped!
I asked my father to find out how much it cost, and he came back and said it was £1500 in steel, a stupid amount of money. I was blown away that a watch other than a Rolex could cost that much money. But it prompted me to ask my parents for a gold-plated Accurist in a rectangular case. Now, it came on a matching gold sort of mesh bracelet. On reflection, it’s very much an old man’s watch, a retiree would watch this as his “gold watch.” But I loved that watch, I felt it was as close to the reverso as I could get.
Today, I have a strong feeling. I don’t like replica or fake watches. But homage, I get it. Because you know what? When you see online and someone’s wearing a Pagani Design Oyster Perpetual for 100 quid, it’s giving them a bit of the magic of the Rolex. And with respect, what most people forget online, is one, the majority of people cannot afford to spend three let alone thirty grand on a watch, and two, even if you can, a lot of people don’t want to. But an homage is giving someone the look and the feel—no one is trying to trick anyone that they’re wearing a Rolex. But they’re trying to enjoy it for an aesthetic reason within a budget. My Accurist for 50 quid is nowhere near a £1500 Reverso, but for me at 13, for a few years, it gave me the sense of standing a little bit taller, because it had just an ounce of that design aesthetic. So I get it, I appreciate that.
TF: You form connections to things and it’s important for you to maintain those connections. You don’t want to have 30 watches in your collection, because you wouldn’t be able to create and maintain those connections.
NB: I have 6 in watches my collection–I have two Fears, a white Brunswick number 13 and Redcliffe number 1. Those are the Fears I wear. The point you made about maintaining those connections is very important. I would argue that my husband and I are very materialistic, and it’s not about accumulation. We love and adore the objects we own, and we maintain them. We don’t consume a lot, but when we buy something, we care a lot about what we’re buying.
TF: There’s an intentionality. I imagine when you two buy something, there’s the question of “Are we going to like this in 5 or 10 years? Are we going to want this in our house and never fall out of love with it?”
NB: There is. When we sell a watch to someone, my feeling in my heart and my head is that they will have it for the rest of their lives. So, when I see one pop up for sale, there’s always a bit of me that is like, “But…why? Surely you were going to keep this for the rest of your life?” But of course, people buy things they know they’ll only own for a couple of years. For me, If I have to sell something, I view it that I failed because I didn’t make a good enough judgment when I bought it.
As you can tell, it’s quite intense living with me.
TF: When you went to university, was there anything in your mind of watches as a profession?
NB: Not really. Before I went to university, from ages 16 to18, I worked a Saturday job and a Sunday job so I could save up and buy what I considered my first proper watch. At the time, my father was lending me—not giving—his Tissot. It was a quartz dress watch, but importantly it had those magic words at 6 o’clock, “Swiss Made.” And that meant that at the time, I went into school wearing a £95 watch. I felt like the absolute baller. I had this tiny little dress watch that said, “Swiss Made.” And so, I, at 16, decided I was going to treat myself to a special watch. I was going to save up. I spent two years reading watch blogs, forums, and researching. The watch was going to be Swiss made, it was going to be mechanical, but it also had to be over £1000. A thousand pounds felt like the most outrageous, decadent amount of money anyone would ever spend on a watch. So, I set my heart on an Omega Seamaster GMT, which has subsequently been nicknamed “The Great White.” I bought it when I was 18, and it was £1300 from the AD.
I loved that watch. I wore it through university, and God, it got banged up on nights out in the club. The clasp broke at a club while I was dancing, and I had to ask for tape to hold it together. Eventually I wore it for my wedding, too. The only time I stopped wearing it was when I started work at Rolex, because I wasn’t allowed to wear a non-Rolex watch.
But I no longer own it, because when I left Rolex to restart Fears, anything of value in the watch collection was sold. And I had sold it to I think WatchFinder, and a while ago they had an identical one come up and the date on the card was February 2005, which is when I bought mine. I tracked down the serial of mine and called them and it turned out the watch they had was 8 digits off. I had no interest in buying it, because it’s not my watch. This is where I come back to the materialistic aspect. It’s not about accumulating stuff or loving objects, but it’s about—that watch is 8 digits off, it’s not my watch. It didn’t go through those club nights, it wasn’t on my wrist on my wedding day.
TF: It would feel inauthentic to have, you’d have to start anew. There’s also this idea of feeling saddled with the memories of a used watch. I feel I have to overcome those memories with ones of my own. I just sent my Monta Skyquest to one of our writers to do the review, and I’ve never packed a watch that carefully. But if something were to happen, I don’t know that I’d buy another Skyquest, because it’s not the one I got.
NB: Yes, I got you. I got you. I don’t want to come across too oversentimental but let’s be frank. My iPhone will tell me the time, so straight away I don’t need a watch, and certainly not a mechanical watch. But what a mechanical watch is to me—it’s the same reason the majority of shoes have laces. What I think about laces is the same thing I think about a fountain pen, or cufflinks, or even a tie. We now have technology that easily surpasses these things. There are so many superior ways of holding a shoe onto your foot than having a lace. And yet, even the latest Yeezys or Balenciagas will have laces on them. Laces are the sophisticated way of doing something, and the reason they are seen as being the sophisticated way is because they are absolutely still functional and relevant even if there are easier, better, cheaper ways; and when something just a little more hassle, it’s the effort you put into things, because it shows you’re focused and fastidious and you’re willing to take the time to do things right. I’m blessed that I make a beautiful product that nobody needs but they desire.
My new head of operations, Robert, just joined us. In his interview, we asked him what his definition of luxury, and he said, “Luxury is something that brings you joy.” That is what these watches are. If we were totally rational, we wouldn’t have them on our wrists. But it brings you joy. They are objects that bring people joy. And by the sounds of it, that’s what your watch is, and if it was to go away, it can’t just be replaced by another steel watch, because of that connection you have with it.
TF: Exactly. So, you got your Omega, you went to university, and then you decided you wanted to make watches?
NB: No. At university I did a degree in pure economics, and I did an internship at Deutsche Bank. I was going to go into investment banking. Everyone wanted to be an investment banker, it was the golden epicenter of the world. But I was lucky enough to graduate in 2008 as the entire financial world began to crumble. I wasn’t bright enough to hold onto my prospects with Deutsche, but I was lucky enough to get a job working in consumer PR. I enjoyed it, but being dyslexic, I knew there was going to be a ceiling to how good I could be at writing or communicating in pitch decks or things. I can talk—and as you can probably tell by now, I can talk for England—but writing I was going to struggle with. I thought, “Screw that, I want to do something physical with my hands.”
I started with a blank sheet of paper, and I said, “If I could be anything in the world,”—let’s go back to being that seven-year-old, I could be a firefighter or pilot, an astronaut—“what could I do?” And I came down to two jobs, and they basically followed my two passions: watches and trains. (I’ve always loved trains, modern railways. I’ve been a loyal subscriber of Rail Magazine for almost 15 years.) I looked at the two jobs and thought I was more naturally in sync with watchmaking. I wrote a long cover letter and CV and sent it to different brands with a presence in the UK, asking if they’d take on this crazy kid as an apprentice. And Rolex did, after 7 months of GRINDING them down. I did so many interviews, so many practical assessments.
TF: They wanted to know, can we teach this person, and will they stay.
NB: Exactly, that’s it. I joined and I had 5 very happy years there. And I must say, as someone who was lucky enough to work in The Crown—I was in the head office in the UK, in the workshop—it’s an incredible company: very humble, very aware of its place of the world, but also fiercely independent. It does not look to the outside world or follow trends.
TF: For better or worse.
NB: For better or worse. You know…the waitlist, the flippers, the whole side of modern Rolex ownership…to be frank, it’s not Rolex’ fault, I believe strongly. I believe there’s a lot to be desired from the ADs and how they behave, but I also think, my goodness, the demand for Rolex is phenomenal compared to 6 or 7 years ago when I was at Rolex. The number of people wanting to buy these watches has skyrocketed.
The reason I left Rolex, the reason we’re talking about me not as a Rolex watchmaker, but as the refounder and fourth Managing Director of Fears is all thanks to the Rolex pension advisor. I had been there two and a half years, and I needed to talk about my pension. So, we sit down and we go through it: Rolex will contribute this, you contribute this, this is what you’ll retire on. All very good. And then he said one thing. He said, “You’ll pay into the pension until your retirement date, which will be in 39 years’ time.” And it suddenly dawned on me, in my 20s, for the first time ever: I was going to retire and die one day, and that would be it. And I remember walking out of the office, down the stairs, back into the workshop, and sitting down at my workbench, with all my incredible colleagues around me, and I just thought, “Oh my goodness, I could actually end up sitting at this exact work bench, doing this exact job, for 39 years.” And I realized: Not me.
TF: Was it that immediate, was it like a switch?
NB: I went into work for the next few weeks, and I was beginning to feel dissatisfied. I just realized, “No. There are things I want to try and achieve and do.” That dawning on me scared the hell out of me, and it made me realize that if I wanted to do things and achieve more of life, I was the only one who was going to do that, and there was no chance of me waiting around until I was offered the opportunity at Rolex.
I went home a few weeks later, for Sunday lunch with my parents. I worked up the courage to say, “I know I’ve done two career changes, but I kind of feel like I need to do something different, and I’m wondering if I might need to do my own thing.” And I told them the reason I want to do this is I want to have “blue sky.” I want to know that what the company and I can achieve is limited by my ability, not by someone else’s fixed ceiling. But what comes with that is it can all go terribly wrong, and you end up with egg on your face and lose loads of money.
My parents asked if I had any idea what I’d do. I’m not one of these people who see problems and think of a company to fix it, who sees a gap in the market. I said I didn’t know but that I thought I wanted to do my own thing. And it was at this moment that my mom, serving up the roast potatoes, jokingly said, “Well, why don’t you restart the family watch company?”
TF: Did you know about a family watch company?
NB: What I knew was my mum’s grandfather and his father and his father had been watchmakers, and so when I was applying for a job at Rolex, she said, “Oh how lovely, following the family tradition, it runs in the blood.” But no one said, “Oh, he was a watchmaker and managing director of the west of England’s largest watch manufacturer, employing 100 watchmakers.” Take that in: In the 1920s, Fears had a hundred watchmakers. My great-great-grandfather, Amos Daniel Fear, was overseeing a hundred watchmakers; he learned under Moritz Grossman in Glashütte. Edwin Fears was a contemporary of Lange. Lange was founded a year before Fears, Cartier was founded a year after Fears. It’s this great long history.
So, at this point, I realized I need to do this, but I didn’t know how, and it took money. It was two and a half long years going to work at Rolex, doing a diligent job, and every lunch break, every evening, every weekend, every holiday was spent researching and planning. My husband and I stopped going on holiday, stopped going out for meals, so we could save up for the company. It was at that moment that I realized I was going to have to sell some of my watches—my Omega, my beautiful Rolex Day-Date, a Ball. I also was going around the house and if it wasn’t screwed to the wall, it went on eBay. We were liquidating everything to finance this. Then eventually I got to the point where I needed to do it sooner than later, and 2016 I decided was when I was going to bring the company back. And the rest, as they say, is history. Of course, it’s been one hell of a six years since then.
TF: You mentioned it could go well or incredibly wrong, who knows what will happen. But at what point did you start feel like it was going really well, and you felt like you could breathe?
NB: There were two moments. The first one was at 18months from launch. I had been told that if on day zero ten watch companies launch, by the end of year one, you’ll only have five. And of those five, by the end of year five, you’ll only have one. It was at that moment at 18 months, that I realized we’d beaten the odds. And it was also that moment where, suddenly, I’d pick up the phone to the press and people would answer and know who I was. At 18 months I stopped thinking of myself as a startup and started thinking of myself as a small business.
The next one, came in January 2020. So, we’re now over 3 years old, and in November 2019, we launched the Brunswick Blue, which was a gamechanger. It really changed people’s perception of Fears, because of the complexity of the dial. All of a sudden, high-end collectors were saying, “Oh, this little company in England is actually doing something quite interesting.” A few months later we had the best January we ever had, and February was incredible. We were in the rare position where we are beginning to sell watches without having to interact with every single sale. As a small business, it’s that tipping point where sales come in without you having to handhold every single one.
But, of course, February 2020—Ha ha ha!—there I am, feeling like we’ve made it. Then literally within 30 days, I’m working nightshifts at Asda, trying to save the company from going bankrupt. I think—this is one of the big things that no one really acknowledges when you run a business—yes, you can brush harsh comments on a Hodinkee article aside, but its the emotional ups and downs. Every single day, some things go well and some things go badly. I’ve done this for six years, and there’s always something going wrong, but there’s also always something going well. Today, we had to sort an issue that our dial maker brought to us, but we also sold a Garrick out of the blue, and we sold the first six last week.
But I tell you what, March 2020…the only way I was able to mentally process it—beyond one or two gin and tonics—was the fact that everyone was going through shit. That’s not to make me feel good, but for me, everyone’s lives were being turned upside down to different degrees. I had friends outraged they couldn’t get their homes cleaned and I had friends who’d lost their jobs. I was looking down the barrel of a shotgun, I could lose my company within a matter of months.
I’ve definitely come out of it a better, stronger person from the pandemic. It’s very interesting: a lot of business owners reacted in different ways. I’m proud we didn’t make any one redundant, we didn’t use government money, we paid our suppliers. I feel that it gave me the strength and the confidence to adjust.
When I was 29 and I left Rolex, I was one man. At the time, the watches were built in Switzerland; I was designing them, I was importing them, I was answering the phone I was doing the Instagram, I was doing all of that. And my job now is being the Managing Director; I now have fulfilled the job title I’ve had for six years. Which is to slowly and carefully, but in a very strong and secure way, grow the company and to make those strategic decisions like taking on a thousand square foot premises.
That’s the exciting thing I realize now. Yes, I’ve had the same job for 6 years, but what that job has entailed, the responsibilities that I’ve had have constantly changed and evolved. The most important thing I do—and the most dull-sounding—is that I have to be a metronome for the company, setting the tone ethically, morally, and socially. But I also have to be the one to make sure that we have standards. Which sounds very old fashioned, but the fact is, if someone is dropping £19,500 on a watch, they’re going to be treated well. But if you spend $60 on our book [Elegantly Understated: 175 Years of the Fears Watch Company], you are treated to the same high standard. Basically, if you spend a single dollar, cent, pound, yen—that is your hard-earned money, and we have to ensure that everyone has a blanket high level of service and respect. That takes a lot of energy and time to achieve, but we have to do it.
You can find out more about the brand and explore the watches at the Fears website.