Thomas Prescher was good enough to spare me a few minutes this week –
Q – What was your first watch?
TP – My first watch was a hand wound wristwatch with digital time indication in two little windows. That was in the early seventies.
Q – What REALLY got you started in the watch industry?
TP – My passion for horology was born from a childhood obsession with collecting crystals and minerals. As a teenager on a visit to a local jewellery shop, my eye drifted to the watchmaker working at his bench and I was smitten. I began working part-time at the store and became familiar with the mechanics of watches and clocks. While it seemed my path to becoming a watchmaker was clear, there was a detour. At 19 I joined the German Navy, leaving six years later as a Captain.
Q – Six years is a long time in the Navy! Was there a point during your service that you thought this might become your career?
TP – After around three years in the Navy, I gradually changed my mind about my future and decided to do something else with my life after my service. My passion had been watches and watch making and ultimately I felt that my passion would become my profession. After I left the navy, I decided to study watch making and I won the single apprenticeship position offered that year by IWC.
Q – When did you really know that this was your calling?
TP – I realized that I had a special talent when I jumped from the mid-point of the first apprenticeship year to the mid-point of the second year. And if I had any self-doubts, it definitely came to the surface when I received the permission to make a half flying tourbillon as a school watch and presented the finished watch at the end of the apprentice ship period.
Q – Before you launched your own company, where were you working?
TP – After my apprenticeship, I stayed a short while at IWC and then I moved to Audemars Piguet in Frankfurt, where I also obtained my Master Watchmaker certificate. Then I came back to Switzerland to work in the restoration department of Gübelin where I had the opportunity to restore some of the world’s most iconic and complicated timepieces and to create bespoke watches for special clients. Four years at Gübelin was followed by a brief spell at Progress Watch, then a position as Production Manager for Blancpain.
Q – What are some of the bigger challenges you have faced in starting your own company?
TP – Being independent is a daily challenge. Especially the beginning when I developed the Tempusvivendi and the three Trilogy Tourbillons at the same time, it was a hard time, with a lot of work day and night. It is a big challenge as well to continue developing and producing high quality, technically extraordinary watches.
Q – And now besides the design and assembly, you are in a sense also doing marketing and public relations. How has the transition been to these new roles?
TP – Public Relations has always been a part of my profession. There is no way to be in a responsible position without having contact with others. The individual life is inseparably connected with all kinds of public relations. The watch is independent and independence is embodied within the watch.
Q – Having worked for a direct company myself (DOXA), do you see this as a growing trend in the watch business? With the SWATCH group jumping in with Longines, Tissot and RADO all selling direct via the internet, do you see this as a positive or negative?
TP – I have a relatively neutral view of these direct shops. I am 100% sure that new media, especially all of the possibilities to be found through the internet will fundamentally change the method of trade in the near future. That means that the work of the watchmaker whether as an independent or a big brand will change a lot too.
Q – In what ways do you see this happening?
TP – The relationship between final client and the watchmaker will become closer. Ultimately the work of intermediates will change.
Q – You have made a very unusual offer – to let complete strangers into your workshop and actually work on watch parts. Where on earth did you come up with such an idea?
TP – It was always our philosophy to have an open workshop and to show it to interested people what we do and how we do. There is no better proof than to let people in so that they can experience the work of a watchmaker. All of these people have been the best ambassadors of our brand and transferred our philosophy to a larger public. By the way, by far the most interesting visit we ever had was a group of 15 children from a nearby kinder garden. These six year-old children were already able to disassemble and assemble a simple movement without damaging anything!
Q – Apart from the watches you have made yourself, do you have any other type of watch collection?
TP – Before I started my career as a watchmaker I was collecting everything I could get my hands on. These days I buy a mechanical gadget from time to time, but only if it is well made/crafted. I am also interested in very old watches, of course. But I don’t collect them.
Q – Who else out there is making watches that you admire?
TP – There are a lot of colleagues who make fantastic watches. Each one has his specialty and so these watches are quite different and unique. It is impossible for me to pick out one, or even several!
Q – If you were not doing what you are doing now – what would you do for a living?
TP – It is quite difficult to answer that because my passion is already my profession. I think I would make big mechanical sculptures but I could imagine a job in nature too.
You can visit Thomas Prescher’s website for more details about his fantastic time machines, as well as find out about a possible visit to his workshop.