How to sell S$275,000 watches and get away with it

SINGAPORE — Maximilian Busser has had a career we can all only be envious of.

Born in Italy to a Swiss father and Indian mother, Busser moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, and eventually graduated with a Masters in Micro-Technology Engineering. After spending seven years with his first employer Jaeger-LeCoultre, the then-31 year old was appointed managing director of Harry Winston Rare Timepieces. There, he transformed the company, boosting revenue nearly tenfold in seven years.

In 2005, at the height of his career at one of the most prestigious timepiece brands he had helped build, Busser decided to leave and set up shop with his friends.

“When I created the brand and called it MB&F (Maximilian Busser and Friends), everybody told me it’s the worst, lamest name they had ever heard for a watch brand,” quipped Busser, who was in town to launch MB&F’s latest Legacy Machine Perpetual, which is available for sale in rose gold (S$226,000) and platinum (S$275,100) from Malmaison by The Hour Glass at Knightsbridge in Singapore. “I guess, without any arrogance, success makes you sexy — the fact that 10 years later people say, ‘wow it’s a great name’.”

Busser said his success can be attributed to the people he works with, who he said had to be chosen with prejudice. “We, in our professional lives, have to put up with 10 times more stuff than we would accept in our personal lives. Somebody lies to you, backstabs you, manipulates you — in your personal life, you don’t see that person any more. But at work, you actually invite that person to lunch,” he said.

“I was like, ‘this can’t go on. “It’s about working with people who have talent, but who share the same values. They are trustworthy, they are honest, they are enthusiastic, they are people who bring the best out of one another. Therefore, one plus one becomes three, because of what we bring to the table and share. Of all my years of creating and co-creating, I have realised that is the number one reason for my success. Share the same values, the same enthusiasm, and suddenly, nothing is impossible.”

Q: Some of your timepieces are called ‘horological machines’. What’s the difference between a regular timepiece and what MB&F is creating?

A: A mechanical watch is essentially a completely impractical, useless object. Anybody who believes differently is delusional. A quartz watch or electronic — like a phone — is 10,000 times more reliable. That is a fact. It is a thousand times cheaper, and 10,000 times more precise. De facto, the only reason you would be interested in a mechanical timepiece, or why we are crafting mechanical timepieces is because it’s a work of art. What bridges us to art is our creative process. It’s extremely artistic because it has no practical use. And it is extraordinarily artisan and artistic because the work on it is insane.

I tell everybody, I am not here to give you “time”. People say, but I’m giving you S$100,000, you better give me time. And it’s because you are giving me S$100,000 that I will not give you time. I haven’t spent, with my engineers, three to four years of research and development, movements that take thousands of hours to develop, 12 to 18 months to craft every single part and hand finish painstakingly, one month with a master watchmaker who’s got 20 years of experience to assemble this piece to give you something that you have free of charge. What you are getting is a mechanical piece of art. The bonus? You get time. But that’s not the point.

Q: MB&F celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. What do you hope your next milestone will be?

A: What I have learnt over the years is that I have no idea where I will be in 10 years. I have no idea what I am going to create tomorrow and I have no idea what man I am going to be.

In my industry, everybody is hurtling down the same highway, they are going to the same point. Some are in bicycles, some are in big trucks, some in Ferraris. What I have done, as much in business as in my life model, I’ve basically parked the car on the side, there’s a big jungle, and I’ve gone in with my small machete and I am just trying into the jungle and I have no idea where I am going. Sometimes, I hit a very big tree and I have to go around it, or sometimes I hit a river. I have no idea where I am going and it’s extraordinary. You have to let go of certainties and goals to be able to actually be you and be creative.

Q: I’ve read that you are very happy with the size of MB&F now.

A: It’s not going to grow anymore. 20 (employees) is maximum. Everybody is pushing me to grow and do more and produce more, and I say no. Sure, I would love to have more money to invest to create more pieces, but it will come at a price and I am not ready to pay.

Today, I have a company (where) every single person has meaning. They see the impact of their work on the company and that is crucial for every single person in their life. I give meaning to the people I work with, they are empowered and we enjoy ourselves.

If I start growing I would have middle management, and middle management is the biggest enemy of creativity. Their job is to take the risk out of the equation. And when you are a disruptive, creative leader, the middle management becomes your enemy. Why would you hire your own enemy in the organisation? Why would I destroy everything I have done to do 10 more pieces a month? What has that got to do with anything?

Q: You’ve had an incredible career. What is one piece of advice you would share with a budding entrepreneur?

A: The first is to understand the “why”. Why you’re doing what you are doing. I always ask budding entrepreneurs and existing entrepreneurs why do you do what you do. And if the reason is I see a business opportunity or I think there’s a space in the market, or I think we can take market share off XYZ, I just turn around and leave.

If your reason to become an entrepreneur is because it’s your calling, that you’re a wolf in the world of dogs, that you have to be free in the forest, even though you will die ... then become an entrepreneur.

The second thing is to surround yourself with great people. I think I have got two talents. One of them is I think I am completely different from other people. I actually made that complex an asset when I turned 38 and I created MB&F.

The other talent is surrounding myself with great people who actually made my ideas a reality. I am nothing without everybody around me. I just have ideas and do bad sketches. They would just remain bad sketches, but it’s all the people around me who look at that bad sketch and transform it into a work of art. And that you have to be humble enough to realise that.