Simon Brewer  

When your father is killed in a plane accident that almost takes your brother's life as well, it proves to be the inspiration to build a luxury watch brand which can compete with the best. So to tell the story of building Bremont, I'm delighted to welcome the Co-Founder and CEO of Bremont Watches, Giles English. From their new headquarters in Henley, Oxfordshire, Giles, welcome to the Money Maze Podcast.

Giles English  

Thank you for having me on, Simon. It's a real pleasure. I've obviously listened to your silky voice from many podcasts so it's an honour to be alongside some of your esteemed guests. Obviously, I'm not esteemed, but it's nice to be on here anyway.

Simon Brewer  

Thank you for these kind words. Well, let's begin with your childhood. Maybe you can give us a flavour because I think you had an unusually brilliant father.

Giles English  

I did. He was this amazing individual, PhD aeronautical engineer from Cambridge who was with the RAF. Although he has an intellect, he had this amazing passion for being in the workshop and talent at it. So our life as young kids was in this workshop. It was never really going outside playing football with him. It was fixing and building things and anything from cars to aircrafts to boats, he built a sailing boat we went and lived on as kids for six months, to obviously watches and clocks. So that was really our whole livelihood growing up. It was tinkering around on little bits of metal and wood.

Simon Brewer  

You yourself decide to study engineering with naval architecture, which is definitely a first on this show. That's quite specific. Why?

Giles English  

Obviously, my father built this sailing boat, and we had this passion for sailing as children growing up. I always loved seeing him with this drawing board, drawing pictures of beautiful sailing boats, and I used to build model yachts and I thought, 'Oh, this is just brilliant. This is what I want to do, go and draw beautiful sailing boats and eventually race them and build them.' So I went to Southampton, which is the number one place almost in the world for doing naval architecture and then I realized I did four years of doing stress calculations of bulkheads of supertankers, didn't draw a single sailing boat. Very, very technical, and I enjoyed it, and I got something out of it. But yeah, I didn't draw a single sailing boat throughout my time there.

Simon Brewer  

So therefore, where you already thinking of a different profession?

Giles English  

Well, it's interesting. When you're in the world of engineering to that level, your career advice is very much, well, you go into a technical team and are interviewed by aerospace companies. And I thought, I don't want to be a hardcore engineer. I've got very much an engineering brain, but carrying on those stress calculations just didn't really excite me. Obviously, as with all engineers at universities, you get the City coming in looking to get those mathematical brains to join, and that's when I went into corporate finance post-Southampton for a small loan company called Williams de Broe, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but quickly realized I wasn't going to be any good in the City. I was far too much of…I had a sort of entrepreneurial feeling. But I learned so much being there for about three years, just understanding reading accounts. We were doing IPO listings, so I learnt a lot but I quickly realized that it wasn't the life for me.

Simon Brewer

I want to turn to the tragic events of 1995. Your father was killed, your brother almost killed when the World War II vintage Harvard plane crashed. I think you were ready on the ground to take off in the plane behind. Just tell us a little bit about that day.

Giles English  

Yeah. You come across in life these tipping points, these life-changing moments. And for, it was the most beautiful day, March, a sunny day like it is today, and as a family, dad, myself, my brother went up to do a day of formation flying in these World War II aircrafts. We'd done a lot of flying. I was sponsored through university by the RAF so that was very much a big passion of ours. On that beautiful day, it all went horribly wrong. I was on the ground and I heard over the radio this crash had happened. I was praying it wasn't Dad and Nick and it was. Dad died immediately. Nick shouldn't have survived. He broke over 30 bones. He was thrown out into the middle of this field. But luckily, HEMS air ambulance were very close by, they got to him, they got him to Whitechapel Hospital and there he sat or lay in intensive care for many months, but had this amazing recovery. But that whole day just changed my life and Nick's life considerably. Having to call up your mother to tell her that her father has died and her son is in hospital is possibly the worst thing you can ever do. That triggered this it's better to go and live life and you've got to make the most of it sort of atmosphere that we created between us. We just went down this route of following this passion. We'd grown up around watches. Our father had this massive desire to fix these clocks and watches and we were so aware growing up as well of this amazing history of British watchmaking that you mentioned in your introduction. A hundred years ago, we were making half the world's watches. And at the time that Nick and I had this crazy idea, there wasn't a single British watch company you can buy off the shelf. That really triggered this desire to actually, look, let's go and do something completely different. We went off to Switzerland, told our wives it would be two or three years we would do it, and please back us! Five years later, we hadn't sold a single watch and we didn't realize quite how hard it was going to be, but it already came from dad's plane crash.

Simon Brewer  

Well, I want to rewind, excuse the pun, just to frame what happened in the world of watchmaking when I visited your facility. You mentioned this Yorkshireman, John Harrison, but just set the stage.

Giles English  

It's just such a fascinating story. So back in about 1703, over 2000 sailors were lost coming back from a Spanish Armada off the Scilly isles. They were lost because they couldn't measure where they are. They couldn't navigate longitude. You can do latitude with a sextant, but longitude, if you don't know the accurate time, it's impossible. You can be massively out. The government at the time and the king, they introduced the Longitude Act. Ultimately, it was a reward, so £3 to £5 million in today's money for anyone who could go and work out a method to actually measure time at sea or measure longitude. There were lots of different theories of how you could do that, and it was a ridiculously complicated task, because not only did you have to map the stars so accurately, but you had to create a timepiece that would work at sea. Everyone thought that was actually impossible. John Harrison, a carpenter from Grimsby came down to London and he really just reinvented the way a clock would work, because the only accurate timepieces at that time were pendulum clocks. If you put a pendulum clock on a ship, it goes massively out of time with the movement or temperature changes. He dedicated his life and by about 1760, he had created this marine chronometer. Everyone thought he'd gone slightly mad, it wasn't going to work. This was not his first attempt. He'd been at it for many years. He gave this clock to various captains, one was Captain Cook, who discovered the world, and really, it transformed Britain. We're a sea-faring nation. Suddenly, we could navigate those seas more accurately, we could turn up to wars with less ships because they could all get there, dissemination of information, trade, the whole lot. Those early chronometers were 30% of the value of the whole ship, so they were incredibly precious items. That really spearheaded this period of British watch and clockmaking that put us in the centre point in the world and hence, obviously, Greenwich Meantime, but you had Arnold, Mudge, Graham, Tompion, all these great British watchmakers and that was the boom time. Got to 1900s and then we had world war, First World War, Second World War. Britain was slow to industrialize, but also, you've seen in our factory we can machine to about five microns of accuracy. If you can machine to that level, you can build guns, planes, anything. So soon as the war effort came on, the German watch industry and the British watch industry were supporting their own war efforts. Swiss as a neutral country, they carried on making watches and they weren't disturbed there. So Smiths was last big British watch company that died out in the 60s. So there's some wonderful history to put into perspective all these great inventions that came from British watchmakers and it's sad to see that go, but Nick and I wanted to do our little bit resurrecting that. To resurrect that was not just making a watch in Switzerland being a British watch company being made in Switzerland, it was bring it back to the UK. You've got the technical issues of how you physically build those watches, but also the branding, getting over this Swiss-made area, but yeah, sorry, a long-winded way of giving you a bit of a history of British watchmaking there, Simon.

Simon Brewer  

Well, Giles, I think it is fascinating. But of course, everything's in the name and Bremont is a very nice name. But how did that appear?

Giles English  

Yeah, not very English, is it? So when we started, Nick and I didn't want to go and buy an old British name. I could have gone and bought the name Harrison. If you look at all those something like 750 Swiss watch companies, so many of those are resurrected brands. They weren't trading 50 years ago, they're resurrected. We didn't want to do that because how as a company, could we work with the military, Martin-Baker, Jaguar, all these different, amazing partnerships we have, if we are still pretending we were marine chronometer manufacturers from 1760. So we wanted to create our own brand. Obviously, my surname is English, it wasn't going to work very well trademarking it on the dial of a watch. This slightly random instance about three years after dad died and we were tinkering with our watches. We didn't have a name on the watch at that point and Nick and I were on a flying trip, one of our many flying trips, and these are days before GPS. We were flying over France. We got in some terrible weather and we just couldn't find the airfield in some low mist. We were running out of fuel and we had to force land in French farmer's pea field. If you do that in the UK or the US, you just give the farmer a bottle of whiskey and say sorry and take off when the weather's better. But in France, they impound your aircraft. They make you take the wings off. They ship it to an airfield. It's a disastrously expensive thing to be caught out on. So there we were in this French farmer's pea field and this lovely old boy came over and said, 'No, no, put it in my hay barn. Wait until the weather gets better.' We ended up staying with him for a couple of days and he is this wonderful character in his late 70s. Yeah, he would have been our dad. My dad died when he was 49, and had he have lived to this age, he would have been just like this old boy playing around with clocks and old motorbikes and tractors. We left a couple days later. His name was Antoine Bremont. We thought Bremont, actually, that's quite a nice-sounding name. So we called him up and said, 'Look, we're not going to associate you at all with this. We just like the name. Are you happy with it?' And he went, 'Ah! Crazy Englishmen.' And that was it. So that's where the name Bremont came from.

Simon Brewer  

So there are two components, as I see it, to your business. You're building a watchmaking capability and you're building a luxury brand. How do you and your brother who you need to just qualify exactly what he does with you in the company, but how do you think about those two components?

Giles English  

Well, first, my brother does a really good job of sweeping floors and cleaning the windows. Actually, he's the talented one. So I probably work a bit more on the marketing now. Nick does a bit more on the product. But really, we overlap in so many different areas. We've got a brilliant team now within the business who are doing most of the hard work. The challenge, as you said, is we wake up every morning. We are one of the most accurate machinists of metal in the country because we make watches. You have to be. Working machines that are almost a million pounds, these are very complicated CNC machines, to training up watchmakers in a country that hasn't made watches. Yes, they've been servicing watches, but haven't been making new watches for so many years. So printing apprenticeship schemes for training our watch assemblers and watchmakers. So really, our day job is how can you make this beautifully made mechanical watch, we only do cogs and gears, that will be chronometer rated and will work, not come back, not break and be beautiful and appealing to the general public out there. But on the other hand, you can make the best product to the world but if no one knows about you, you're never going to actually get out there. You're having to build a global brand because businessmen want to see you in Hong Kong and New York and London, and our competition are spending hundreds and hundreds of millions on marketing. So that's always a challenge. You have to be a very good marketeer and a very good engineering business. And obviously, we own our own retail stores as well, so you have been good retailer. So it's deeply complicating and you're up against some incredibly good competition. Our competition are generally the groups. They’re owned by the Richemont, LVMHs, the Kerings, the big groups. But we saw it as saying, look, it's a big market out there. All we need is a slight percentage of that market to actually build a very successful business. What is lovely is we're not in tech in terms of what luxury watches will go out of fashion in the next two years’ time, you have to grow very quickly. It's about building that long-term luxury brand in a sustainable way in the UK so it does keep your weight low.

Simon Brewer  

I think you said seeing is believing in the context of watches. I mentioned having been to your new facility and as a non-engineer, just how stunned I was by its excellence. But what is it when people visit your facility that you think happens to them?

Giles English  

Yes, Simon. It’s a very good point. When you go to a retailer and buy that watch, you put it on your wrist, you like the look of it, it's the right size, it fits you, you buy it and you take it home, but really, you have no conception of how complicated and all the efforts and investments gone into building that watch and the skills created accordingly. So when you come to Henley, it's so nice to now be able to show you this is how the parts are machined. Those coating gears all ticking away together, this is how finite, this how complicated they are to produce and put together and really showing that in a day, there's 86,400 seconds in a day. A mechanical watch that we sell will be within three or four seconds accurate. And if you think that the most accurate mechanical object out there is a chronometer-rated mechanical watch, it's genius engineering and this has been worn on your wrist 24/7. It needs servicing every four or five years, but that watch will last 200 years. There's no reason why that watch can't be serviced and repaired and work in 30 years’ time. And I love that and when you come to Henley, suddenly you can see the light bulb moment go off in people's heads and go, 'Yeah, I totally understand why it costs that much money.' So it's lovely to finally have a facility where we're happy showing people around.

Simon Brewer

So it's a fusion of engineering and branding, and I, as an unashamed James Bond fan, I know that Ian Fleming wrote many years ago, 'A gentleman's choice of timepiece says as much about him as does his Savile Row suit.' Are there going to be fewer watches as many young people are thinking about being able to answer the phone off their wrist?

Giles English  

We've seen, out of nowhere, Apple has become the largest watch brand in the world. It's an amazing feat. But where I think that's really affected is the fashion watch market. People have gone for the iWatch, but it still doesn't give you that statement piece. For how much you pay for the Apple Watch, you're going to chuck it away in two years’ time and get a new one. It has no long-term value associated with that. A lot of individuals will wear both. They will have their smartwatch for their exercise and other areas, but actually, long term, that is probably the only piece of jewellery a man wears and it's a lovely thing to collect. Over the years, you should make money on it or lose very little. So it's still got a lot going for it. But I think getting the young into it is very important. I think the fact they're used to wearing something on their wrist if it is a smartwatch, that actually helps. It's getting people wearing it. But no one really quite knows where the market will go over the next 10 years. Really, in our space, I can't even compete with that. I can't think about it too much. I just have to do my best at growing the brand and taking market share from everyone else. So the whole market is not burning. That doesn't really bother me as long as more people are buying my watches. And we're ambitious. To invest in the UK, we need to grow ourselves as a business. Otherwise, we can't put that extra engineering investment in. So we need to grow as a business, and we need to grow around the world.

Simon Brewer  

So when we look at your collections, you have worked with the collections around Concorde, Jaguar, Stephen Hawking, Bletchley Park, and I think in many cases, there are components of those topics in the watch. Tell me a little bit about how that came about and how you think about the next collection.

Giles English  

Yes. So every year, the watches you're referring to are our big, limited edition pieces. It all happened about 12 years ago. We came up with a watch. A friend of my father’s owns very famous Spitfire that is totally original and he was replacing part of the paddle on the wing and he held this metal and he said, ‘Do you realize was being flown over Germany by a 19 year old boy on this day in 1940.’ And we looked at it and it was very emotional. We saw the clock in the Spitfire, and it was off an old Smiths clock. And this light bulb moment went off and I said, ‘Why can't we actually do a watch? We'll call it EP120 off the Spitfire and we'll put that metal into the watch and create something which is really unique, only make a 120 watches.’ And we did and they sold immediately. We realized, actually, these historical limited editions, we'll do one a year and we’ll create something which is quite unique. The most recent one was the Stephen Hawking Foundation and we can raise a lot of money for charity in the process, but we're creating something which is mechanically stunning. Each movement is very different in those watches but has that historical reference, and that's got meteorite from Stephen Hawkins desk, paper from one of his seminal thesis within it. But you are creating this total work of art, and they become big PR pieces for us as well. Now there's lots of spin offs of other companies copying us now and what we're trying to do with that, but I think the trick is never to be gimmicky, raise a chunk for charity in the process, and that's very important for us to do. But when you come through the wing of our facility and you see all the different bits, working with Wright Flyer with fabric from the first wing of the first plane that ever flew, we did enough to restore Wilbur and Orville’s family home in Dayton, Ohio off the back of it, and as you said, Bletchley Park, HMS Victory, these amazing watches, and we'll have collectors who'll buy every single one of them and built a lot of friends through them.

Simon Brewer  

In parallel with that, the types of machines you have doing this very fine work, whilst they predominantly exist in Switzerland, are they made in Switzerland? Is it a pretty closed market?

Giles English  

We've had to work with the Swiss for many years and build some very close relationships. It is quite a closed market, but we wouldn't be here now without the Swiss. They've helped us considerably. The machines, probably, half the machines, we are the only watch company ever to have bought one outside Switzerland. The other machines, we work with DMG Mori, which is a German-Japanese business, and they make a lot of the aerospace and motorsports, introducing them a lot in Formula One engineering, but we've had to convert these to work for us, and we've had to train new skill sets on it. Because when you're machining those micron levels, there's just nothing else that needs to be that accurate apart from watchmaking. So literally, we're getting engineers who have been in the industry working in aerospace or motorsports, and we're retraining them. And then the finishing on these, what else has produced in metal that people get a loop out and look through the loop and it has to be utterly perfect? There's just nothing else that really happens like that. So it's incredibly challenging but rewarding when you get it right. And, yes, the Swiss have been supportive to us, and I think it's in their interest to make mechanical watch industry to get through certain barriers. The quality has to be there and they're very protective over that, as they should be. But on the other hand, we are waving this British flag of actually saying, 'Look, the Swiss are very good marketeers. I know the Swiss are dominant in the watch industry now, but they were not always dominant.' And we are playing our little part in that revival of British watchmaking.

Simon Brewer  

So we had Gary Boom as the CEO of Bordeaux Index on a few weeks back to talk about the world of wine and he was very clear about the continued and enormous wealth generation, particularly as we know, in Asia. Talk a little bit about where your growth is coming from?

Giles English  

It is fascinating hearing him on Bordeaux Index. What a business! I think the average sales price is going up. It's becoming less of a volume game. The premium purchasing of some of these high-end watches, it's almost easier to sell a very expensive watch than a cheaper watch. I think the market will head on that way. There isn't really an opportunity for a lot of consolidation in the watch market. Most of the watch brands you name are also currently owned by a group and they are becoming more and more powerful. If you look at Rolex and Patek, they are a massive percentage of the luxury watch sales. And I think in times of uncertainty, there is a flight to the biggest brands. It is that certainty that consumers want. So they will continue to grow strongly, but it's still a big market out there. So us as a business, we will grow our individual retail, whether that's working with our wholesale accounts or direct, and I see that being a trend, increasing that level of customer exposure. I think online is now here to stay in the luxury watch industry. That will probably have gone to 5% and may go up to almost 20% and I don't see why that will go away. So there's been some material changes and shifts and retail locations will change at the moment.

Simon Brewer  

I've been to your beautiful shop in Audley Street in Mayfair. Where else are you globally?

Giles English  

Well, the key markets for us are the US. We have our own store in Madison in New York and just about to open in LA but we've got wholesale across the US. UK is a very strong market for us. In Asia, we have a store in Hong Kong and Australia. So they are sort of key markets, and then China, launching in Shanghai and growing out there. So Asia I think will go from being probably 5% of our business and that will grow considerably over the next two or three years if we can get that right. It's difficult. You've got to change your messaging when you go to a new market. The whole brand, the made in England works in England, but does that work in China when they just want Swiss-made when it comes to watches? So it's a challenging area, and also, 20% of our business just making for the military around the world and that's predominantly the UK and the US. That message is not going to resonate well in China when you're positioning US jet pilots. So you have to really be very careful about how you're branding and pushing that forward.

Simon Brewer  

I think you referred, at some point in time, you were given three rules about starting up a business, and they're all around how tough it is. Tell me about that. And how tough has it been?

Giles English

We deferred quite early into our business. My advice for any entrepreneur doing anything is this three-times rule, and that is undoubtedly true. It always takes three times longer, it always costs three times more, and it's three times more effort. if you're not willing to really go for that three-times rule on day one, then give up now because it never goes directly to plan. But that hard work really shines through. I think we've done something that no one else has really done in the luxury watch industry, especially for the last 20 years, and that's incredibly exciting. Yes, we can pat ourselves on the back, but we feel we're only just starting really in what we can do and what we should be doing. But back then, you have to readdress that three-times rule and say, ‘Look, have I really got that energy and investment to go on to that next level?’ I think with any business, any entrepreneur, people who give up far too easily or underinvest, it does take investment. We’d make so much more money if we just outsourced the manufacturing. All other watch brands our size out there just don't do any of it themselves, they just outsource it all and they just do the frontline branding. But that wouldn't have been any fun, that wouldn't have built up British watchmaking and the enthusiasm you get from clients walking in and seeing that big machine wearing away machining metal is just too much fun myself. So it's a long-term journey we're on. But I think yeah, if we can continue that three-times rule, we’ll get there.

Simon Brewer

You were a corporate financier for a while, when we talk about patient capital, this is a long-term payback industry. How have you gone about identifying and partnering with long-term investors?

Giles English

That's a really good point. If we got our standard VCs and we wanted that sort of three to four year turnaround, that would have been very difficult. The benefit for us though is that every year we're building our brand, we're creating more value in the business, and our business will be here in 30 years’ time. It's not a tech play that will be gone or the high risk. So you won't get that ridiculous high growth but you will have that longevity in who we are. We're very lucky to get some investors earlier on who really back that long-term play of what we were able to achieve. And I think if you are happy to take that long play, you will get the return. There's no doubt about that but you have to really give it that time. We've shown that and we've created something that I think everyone in the team are very proud of. Eventually, yes, for them, they did see an exit. So how that exit comes, is it selling their individual shares or a total sale? Who knows? But really, I think, from Nick and my perspective, you can't aim for that. Even if the business ever did get sold, Nick and I would still be very much involved with the business. This is our baby, this is something we love. When you get investors on, you have to give them a return, so quite how that pays out. Are there benefits for listing a business like ours? Possibly. But I think listing, you need a real reason to go and list. Is it to make acquisitions? Is it a brand growth piece? Because it's not really an exit. Do we want to be bought by a Swiss company, one of the big groups that will want to close down UK manufacturing because it doesn't fit in with their centralized model? Well, that won't work for us. So who knows where we'll end up.

Simon Brewer  

What do you wish you'd known 15 years ago when you were starting out?

Giles English  

The three-times rule, I think would have been a good one. No, I think we have achieved what we wanted to achieve. But I think along the line, when you're building a business, you make big mistakes and those mistakes may be around timings for investment, they may be around product growth, going to new markets without being prepared enough or without investment behind it. I think we've learned huge amounts along the way and that whole thing. My advice to anyone going into a new market, you've got to properly do your due diligence beforehand and that costs money. Just because you've got one client who wants to take your product on, it's not good enough. So put that proper investment into it. But would we have changed anything different, Nick and I, with this mad idea and starting out and going into watches? No. Could we have made quicker money by doing other things, jumping on other trends? Probably yes. But the satisfaction we’ve got together, it's amazing. Last week, Harrison Ford, he called us up through a friend of a friend and said, ‘Look, I love watches. I love aircraft. Is it possible to come for a tour around your facility?’ How many other businesses do you get that? Nick Mason flew in last week and had a tour. These are people who are generally passionate about watches and our customers are such lovely people. It's a wonderful space to be in.

Simon Brewer  

Not everybody sets up and runs a business and holds the business together with a member of their family. Any advice on running a business with a brother or sister?

Giles English  

Yeah, I think make sure you get along with them very well beforehand. The lovely thing about working with family is one, we do product design together. We've grown up with the same tastes. We like the same thing. So that makes it easy. But I think with running any business, any partnership, it's all about trust. Can you trust the partner you're working with? I've always known that Nick would never screw me and I'd never screw him. Ultimately, if it's a business partner who's not family, he will put his own interests above yours, and that's just fact. And when all is going well, you don't argue. When it's not going well, that's when the cracks appear. That's the beautiful thing about working with Nick and I think had I done it with anyone else along the way, it wouldn't have worked. I'm lucky that he's very talented at what he does and helps to deliver what we have delivered without that, and it's been fun. The only downside is Nick is my best mate who I only see workwise now, so very little on the fun side together, which is the downside.

Simon Brewer  

What's the most important daily habit you have?

Giles English

Actually, in slight sadness, but I've become slightly obsessed with gardening. And going out into the garden, I have some timeout out of the sort of hectic world we live in just to really sit back and take in nature and get away from everything. Get away from your phone, because your head is down in the flowerbed, for not much but I try and go out every day and do something.

Simon Brewer  

Anyway, Giles, thank you so much. As I've said, I think anybody who would and could come and see your facility in Henley should do so and we'll make sure the links are available on the show to be able to contact you because it really is absolutely inspiring to see a manufacturing facility which is just state of the art and the collections alongside it which are so timeless. So congratulations on what has been an extraordinary journey. And our thanks again to you and your brother for being an early sponsor of the Money Maze Podcast, which has been really appreciated and we’ve really enjoyed our association so far.

Giles English

Well, really appreciate that. We'd love to show anyone around. Simon, thank you. I'm honoured to be on your show. Clearly, there are people a lot more interesting than myself, but it's been an interesting journey. It’s lovely to tell the story.