How Two Friends Built a Hot Swiss Watch Brand in Just Five Years

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- When Ben Küffer started Norqain SA in 2018, he knew it wouldn’t be an easy sell. “We did it when nobody wanted another watch brand,” says the 35-year-old chief executive officer. His family is Norqain’s majority shareholder..At the time, the industry was just recovering from a multiyear decline. In 2017 the chairman of watchmaking giant Richemont, Johann Rupert, lamented that retailers were being “force-fed” timepieces wholesale “like geese producing foie gras” and that stores were choking on the volume..“We didn’t listen, we just did it,” Küffer says. With the backing of his parents and a childhood friend, he put the pieces together to begin a line of rugged sports watches with streamlined designs and Swiss-made movements..Five years on, plenty of people want a Norqain. The company produced about 10,000 watches in 2022 and enjoyed its best sales year yet, with revenue surging 117% from 2021. The watches are available in more than 180 retail locations as well as Norqain boutiques in Singapore and Zermatt, Switzerland, with New York City and Zurich stores in the works.. Related: .Right from the get-go, “Norqain was bang on trend with a solid family of steel sports watches aimed at new and young converts” to mechanical timepieces, says Rob Corder, editor and co-founder of the trade publication . Priced at a range of 2,000 Swiss francs ($2,175) to a little more than 6,000 francs, the watches fill a market gap in entry-level luxury as brands such as Omega move further upscale..Many of its offerings are subdued and traditional, but the brand’s Independence line is where Norqain’s watchmakers showcase their mettle. The most exciting of these timepieces, the Wild One, was released in 2022 after being developed in collaboration with Swiss watch industry legend Jean-Claude Biver, the former head of watches at LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, where he made Hublot a top seller..Biver agreed to help the fledgling company in the darkest days of the pandemic; Norqain’s revenue had dropped from about 4 million francs in its first year of business to a low of 22,000 francs in April 2020. He became an official adviser to its board of directors in June 2022 and later an investor..Küffer says the veteran executive pushed the young brand to create a timepiece that was unique and original enough to differentiate it from the usual Swiss offerings..The result: a featherweight watch housed in a proprietary carbon-fiber case (the brand calls its version of the material Nortec) with a shock-resisting system that makes it well-suited to mountain biking, skiing or trail running. Priced at around 6,000 francs, the Wild One is six times lighter than similar watches made of steel and three and a half times lighter than those made of titanium, thanks to the Nortec. Swiss manufacturer Kenissi SA, which also supplies to Tudor and Breitling, produces its NN20 movement..Biver “instinctively understands what is needed to position a brand, to work with the existing elements and take them to the next level,” says Roger Ruegger, editor in chief of WatchTime. “And I think the Wild One is a perfect example.”.’s Corder says Norqain’s fast ascent to selling 10,000 watches a year is notable; it took English brand Bremont 20 years to reach the same milestone. The company’s financial backing and connections to the Swiss watchmaking industry have been key, he says..Küffer’s father, Marc, was once the CEO and owner of white-label Swiss watch manufacturer Roventa Henex SA and now chairs Norqain’s board; those ties led to a special setup in which Norqain watches are produced at Roventa Henex facilities in Switzerland. The younger Küffer worked for Breitling AG for 11 years as the brand manager in Switzerland and Asia; his former colleague and childhood friend Ted Schneider, whose family owned Breitling before selling in 2017, now sits on the Norqain board..“I said, ‘I can’t let him do this alone,’ ” recalls Schneider, the director of business development at Swissroc Group, a Geneva-based real estate services firm..Küffer says Norqain is now in the black and recently conducted a successful capital increase with shareholders. Although the early hurdle of starting a Swiss brand and boosting sales to a respectable level has been passed (it helps that the industry has boomed extraordinarily since Norqain was launched), challenges lie ahead. The brand wants to expand to regions beyond its core markets in the US, Japan and Switzerland and try to keep pricing at the entry level of the market for most models, even as inflation puts pressure on its costs..And yet, Norqain’s plans are mapped beyond 2025. “When you start a company with your friends, there’s a real pressure,” Küffer says. “But we always knew we’d do it together.”.(Adds journalist comment in 10th paragraph. A previous version of the story corrected the spelling of Norqain in the deck headline.).More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com.©2023 Bloomberg L.P.

How Two Friends Built a Hot Swiss Watch Brand in Just Five Years

Norqain’s founders leaned on family connections—and cash—to quickly build a popular brand.

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How Two Friends Built a Hot Swiss Watch Brand in Just Five Years

Norqain’s founders leaned on family connections—and cash—to quickly build a popular brand.

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