Money Maze Podcast Building a Global Luxury Watch Brand - With Giles English, Co-Founder & CEO of Bremont Watches [REPLAY]
Feb 23, 2023
38:12
To celebrate Bremont’s recent successful fundraising round we’ve refreshed this popular interview, originally released in July 2021. Investors in the round included the billionaire hedge fund manager, Bill Ackman, who took a stake in the firm after buying a number of their luxury watches on a visit to London.
When we talk of luxury watches we typically think of Switzerland with its quality engineering and dominant market position, apparently illustrating the economist David Riccardo’s theory of comparative advantage. Yet in this conversation, we learn how Bremont is disrupting the luxury wristwatch market and successfully bringing large scale watchmaking back to UK shores.
Giles English begins by discussing the plane accident that killed his father and almost took his brother’s life as well, yet how the tragedy proved the inspiration to build a luxury watch brand, which can compete with the best.
After describing the history of British watch making, with some fascinating anecdotes, Giles explains how he and his brother Nick have approached the two components; building a state of the art watch making capability & developing a luxury brand.
Giles describes the engineering challenges involved, the technical aspects of precision engineering, and why seeing the Bremont collections can be a lightbulb moment for collectors. He talks about the collaborations and collections with Jaguar, Concorde, Stephen Hawking and Bletchley Park to name a few, and their vision for the future.