Eqotime meets Moser's CEO Edouard Meylan
Schaffhausen-based H.Moser & Cie think it is fine to be called the watch world's enfant terrible, and it seems they enjoy being a little ”on the edge”.
Text/image: Britta Rossander & Mia Litström
Schaffhausen-based H.Moser & Cie think it is ok to be called the watch world's enfant terrible and it seems as if they enjoy being a little ”on the edge”. Eqotime met CEO Edouard Meylan in Geneva during Geneva Watchdays and got a chat on the balcony of the suite where they were showing their latest models.
The pressure to see their collection was great and even though it was an extremely hot late summer day and the sun was shining sharply straight into our eyes we did the interview on the narrow balconyh to a bit calm in the middle of the buzz.
H. Moser & Cie's history begins in the 1800s with the young entrepreneur Heinrich Moser. He was born in Schaffhausen into a family of watchmakers and learned the trade at an early age. He made his way to Saint Petersburg as a trained watchmaker and quickly became the favourite of the aristocrats. With that success behind him he returned to his home town and founded H. Moser & Cie in 1828. He had a manufacturing unit built that employed several hundred craftsmen. During his lifetime the company is said to have produced around half a million watches. The base was ordinary three-hand watches but the range stretched all the way to ”grande complications”.
Heinrich Moser is known for his involvement in the industrialisation of Schaffhausen and forty years after he started he was of help when Jones, the American who founded IWC, needed land to build on for his manufacturing. Jones was not welcome in Geneva and then Moser stepped in and offered him a part of his land by the river Rehn. IWC's HQ still lies there today.
H. Moser may have a history of a good 190 years but was reborn again in 2002 after a troubled period, the official year of the rebirth is 2005 when the business picked up speed.
In an interview in 2013 in Watches and Culture 2013, Georges-Henri Meylan, former CEO of Audemars Piguet, tells that:
-A group of friends including several ex-Audemars Piguet and my two sons nurtured the idea of why not start something together.
And so it turned out, through them Moser got new air under its wings.
-Instead of recreating the past and following the mainstream, we strive to create our own future, and even though our founder is not here to guide us today, Heinrich Moser's descendants play an active role at H. Moser & Cie and continue to uphold his legacy, said Georges-Henry Meylan at the presentation.
Today, its own in-house mechanical movements including hairsprings are designed and produced, which results in the watches being real works of art – often with a twist all of their own.
At the latest GPHG Genève, H. Moser & Cie was awarded the prize for best Tourbillon with its Pioneer Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton. The citation was:
A tourbillon with elegance and genuine artistry that underlines the beauty of the 1-minute flying tourbillon at 6 o'clock, which embodies the hairspring expertise of H. Moser & Cie's sister company, Precision Engineering.
