Gary left a while ago, I believe. I hope so, at least.Originally Posted by Neil.C
Gary left a while ago, I believe. I hope so, at least.
Thanks Neil and Dave.
I left Bremont around 18 months ago and, for once, I think my timing was pretty good.
After nearly 10 years working there I had mixed emotions about leaving, after all they gave me my first job in horology and I had a lot of good experiences in the early years. However, as the company grew it became apparent that there would be no progression for assembly staff and no training or indeed encouragement to improve. From what I hear that situation has only got worse.
One of the things that made me proud to work at Bremont was that each assembler built the watches from start to finish. So case assembly, fitting hands and dials, casing up, regulation, pressure testing and any quality control corrections was all done by the assembler responsible for that batch of watches. I got a daft sense of satisfaction from knowing I'd built thousands of watches in their entirety and indeed, some might have owned and hopefully enjoyed by you guys. Not to mention all the special edition watches and military projects I worked on.
Unfortunately I think the watches are now made on an assembly line with each assembler only responsible for one part of the process. I understand this is probably more efficient but I can't imagine there's much job satisfaction left.
As for the new direction from Davide, I know design is purely subjective but as a former designer and art director with decades in the profession and multiple awards, I think I can safely say it's a dramatic turn in the wrong direction. Visually it really cheapens the brand and everything that made the brand unique within a crowded market has been thrown away.
Despite all this I hope they make it work. There's some very good people there (and a lot of not so good people too). So for their sake I hope the company doesn't fold under the weight of expectations from the backers and poor decisions from the CEO.
Cheers,
Gary
Glad you got out at the right time mate.
All the best.
Cheers,
Neil.
Interesting, thanks for the insight. I guess watchmaking like that only works financially when you customer base is willing to pay the premium for the notion of proper old-school watchmaking. I'm thinking Dornbluth etc. Looks like Bremont has set it's sights on a more mass produced market and they can only compete by streamlining to a more production line strategy.
funnily enough, that's one of the things that I spoke directly to Giles English about in the 2010's. He was passionate about the staff and considered them to be the most important aspect of the company. The original townhouse events almost without fail had someone present to discuss the assembly of watches with customers which was both interesting and informative. I still remember discussing the assembly with one team member who described assembling a watch being like a puzzle - I'm not sure that I would have the patience. Something I did mention to another member of the Bremont management team was that given each watch at the time was assembled by a single person, in a similar way to how Aston Martin used to have the engine builders 'badge' the engines they had built, could the assemblers name not be included on the watch. Admittedly it might have been too much trouble for the volume models but possibly for the expensive limited editions? The idea seemed well received but sadly never came to fruition.
Nothing daft about that at all, admirable.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote