An iconoclast who prefers to remain in his niche

The parallel with the veteran New Wave musician is not limited to his appearance. He may be a third generation Swiss watchmaker but there is an iconoclasm about Mr Baumgartner that is pure punk rock. He loves to shock. Although only 33 years old, he made his first appearance at the Basel watch fair of 1997. "That was when we showed the first prototypes," he recalls with a rueful smile. "People, they hated it. Perhaps it is better to say that they did not understand that what we did could be haute horlogerie . They could not see that there was a new wave coming that would offer an alternative to traditional watchmaking. "It is like in painting," he says. "In the 18th century, they wanted to paint like a perfect photograph, then the Impressionists came and they said: 'science has given us the camera, so it does not make any sense to perfect a painting'. So they did something different. "A similar thing happened in the 1970s. Quartz gave us perfect time; but haute horlogerie did not want to understand that things could be done differently." Of that first watch fair, he says: "For me it was fun coming to Basel to be provocative." Even the name was calculated to antagonise the more traditionally-minded horolophile: "Urwerk Geneve; people think this is a drill or machine-tool company," he sniggers. Even a decade later, with the world much more open to modern-looking watches and the huge success enjoyed by the work of, say, Richard Mille, Urwerk timepieces have a challenging aesthetic. However, just because his watches look different, it does not follow that Mr Baumgartner is disrespectful of tradition. Quite the contrary. As he sees it, you do not respect history if you just repeat it. "To respect history and tradition you have to make new history and new tradition." And he is talking as much about his personal history as well as the broader history and tradition of watchmaking. "My grandfather had a shop in Schaffhausen selling Omega, IWC and watches like that. My father went into historic pendulum clocks and that is what I saw when I was very young and worked with him on that. His dream was that I should take over his business restoring and selling clocks. Instead, I came to Geneva in 1995 with the basic idea to do something new." He started his company with capital of SFr20,000, a sum that represented the sole entry in the order book, placed by a family friend who had faith in the young rebel watchmaker. He moved into premises in the sort of insalubrious industrial building that it is difficult to imagine exists in Geneva. "My first impression was of a prison in the Ukraine," he says fondly. In those early days there was a lot of idealistic talk, intellectual "ping pong" of concepts, and beer drinking. In the end it was an artist friend, Martin Frei, a partner in Urwerk, who came up with the something new - from the 17th century. In the 1650s, the Campanus brothers built a clock for the Pope in which the hour markers appeared on rotating discs that described an arc along a semi-circular minute indicator. While not unknown in wristwatch form - Audemars Piguet launched something similar in the mid-1990s - Urwerk was to make this unusual way of reading the time its hallmark, with highly imaginative variations including tumbling cubes as well as discs and, most recently, a retractable arm. The result was haute horlogerie with attitude. More than a decade later Urwerk is well established and sold in some of the world's best watch shops. In London it can be found in Marcus on Bond Street. The business has an annual turnover of SFr10m and the Swiss tax authorities have put a value of SFr6.5m on the company. But its strong identity, elite distribution and cult following is likely to be worth considerably more than that and Mr Baumgartner says he has been sounded out ever so discreetly about establishing links with some of the industry's important operators. "I could enter into a distribution contract which would push Urwerk up to a turnover of SFr100m," he says, adding quickly that neither an alliance with a big group nor boosting his turnover is what he wants. Ten people work in Urwerk, using two offices. Mr Frei prefers the quality of life in Zurich, while Mr Baumgartner remains incarcerated out of choice in his Ukrainian prison. "It is the job of our distributors to have nice premises. It is our job to make watches." And Mr Baumgartner is clearly a man who prefers to make rather than to manage, so there is virtually no hierarchy: ring up and it could be Mr Baumgartner who picks up the phone, He works on exactly the same sort of workbench as his employees. "I think this is a good size, enabling us to keep the flexible individuality we need to create our watches. At Urwerk, we are all working in the same atelier , with our benches side-by-side. This gives us the opportunity to exchange our experiences. How could you do this in a big company?" For Mr Baumgartner, keeping the company at its current size with an annual production of about 200 pieces has been a conscious choice. Unusual though it sounds, he says he has made a decision to stay as a SFr10m company rather than grow into one 10 times the size. The simple reason is that, like his father and his grandfather, he is a watchmaker and prefers to remain one. It also seems that the horological gene is being passed on. Mr Baumgartner has two children. At eight months he says it is too early to tell whether his younger one is going to be a watchmaker. But the two-year-old is already showing promise. "Her favourite words are 'Papa goes tick tock'."By Nick Foulkes - The Financial Times Limited 2008