François Moreau, you founded Reservoir Watch in 2016, after twenty years in banking. That’s quite a leap!
That’s right. I left HSBC after a long career that took me to Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. In fact the “lightbulb moment” came while I was in Japan, where I worked from scratch to launch a new banking proposition. That’s when I realised how much I enjoyed creating things. The question being, what?
Back in Paris, the idea kept going round and round in my head. It just so happens that I’m a watch enthusiast with a modest collection, and I’m also into cockpit and dashboard instruments. Driving home one day, it struck me that the rev counter needle was similar to a retrograde hand on a watch. The idea stayed with me and I ran with it!
You’re not the first watch brand with links to the automotive world.
True, but it occurred to me that there was no independent brand with a distinctive aesthetic and technical focus in the €3,000 to €5,000 price range.
If you’re looking for a truly disruptive watch with a very high level of added value in terms of mechanism, there’s MB&F and Urwerk, but at stratospheric prices. There are also some great brands at the opposite end of the spectrum, such as SevenFriday, but they are mainly design-driven. There was nothing in between, or rather there was room for an independent, creative, technical brand with a focus on mechanisms, positioned at a reasonable price. That’s Reservoir.
And did your instinct prove right?
It did. We were at Baselworld as of the following year, 2017, where we were well-received by retailers and the press. They had no trouble understanding our concept of retrograde minutes and jumping hours. Our price positioning was judged very attractive, too.
But a successful launch isn’t the hardest part. Anyone can have a good idea. You don’t build a brand simply with an idea for a launch. It takes time and a concept. This is what we’re doing now, by developing new movements still with the instrument-inspired, retrograde displays of our mechanical universe.
Meaning?
We started out with our historic movement, developed with Télôs, featuring jumping hours, retrograde minutes and power reserve. The Sonomaster Chronograph introduced our second movement, a bi-retrograde again on a La Joux-Perret base. For Only Watch, also with Télôs, we’ve developed a tourbillon, which is our third movement. And I can reveal that we are working on a fourth in-house movement, scheduled for 2024–2025, with a particularly disruptive display.
Outside partners have been fundamental to the brand’s growth. Do you plan to bring certain processes in-house?
Yes. Within the next two years, if we continue to grow, we want to bring assembly in-house, in collaboration with our current assembler.
You’re absent from women’s watches and collaborations, which are both strong segments. Why is this?
We released a Popeye watch, made under licence in collaboration with LabelNoir, and we’ve had a collaboration with Revolution. Both series sold out and we’re still getting requests. Over the next 18 months we intend to explore the automobile, aeronautics and comic-strip universes even further, as well as horological collaborations.
As for a Reservoir watch for women, we’re looking into it. We already offer a 39mm diameter that women can wear, although the brand’s natural environment revolves around mechanisms, measuring gauges, cars and submarines, and so tends to be more masculine. No way would we produce a women’s watch that was just a version of a men’s watch with diamonds on the bezel.
We’re working with a taskforce of female influencers to see whether this is an area we can explore. If we do, it will be in a way that makes sense for the brand and for the customer.
