Max, why did you decide to end your successful career at Harry Winston and establish your own watch brand?
While working at HW, I understood that I was lucky and worked very hard, but I kept asking myself - is this what my dream is expressed in? When my father passed away, it was as if some mechanism worked inside of me. I began to seriously think about what I want in life and that it is so fleeting. Then one of my friends said that he did not know a single person who would say on his deathbed that he should have worked even more. I began to think about my dream, to analyze what my work at Harry Winston consisted of, and I realized what I liked about it and what not. The thought began to take shape first in my head, then in the first sketches on paper and slowly evolved into the big picture. It was not yet called MB&F, but it was already taking shape. Following this, a business plan, the design of the first hours and a list of future like-minded people were compiled. At some point, I realized that I needed to leave Harry Winston. It was difficult, but I did it.
Your action did not seem to you somewhat reckless?
Now, several years later, I realize that it was very risky. After all, when I left, I had half the necessary initial capital to create my own business. Then I collected sketches of future watches and paper outlining the concept of the project, got on a plane and went to seek support for my idea from the first retailer from Dubai. Seeing my leaflets, he said: "You are probably joking?" I was not ready for such a refusal, but decided not to stop and went to Kuwait. The second dealer replied: "No problem, we trust you enough to take the risk." Then I went to Singapore and there they immediately asked when the money should be transferred. After five traders agreed to invest in my company, I informed the very first one from Dubai, and he gave up. Thus, I received the missing half of the amount and started my own business.
The latest watch project Opus, after which you left Harry Winston, somehow influenced the choice of the MB&F concept?
The Opus project was the thing that inspired me. It was not a straightforward brilliant marketing calculation, as many still think. Then we - Harry Winston and the best independent watchmakers in the world - created incredible mechanisms, and the effect of our collaboration was ten times more powerful than any advertising campaign. It was then that I finally realized that my activity becomes more significant and effective when I act not alone, but with phenomenal creators, and not only in watchmaking, but in any other business.
Many people believe that it is impossible to conduct a joint business with friends and relatives, this will certainly lead to the breakdown of friendly relations. How did you decide to attract your friends to the team?
Indeed, working with friends is impossible. But the MB&F concept is based on attracting the best professionals in creating a specific project, we are friends only in the profession. This allows us not to complicate the relationship, it is enough that we are working on complex mechanisms. Today, in MF&F booklets, we always mention everyone - from watchmakers to watchmakers who create dials, cases, hands, finishes, designers, photographers, those who make product presentations, are responsible for communication, webmasters, project managers and so on - There are 35 of us in total. This is important, because in MB&F, the person, his vision, his personality are put at the forefront. This is the most important thing, not marketing ambitions.
We want to be a creative laboratory, which produces one project every year, which is completely different from the previous one. One form is followed by another, and although sometimes one product may resemble its predecessors in some way, different people make it each time and therefore our watch machines will never be identical. In Horological Machine No.1 and Horological Machine No.2, different watchmakers created the mechanism, in addition, 20 percent of the team changes from project to project. We are already working on the design of Horological Machine No.6, a third already exists in the prototype and will appear on the markets in the spring of 2009, the fourth and fifth under development ...
How long are you going to stick to the once chosen concept?
I have not seen and do not see another concept and perspective. We must use each other's strengths. Let's say I made a Horological Machine No.1 with a turbillon with Laurent Bess, because he is a specialist in turbillons; and Horological Machine No.2 with Jean-Marc Wiederecht, because his forte is retrograde clockwork and a jumping hour. By the way, the first "machine" in each of the metals was released in a hundred copies, and the second - in five hundred. And it's all! We will always remain a small company in which there is neither a sales manager nor a public relations department - I prefer to meet people in person. MB&F for me is not a business decision, but a life choice, and profit is not the main motivation. Today I am a little over 40 years old and I want to maintain the current state of affairs until my fiftieth anniversary, I want to be one step ahead of the rest, but I don’t know what will happen next. Many in our industry consider us abnormal, because once a year we set about creating a completely new mechanism, and perhaps they are right. But we do it.
Do you seem to make many recognized masters of the industry nervous?
Surely. But we are not doing this because the people involved in the MB&F project need work - each of them has their own business, they are all independent, collaborate with the best brands, and besides, they cannot earn very big money on Horological Machines, because we produce them in small quantities. It’s just their personal choice, a kind of playground, and they are interested in trying their hand at it.
For whom do you create your "time machines" - for romantics, dreamers, collectors?
I will tell you one short story. Once, with my designer Eric Giro, a passionate collector of contemporary art, I decided to go through art galleries. I showed him what I liked in the first gallery, and did not hear anything in reply, then in the second - and he only shrugged his shoulders vaguely, and in the third gallery he already pointed out to me the alarming, destructive painting of one artist. And I told him that I would never have hung such works in my living room, and he replied: "Who said that they were written for your stupid living room? What you showed me is not art, but a beautiful decoration, a bourgeois picture, which goes well with wallpaper, carpet or furniture, but they have no artistic depth. But the artist’s art expresses some powerful hidden feeling. " And so we create our “cars”. Not in order to please someone or satisfy someone's curiosity - this is what our industry has been doing for almost two hundred years. And ninety-five percent of consumers of watch products in this industry will say about our watches: “What the hell is this ?! I will never wear one like that!” Well, let me, I need the remaining five percent, only thirty people a year, who will find our “cars” amazing.
Since I am the first Russian journalist to see your third “car” now, tell us in more detail what’s different from the first two?
In this "car" I was supported by the winner of the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Geneve 2007 Jean-Marc Widderecht and designer Eric Gyro with his team Agenhor. As for the machine itself, the emphasis was not on technical complexity. Rather, it is our avant-garde look at the representation of time. The base caliber was the Girard-Perregaux. an ax-shaped rotor - the original detail, which can be traced in all previous machines, is carried up, two double-edged hands are responsible for representing the time, fitting the truncated cones of hours and minutes, a date disc surrounds the rotor. Along the way, one end of the hour hand serves as an indicator of time of day. There are two versions of Starcruiser and Sidewinder with apertures of hours and minutes oriented longitudinally and transversely. Dimensions of the hull resembling the Shuttle space shuttle: 47x50x16 mm. We wanted to put complex content in the right form. It seems we succeeded.
Interviewed: Elena Olkhovskaya
