Issue 198: Corum's Alive!
First-hand impressions of the new Admiral and in-depth analysis of the business and product strategy behind Corum's revival. Plus: GPHG realpolitik, Minerva and April Fool's jokes
Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that once again owes you an apology. There was no podcast this week; I have been travelling in Switzerland and the short window of time I had earmarked to create it was closed at the last minute by another unexpected day of travel. Suffice to say my guilt probably outweighs your disappointment, but it WILL return next week come hell or high water. (Although it will be on Wednesday, as the Easter weekend is upon us.)
My action-packed week took me first to Dominique Renaud, where I spent a few hours touring the brand new atelier, sitting down with CEO Michel Nieto and hearing directly from Dominique and his colleagues exactly how the Pulse60 works. That, you will read about next week — aside from the ingenuity of the watch itself, they have a fascinating vision for the future of independent brands.
As there was no podcast, I’ve included a couple of shorter items - okay, rants - before the paywall. Behind it, you can hear all about Corum’s re-launch, its new products and my analysis on where the brand will sit in today’s market. I also spoke to advisor Vincent Perriard on the financial outlook for the brand. Paying subs get the whole scoop.
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Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:
Jury Duties
Conflict of interest! In the watch industry?! In the GPHG?? I won’t hear it. News that Wei Koh was to be appointed jury president for the awards — the least surprising news since Rolex’s last price increase — has been met with much hand-wringing over what it could mean for the integrity and credibility of these cherished and significant prizes.
I can’t argue with the factual breakdown of the various conflicts that exist between operating a media business, a retail business and if rumour is to be believed, one day soon a watchmaking business, and being a part of a ceremony in which some of the same brands are up for awards. It’s all pretty black and white; you either have conflicts of interest or you don’t, and in this industry we all have them. As others have pointed out, even collectors want allocations.
I’m not here to argue that it doesn’t matter at all, or that Koh’s appointment represents the sudden pollution of a previously pristine pool. Controversially perhaps, I am minded to wait until the awards have actually happened before exploding with righteous scorn. Which is not to say that pointing out the existence of conflicts is wrong. I do think however that across social media in particular, we have as a community shown a firm a desire to have it both ways.
We want to proclaim that the awards don’t matter and vent our spleen that they are so manifestly compromised. We are so animated that Koh has multiple avenues of conflict operating in parallel, yet fail to consider that surely, the more conflicts of interest you have — perversely enough — the less influential any of them could possibly be. If Revolution takes advertising from a pool of ~50 brands, Grail Watch has a dozen collaborative partners past, present or future, and his TV show accounts for another dozen or so… it seems perfectly likely that there could be categories at the awards populated entirely with brands that have a connection to the jury president. What then? We want an expert jury — never mind the president, we have to think of the whole panel — but we don’t want that expertise to have come hand-in-hand with any manner of industry connections. It might be tempting to think the answer is a greater amount of public participation; more votes would dilute any individual’s influence, but then you are asking people to vote on something they haven’t seen and maybe don’t fully understand1. I would like the academy’s votes to be weighted a bit higher, and the gender balance on the jury has never even approached parity, but these are tweaks to a flawed model, not a rejection of the model outright.
Fundamentally, we want an awards show (or do we? I guess that’s a reasonable question at this point, although certainly we the media get plenty of mileage out of engaging with it) and we want to reserve the right to complain that awards shows are flawed. They always are, everywhere.
That said, it would be perfectly possible to set up a truly independent awards ceremony for watches. I just don’t think anybody would pay attention. As I’ve said many times before I think the GPHG should be better, but at this stage I’m not sure it actually can be reformed without losing its establishment status. The irony is that it wouldn’t have the position it does without everyone’s buy-in; if everyone who complained about it stayed away, it wouldn’t exist2, and if every media outlet that lamented its failings ignored it - here I’m as guilty as anyone else - it would be irrelevant. But it has the legitimacy of budget, and spectacle, and longevity. Quality is usually recognised at the end, but the process has become a marketing jamboree. In this sense, the awards feel like a pretty fair reflection of the industry.
What A Bunch Of (April) Fools
I may be in a minority here, and it may not help that I had taken four flights in three days, but I found April 1st a terminally painful day to be on watch Instagram. Like most humans, I enjoy humour3 although there is absolutely no way to write that down without sounding like a maniac psychopath who doesn’t at all. I am surely not alone in finding corporate humour forced and being able to see cynical engagement-farming for what it is, though...
Bremont pioneered the April Fool’s prank press release, and my god was it getting stale by the time they stopped. Yesterday’s barrage of bullshit made them look funnier than Ricky Gervais4. Allow me to provide - a week late, clearly, but please hold onto it for next year - a few pointers to brands, media or influencers looking to unlock their inner joker.
Don’t acknowledge that what you’re doing is an April Fool. The point is to fool people. Clue’s in the name.
Don’t do mad shit on April 1st that isn’t a joke.
Don’t come out with stuff that could very easily be real, isn’t funny and is actually your own personal wish-fulfilment/engagement farming slop. Saying “Breguet made a green Fifty Fathoms haha PSYCH no they didn’t!” is not an April Fool.
If you are never funny the rest of the year, have a really good think about whether you’re funny now. At least Studio Underd0g has that side of its brand personality to fall back on.
Quite a lot of real-life watches are ridiculous to begin with. Saying “wouldn’t it be funny if we made a totally useless watch whose functions aren’t practical and make you look stupid” is… close to home. And no, I don’t think anybody who posted this kind of thing did it with the tone of voice that suggested this was the joke.
Understand that the real humour comes in the comments. Shout out to Anoma, which did at least raise a smile, approached the whole thing with a self-deprecating tone and engaged well below the line. The Thomas Crapper thing was ok as well, if only because it gave new context to a spiral dial pattern.
Great Wisdom From Montblanc
The powers that be at Richemont have clearly been listening to The Watch Enquiry, because after many years of speculation (and our highly speculative chat) we finally have a line of watches with Minerva as the sole brand name on the dial5. It’s the first of our ideas to actually come true, as it seems that at least for now, Jaeger-LeCoultre isn’t declaring independence after all.
I really like the look of this. The Unveiled Crownless - ok, it sounds like the high priest in some kind of arcane ritual, but it’s a handsome one. Measures 41.5mm by 12mm, runs on a 2.5 Hz hand-wound movement (no press pics but Monochrome has hands-on here) and costs - phew - €39,000.
You can read all about the time I visited Minerva’s manufacture here. It’s great: real watchmaking and real passion.
Corum Call
It was snowing in La Chaux de Fonds — not an unusual situation in itself, even on the first of April. Around three dozen European journalists had assembled for a press conference to announce Corum’s return to business. Commendably, nobody asked if it was a joke. (This is, after all, the industry in which brands never really die - although it’s not looking good for Christophe Claret right now. Rumour has it the liquidators handling the company’s assets after it went bankrupt in 2023 have been completely unable to find a buyer. But I digress.)
Corum’s return has been both a long time coming and surprisingly rapid. In the collective imagination, it ceased to be relevant or interesting about eight or nine years ago; to my knowledge it has not exhibited at a watch fair since Baselworld shut down, and I could not have told you the last time I saw a press release, social media post or item of media coverage, much less an actual watch. Previously owned by Severin Wundermann, of Gucci Watches fame, Corum had been bought in 2013 by a company called China Haidan - a Hong Kong company that later rebranded as Citychamp Watches & Jewellery Group - for a reported $86m. Citychamp also owned Eterna6 and Dreyfuss and according to Andy Hoffman at Hodinkee, writing last year when the management buyout was announced, the trio of brands posted an $11.5m loss on revenues of around $20m in 2024.
Rapid, because the new CEO Haso Mehmedovic and his backers - two unnamed investors, both Swiss, one from the watchmaking world and one financial - only wrested control of the brand a year ago. The CEO, quite possibly the industry’s youngest at 34, is the majority shareholder and according to Vincent Perriard, the entrepreneur and one-time HYT CEO who is advising Corum’s leadership team during its revival, he raised the funds for his share of the buyout on his own.
Corum’s premises are fairly substantial; two 20th century brick buildings and one four storey steel and glass block. It is pretty close to the centre of La Chaux de Fonds and sits right next door to a dialmaker, Montremo SA. The press conference took place on the lower level of the modern building, and as you enter the space you could be forgiven for thinking you were in the headquarters of a higher-end Swatch Group brand, or a company like Girard-Perregaux. A couple of rooms were given over to displays of historic watches - more on that shortly. The size of the HQ is pertinent: it is a facility suited to a company that once made 20,000-30,000 watches a year. Mehmedovic says that in its first year under his leadership, Corum will produce around 1,500 watches, and he told me after the press conference that it would look to grow that, eventually, to around 4,500-5,000 watches a year (which is coincidentally roughly on a par with the brand’s annual production before he took over).
