15/15/15 - Horage Early Years

It can be argued that only two types of watchmakers are true watchmakers. First there’s the old, historic brands that have been in continuous operation for up to a century or more with horological milestones and in-house movements. Between this are the countless microbrands and others who design cases and dials around outsourced movements from ETA, Sellita, Miyota and more. They’re often very cool, but are they just designers at the end of the day? Then we have watchmakers that are relatively new, like HORAGE, who design and engineer movements and innovations in-house, no different than the legacy brands and in some cases, even better. Let’s look at our early years as we celebrate the 15th anniversary of our first watch in 2009.

It Starts with an Idea…

Husband and wife team Andreas and Tzuyu were already in the watch game, albeit on the supply chain side of the industry for other Swiss and German brands. During a rooftop, Japanese-style barbecue party, the idea of starting their own watch brand began to form. They could only go so far designing for others and success was dependent on those brands’ success. They were both soon committed to the idea of their own brand, but they initially took it on as a “hobby” as bills always need to be paid.

The first question was - “Do we buy an old established brand that shuttered during the Quartz Crisis and revitalize it, or do we establish something entirely new?” Many have tried and failed at the former and the latter just seemed like the best way forward. Andreas and Tzuyu simply wanted to create history from scratch.

What’s in a Name?

The name HORAGE was two years in the making, both in meaning and design. The look is very distinctive, mirroring the mosaic tile names in New York subway stations and the perfect font was used - Swiss Helvetica. It’s a dynamic logo, but the meaning is also very important.

HORAGE is a combination of two parts - HORA (Latin for time, hour and season) and AGE (English for lifetime and epoch). It has a French pronunciation where the H is silent and interestingly, the French word Orage (without the H) means thunderstorm. A thunderstorm is exactly what we faced developing a new brand and in-house movements, which are tremendous undertakings.

Omnium

HORAGE was official in 2007, but it would be two years before our initial watch would debut at Basel World 2009. Following extensive research and visiting brands throughout the world, our first watch was born, Omnium. It’s a name that continues in our portfolio today with two evolutions.

Omnium had the right style penned by designer Julia Hou and featured an ETA automatic that was perfectly serviceable, but just didn’t feel right. Vertical integration was a must for HORAGE to truly have a future in this hyper-competitive industry. The decision was made to pause operations and develop our own automatic caliber, which is among the most difficult achievements in watchmaking.

Jonas-K1

Developing a new movement from scratch involves developing new methods, tools and ideas - a horological toolkit if you will. Our K1 automatic was seven years in the making, but the knowledge gained, and the newly established core component toolkit would allow us to continue developing movements in far less time. This was during an era of radical change as well - post 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and Apple and Android changing how business was done via smartphones amongst the others. It was our first major ‘Orage’ to navigate through.

K1, otherwise known as Masherbrum, is a mountain considered so technically demanding, brutal and plain dangerous that its southeast summit has only been reached four times. The second southwest summit has only been climbed once. Developing this movement is analogous to the difficulty of a K1 ascent and we successfully completed it in 2015. The project was led by our watchmaker Jonas Nydegger (who plays rugby on his off time) with the help of movement expert Florian Serex. The original piece with our new K1 automatic was affectionately named Jonas-K1 after Nydegger, the master watchmaker that put it all together.

The Jonas K1 watches came in three colors, blue, grey and pink, and closely resembled our current Array collection with an exposed front plate and big date wheels. Array was the next piece after Jonas K1 with Multiply coming soon after. These all carried the first incarnation of our first ever in-house movement and HORAGE was now a bonified Swiss watchmaker.

Crowdfunding

As mentioned, creating a new mechanical movement from scratch is among the hardest achievements in watchmaking and typically requires sizable capital for development. Industry experts claimed that without an attachment to an established brand or conglomerate, it would take 100 million Swiss Francs to develop K1. Well, fortunately that turned out to be a bit exaggerated and we turned to a new trend at the time - online crowdfunding. Kickstarter allowed us to raise almost 122,000 GBP for the Jonas K1, which exceeded our 100,000 GBP goal. This capital and additional investments, combined with Tzuyu’s manufacturing and supply chain expertise, Julia’s amazing designs and Jonas’ engineering and watchmaking prowess, made the project attainable at a small fraction of what was predicted by many. Additional Kickstarter campaigns allowed us to develop Array and Multiply along with a campaign on JD-Crowdfunding, which helped us reach enthusiasts in the Asian market.

Our first 300 (pre-series) K1 movements for Jonas K1 certainly came at a price. We invested over 6,000,000 Swiss Francs in the 6 years of development. It’s a sizeable investment indeed, but then again, much more attainable than the predicted 100 million Swiss Francs some industry experts had suggested. Kickstarter not only helped raise some capital, but gave us invaluable, real world feedback from early customers.  

K1 Automatic

Following its debut in 2015, our modular K1 automatic is now in its 10th version with the ability to add or remove complications without changing the size/profile or use external modules. From the beginning, the K1 has been designed and engineered at our Biel/Bienne facility, starting from early design to full assembly that begins at terminage zero.

Improvements from the early days include a power reserve of 65 hours, up from 56 hours, a COSC certification for select watches (verifying a chronometer level of accuracy at -4/+6 seconds per day) and 18 configurable variations for a smorgasbord of options without the need to alter the case size. We also use a silicon escapement that’s very wear resistant, anti-magnetic and lighter than conventional metals for better efficiency. Current specs include a 3.5Hz frequency (25,200 beats per hour), 22 jewels, chronometer level of accuracy (whether certified or not), silicon escapement, 65-hour power reserve and dimensions of 25.6mm x 4.95mm.

Where Do We Go From Here?

We’ve highlighted key moments from our early years, how and why we developed the in-house K1 automatic and our initial crowdfunding campaigns to help fund it. This was just the beginning as we embarked on the journey to create several more in-house movements that add sophistication and complexity, rivaling the best offerings from long established brands. Although we continue to sell K1-based watches, our first automatic will ultimately be phased out for our newer, more advanced movements that’ll be covered in the next 15/15/15 forum posts.

Were you an early HORAGE customer? Sound off in the comments on which K1 watch (or watches) you’ve acquired from us. If you haven’t picked one up, which one catches your eye the most?

Also, be sure to sign up for our newsletter (here) and check out journal entries as well (here) and a detailed section on performance watchmaking at HORAGE (here).

We'll talk again soon!

Erik Slaven