BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

H. Moser & Cie, under the leadership of CEO Edouard Meylan, marks an important milestone in 2022. He explains the importance of family ties in the story of the brand, and its relationship with retailers, while also revealing why independent watchmaking is so attractive now 

-  ASHOK SOMAN

At this year's Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Geneve (GPHG), H. Moser & Cie picked up the Tourbillon Watch Prize for the Pioneer Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton, adding to its tally of wins at the prestigious watch industry awards. These include the double wins in 2020 for the Endeavour Cylindrical Tourbillon H. Moser & Cie x MB&F (Audacity Prize), and the Streamliner Flyback Chronograph Automatic (Chronograph Watch Prize). And these are just the most recent achievements for the Schaffhausen-based watchmaker, which was established in 1828, 40 years before its neighbour, IWC started up. In fact, H. Moser & Cie was making watches some 11 years before the brand that would become Patek Philippe was founded, and close to 50 years before Audemars Piguet got its start. Despite this, it may surprise you to learn that in 2012, the firm was staring down the barrel of bankruptcy.

If you are a regular reader of this magazine, or just a person familiar with H. Moser & Cie CEO Edouard Meylan, then you know that we speak with him quite a lot. Obviously, the brand's story did not end in 2012! Anyway, it will not surprise you to learn that we did catch up with Edouard during Watches & Wonders Geneva. As fate would have it, he swung by Singapore a couple of times after so that earlier chat has been largely supplanted with this story. This year also happens to be the 10th anniversary of a remarkable turnaround in H. Moser & Cie's fortunes, and we thought we would spend a little time going over that before leaping into our conversation.