IT MIGHT seem just a little unlikely to make the leap from being a collector of vintage watches one day into a manufacturer of Swiss-made designer timepieces the next - but that's more or less the case with Christopher Long, a young Singaporean with a healthy interest in watches and a sharp eye for business opportunity.
Long exemplifies the story of a person who had the motivational drive and entrepreneurial spirit to turn his weekend hobby into a full-time profession. He's one of the lucky few who aren't really able to distinguish between weekdays and weekends or separate work from play because it's all the same to him.
Together with business partner Alvin Lye, he created the Azimuth Watch Company from scratch five years ago, a niche brand that combines innovation with watch-making tradition to produce high quality haute timepieces.
Working from a home office near Holland Village, Long and Lye first come up with the concept for a watch design - typically featuring a mechanical movement and high-tech complications - and then work with their own atelier based in Bienne, Switzerland to bring their creations to life.
From a production of about 200 pieces in the first year, they now manufacture about 1,500 watches a year, with a price range of between $2,500 and $7,000. They are also able to produce one-off timepieces at one-off prices of $100,000 and up for hard-core collectors.
'We do everything from A to Z, from concept to design to marketing strategy and our own manufacturing facility in Switzerland,' says Long, 32, who started his love affair with watches by scouring weekend flea markets for vintage pieces as a teenager in 1994. 'From there, I progressed by learning more about the industry. Early on, I got to know more about the various Swiss watchmakers.'
Whether by luck or serendipity, he found a supplier of old Swiss watch movements and watches through the Internet, made a business decision and started selling watches online and also in secondhand stores. He was also a mechanical engineering student at NTU at the same time. It turned out that one of the first people he tried to sell a watch to was fellow watch aficionado - and future business partner - Alvin Lye.
Meanwhile, Long's first job was at retailer Sincere Watch. 'In the back of my mind, I wanted to do something on a bigger scale, so I sounded out Alvin on the possibility of doing something on our own,' he says. 'I had this bold notion of being the first Singaporeans to design and manufacture Swiss watches - it was a refreshing business angle.'
Long says he had always wanted to have a business that he could be passionately involved in and Azimuth - which focuses both on watches with avant garde designs and watches inspired by those worn by German aviators in World War II - certainly fits the bill.
'Our strength is in making a unique design, not a me-too product,' says Long, whose concepts have been inspired by, among others, a detail from a high-performance supercar, the head of a vintage tin robot toy and even a roulette wheel. 'Our design DNA results in a watch that looks different,' he says. 'The craftsmen in Switzerland turn my ideas into reality - we also come up with the complications that support the aesthetics of the watch.'
Long, who travels to Switzerland three times a year, says that dreaming up watch concepts and looking after his one-year-old daughter Portia is a full-time occupation, but the collector in him ensures that he has a couple of other interests as well. These currently include investing in wines and buying Asian contemporary art, particularly Indonesian art. He also likes to drive cars that are both comfortable and performance-oriented - he calls them luxury muscle cars.
'People who collect watches usually have similar interests - wine, art, cars,' says Long. 'These will take up my time but watches have to be my primary interest. Our company is just out of the infancy stage and we have to work on developing markets.'
Azimuth watches are distributed in close to 20 countries, with the biggest markets in the US, Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong. 'Down the road, we have to expand the business, invest in facilities and so on. My goal is to build up brand equity so that everyone will know what Azimuth is about.'
Long says he gets to meet many interesting characters during the course of his work. 'I will always have something to do with watches - it was lucky for me that I chanced upon something that has commercial value,' he says. 'Watches are both my hobby and my profession - it's something that is very much in my blood.'
