Few up-and-coming watchmaking brands today would put ‘emotion’ ahead of business strategy, but that is the route CEO Xavier de Roquemaurel says his brand Czapek has proudly taken. He calls it the company’s ‘human dimension’. It is what has driven them to keep the legacy and watchmaking mores of renowned Polish watchmaker François Czapek (b. 1811) alive, and it is what dictates the idea of beauty in their watches. This is what drove them to become a crowdfunded company, and this is how the brand thrives among collectors today. Being a small enterprise, human dimension forms the crux of their work with collaborating partners. In 2021, it what made them offer their watches to the Indian market, via the multi-brand watch boutique, Ethos.
“Our company is about people, and our vision is to give people who love watches, who maybe today are into more mainstream brands, something much more unique, where they discover the soul behind our timepieces,” says Roquemaurel. “Pranav [Saboo, of Ethos] insisted that we come to India. It was not part of our plan. But when someone wants to become your prophet in a country, you have to say yes.”
The uniqueness of Czapek watches, this ‘soul’ that Roquemaurel talks about, is quite evident. Though the company is boutique (there are only seven or eight full-time employees), in the eight years since it unveiled its offerings, it has gone from strength to strength. The foundation of this is a product line that draws from François Czapek’s creations, while contemporising it for collectors of today. “We discovered after studying Czapek’s pocket watches that he was on a quest for beauty. Every watch he made, he wanted for it to be beautiful. He was quite extravagant for the time. When you compare his pocket watches with others of that period, they are extreme.”
Czapek pillars
The brand’s flagship line is the Quai des Bergues, a manual-winding watch with a seven-day power reserve that is named after the place where François Czapek founded the company in Geneva in 1845. Its case recalls the round shape of pocket watches (white, rose gold or platinum), although there is also a more modern case that employs a sandblasted and polished finish (titanium or secret ‘XO’ steel). Most iterations feature beautiful guilloché dials, a hallmark of Czapek designs, a mismatched pair of central hour and minutes hands, a small seconds at 7:30, and a ‘coupled’ day and power-reserve at 4:30. The classic dress watch’s 5N rose gold iteration, No.33bis, inspired by the circa 1850 3430 Czapek & Cie. pocket watch, won the ‘Public Prize’ at the 2016 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève. Its white-enamel grand feu dial had extended Arabic hour markers, and sported a ‘fleurs de lys’ hours hand, with a ‘trident’ minutes hand; the movement inside was the hand-wound Calibre SXH1, built in collaboration with independent master watchmaker Jean-François Mojon. The watch had a secret ‘Czapek’ signature, and the dial could be personalised with a message, visible only when the sun hit it at a certain angle. (There is also a Quai des Bergues Lady line in diamonds and a mother-of-pearl dial.)
This was the brand’s first launch, a classic timepiece to start off with. “We took the past and brought it to the present,” says Roquemaurel. “Whenever we discuss new watches, there is a fourth seat at the table for François Czapek. He wouldn’t want us to repeat what he did; he would like us to make something new for the watch collector of today. Everything we have done is new, but no one has ever said it is not Czapek. Its movement is the Calibre SXH1, inspired by the same movement that was in Czapek’s first pocket watch, whose pictures we found online. We chose that watch because it represented for us what Czapek was. We wanted to respect its notion of vertical symmetry.”
This idea extends to all of the product lines. The Place Vendôme is Czapek’s haute complication line featuring a manual-winding 60-second tourbillon with a GMT with the half hour difference. Launched in 2017, the line is named after the Parisian square where François Czapek opened a boutique in the mid-19th century, assumed to be the first haute horlogerie boutique there. The models feature a day/night disk, a power-reserve indicator, and the signature subdials at 7:30 and 4:30. The movement, a Calibre SXH2, was developed by Chronode and Czapek.
The third line launched in 2018 was the Faubourg de Cracovie (location of Czapek’s third boutique in Warsaw, 1850). A chronograph featuring the signature guilloché dials, its different iterations featured a date window, varied styles of indexes, and dial colours. The calibre inside is also Czapek’s third, the Caliber SXH3, with a 5Hz frequency and a power reserve of 65 hours. This line also hosts a secret alloy dial. “The alloy 401 has 55 per cent gold, and platinum, palladium, and silver. The alloy is good for guilloché, as it can make good cuts and gives a strong domed effect,” explains Roquemaurel.
These three laid the foundation of what was to come next in 2020, currently Czapek’s most sought-after line—the Antarctique. “When we finished the list of names of places for our lines, we then started looking at names that were anchored in the present and the future,” says Roquemaurel. “The answer came from one of our shareholders, who made a trip to Antarctica. We all felt Czapek would have liked that. If he was alive today, he would have his eye on the Antarctic.”
The moniker has been assigned to a line of steel sports watches with an integrated bracelet. The first to launch was the Passage de Drake iteration, a 40.5mm watch with a central hours, minutes, and seconds hand, with a date window at 6 o’clock. The dial featured an exclusive stamped, flinque ‘Stairway to Eternity’ pattern. The transparent caseback revealed the in-house SXH5.01 automatic calibre with a 60-hour power reserve. The micro rotor was made of recycled platinum 950 mass and the network of skeletonised bridges of its movement was inspired by 19th-century pocket watches. While integrated, the bracelet, with its satin-polished ‘C’ link design, featured an exclusive ‘Easy Release’ system, with the watch coming with an additional calf leather or rubber strap. The timepiece was water resistant to 120 metres. The Passage de Drake was followed by the Terre Adélie, with a hand brushed ‘Lamé’ dial with striations on the face, in four different colour variations, and the SXH5 movement.
In the second half of 2020, Czapek leaped forward with the Antarctique Rattrapante Silver Grey, a skeleton, 77-piece split seconds watch. The timepiece had a patented satellite minute train, and a patent-pending split-seconds mechanism (for miniaturing and simplifying it). “With the Rattrapante, the brief was horological eroticism. We wanted to reveal as much as possible about the mechanism. This is how we have conceived the bridges. Today, we are known for dealing with hard things, and this was a big challenge in terms of design,” says Roquemaurel. Most recently at Watches and Wonders 2023, the brand offered the a winning Antarctique design, the Titanium Dark Sector, which employs the space on a dial in an unconventional yet discreet way - it features a double row of lightly arched parallel segments that are divided at each hour marker. The hour hand points to these spaces to mark time, while the minute and second hands sweep the dial.
Over the eight-year period, what has further helped raise the popularity of Czapek’s offerings is that almost all of them have small, limited production, available for pre-order on the website or purchase via authorised dealers. Given their micro-brand status, the company is transparent about the various partners and suppliers it works with, including movement makers like Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier, watch designers Adrian Buchmann and Antoine Tschumi, enamellers at Donze Cadrans, and dial factory Metalam, among others, all of whom are clearly mentioned on the website. Furthermore, on their website, one can custom-create each watch with an option of straps, colour of dial and hands, and even add a personalised engraving, giving each timepiece a unique idea of beauty.
In 2021, Czapek produced just over 300 watches.
Czapek, the legacy
The idea of beauty was integral to the work of François Czapek. His legacy goes back to 1832, when the Polish immigrant and gifted watchmaker (then called Franciszek Czapek) fled to Switzerland following the collapse of the Polish uprising. Changing his name to François, he established his watchmaking atelier, and seven years later, partnered with Antoine Norbert de Patek (of Patek Philippe) to found Patek, Czapek & Cie. This was a partnership that lasted six years, with François founding Czapek & Cie. on May 1, 1845, with a new partner, Juliusz Gruzewski. Herewith, began his golden era. He became the watchmaker to the court of French Emperor Napoleon III, and opened boutiques in Geneva, Warsaw, and Paris, and even wrote a book on watchmaking, in Polish. Not much is known about the brand or the founder starting 1869.
Cut to 2012, and Harry Guhl, erstwhile art consultant, and co-founder and current chairman at Czapek, re-established the brand name, and the next year brought in Roquemaurel and watchmaker Sébastien Follonier (who has worked at IWC Schaffhausen, Girard-Perregaux, Greubel Forsey, and Corum as a horologer), as the other co-founders. “I was unemployed at the time,” says Roquemaurel, who has done stints at fashion brands Ermenegildo Zegna and Loewe. “A friend knew that Harry was working on a nice project, and introduced us. We met, and there was a great connection. Harry himself has extraordinary ideas, but he knew he needed someone in operations. And I said that the two of us cannot do anything. We need a watchmaker, and we brought Sébastian in.”
From the start, all were clear about three things they wanted to execute to retain the essence of the brand. “We didn’t want to be the toy of a billionaire. We knew that things with a billionaire owner never end up well. Our second decision was to stay true to Czapek. We wanted to make beautiful watches. Czapek’s work has been a quest for beauty using watches or time-keeping instruments. We did methodological work to understand him better, and provide a better expression of his work. The third was to be crowdfunded,” says Roquemaurel. The crowdfunding took place in November 2015, where watch enthusiasts were given the rare opportunity to take part in Czapek’s revival by investing through an equity crowdfunding campaign, making it, as the brand puts it, “the first haute horlogerie company revived by watch connoisseurs worldwide”.
The first round of crowdfunding, opened on the platforms Raizers and Crowd for Angels, was conducted simultaneously in Switzerland, France, and the UK, and raised CFH 860,000. Roquemaurel says that crowdfunding has further helped develop the brand’s identity. “We have 200 shareholders. Because we are crowdfunded, we have to be transparent, and because we are transparent, people come to collaborate with us. So, collaborations have become a part of our identity.”
The past few years have seen a strong acceleration at the brand, with the number of watches produced every year increasing; Roquemaurel hopes to double production in 2022. He says that the brand is not looking at too many authorised dealers, but wants to focus on strong relationships with each of the retailers. Future plans include starting a trading company in China. “Today, there is an interest in the brand, but we as a company are not running after profits or sales; we are running after a dream of making the most extraordinary watches. We are the most microscopic multinational you will see.” Not bad for a company that’s driven by emotions.
The story first appeared in WatchTime India's Jan-March 2022 issue. Subscribe to get our latest issue here.
Images: Courtesy Brand
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