Nicholas Rudaz on Steering Franck Muller’s Legacy With Style and Strategy

Brand CEOs often have to embody the spirit of the companies they lead. This can be challenging because most of these C-suite people are not watchmakers or engineers who can dazzle with their technical knowledge, experience with industrial or artisanal production and sense of love for the craft. Yet, watchmaking skills do not serve well in the CEO role, which tends to require business acumen and charisma. This is most evident at a brand such as Franck Muller, where the master watchmaker himself is not in the captain’s chair, so to speak. Happily, Nicholas Rudaz has just the right vibe for the top job here.

Rudaz is one of the watch brand leaders we typically meet more than once a year, and who is also happy to spare a little time for the press. Regular readers will be quite familiar with him and his style of communicating; key Franck Muller collectors will be even more familiar with the man. Nevertheless, as we discussed on his visit to Singapore late last year, we can always be surprised, as we were to discover that he once tended bar at the Sydney Opera House…

Rudaz has charted a remarkable journey from his early days in hospitality to leading one of the world’s most prestigious contemporary watchmaking brands. Franck Muller is also a favourite of this magazine, by tradition because it has been on numerous covers and, generally, it has been one of our strongest supporters over the years. Rudaz is relatively new to us in the CEO role, having taken the top job in 2021, the 20th anniversary of WOW.

Rudaz was born in Switzerland but raised in England, and we imagine that his diverse background must have significantly influenced his professional trajectory. In the early 1990s, at the age of 20, Rudaz found himself in Australia, working behind the bar at the aforementioned Sydney icon. This experience was more than just a job; it was a formative period that honed his interpersonal skills and deepened his understanding of luxury service. Reflecting on this time, Rudaz told Harper’s Bazaar Australia/New Zealand, “Working in luxury hospitality is about selling a dream, which is exactly what we do in watchmaking.”

That statement is a fine summation of a point Rudaz likes to make, which was particularly relevant on the occasion of his visit this time, which was to launch a special watch for the 70th anniversary of Sincere Fine Watches: the Vanguard Damascus Steel Sincere Platinum Jubilee Edition. Rudaz’s sentiment goes a little like this, and we are paraphrasing here: making watches is an art but selling them is another kind of art. That is a fine tribute to pay to Sincere Fine Watches, which opened the first mono-brand Franck Muller store in the Asia Pacific region, right here in Singapore back in 1992. Franck Muller had just established his brand the year before and Sincere had just become the exclusive distributor in Southeast Asia.

Our story picks up in 2007, with Rudaz’s entry into the world of haute horlogerie when he joined Franck Muller as a director. Over the years, he ascended the corporate ladder, culminating in his appointment as CEO. Under his leadership, Franck Muller has continued to push the boundaries of watchmaking with releases such as the Aeternitas Mega 4 and the recent Long Island Evolution Master Jumper continuing to build on the brand’s reputation as the Master of Complications. Joining these watches to celebrate Sincere Fine Watches’ birthday is the world’s first watch to include movement elements crafted in Damascus steel.

As a quick note on the watch in question and the vaunted Damascus steel here, Rudaz notes that Franck Muller has used this material before, but just for cases. We recall these as the Vanguard Damas watches and Rudaz frequently referred to the new watch in the same way, even though this is not the current naming convention of the 28-piece Platinum Jubilee Edition. We have altered this in the interview that follows.

On a further note about Damas and Damascus steel, what Franck Muller has done here is to use two steel alloys in one, shall we say, ingot; this accounts for the two distinct grains seen in the metal of the case and the movement. Rudaz explained that the pattern emerges after a chemical treatment (an acid bath) causes a surface reaction in the two different types of steel (316L and 304L), and this is consistent with other reports on the subject. As you may already know, true historical Damascus steel is not extant because no one knows how exactly to recreate it. Everything that looks and even functions like preserved examples is an approximation.

With that said, we invite you to read on for Rudaz’s point of view on the watch and Franck Muller’s many years working alongside Sincere Fine Watches n this region.

Welcome back to Singapore! Tell us about the milestone you are here to celebrate and the Vanguard Damascus Steel Sincere Platinum Jubilee Edition?

Well, I think it’s a wonderful milestone and effectively it’s an incredible 70th anniversary for Sincere; we’ve been sharing 32 of those years with them so we’ve grown together mutually, hand-in-hand, and we have had many milestones together. I’m very happy to be celebrating this specific one with this wonderful Vanguard Damascus Steel Sincere Platinum Jubilee Edition. It has a seven-day power reserve and, at 43mm, is a great size for the local market. It’s exclusive to the Asia Pacific region of course. While we have used Damascus steel in our cases before, this will be the first time it has been used in the movement. Damascus steel is very hard and strong, and using such a material for the watch movement is very difficult. Since every Damascus steel pieces has a different pattern, there are 28 unique watches in this edition. It took us about one year to master using Damascus steel in this way, and the watchmakers, for sure, needed special tools to work the material and to decorate it (the bridges and plates are skeletonised and have clearly been beveled and chamfered).

With this watch, Sincere and Frank Muller have become one family, as represented by the mixture of different materials here (the different steel alloys and the rose gold of the case middle and crown). It is really about two entities, Sincere and Franck Muller, becoming the Yin and the Yang, as embodied in the intricate mix of materials seen in each Vanguard Damascus Steel Sincere Platinum Jubilee Edition.

Tell us more about the partnership then! It is a fascinating story that spans more than 30 years, as you noted.

Well, effectively there’s a million and one aspects to look at when you sell a watch, that’s for sure. We are Franck Muller, and we concentrate on designing and producing beautiful watches. We are then only as good as the agent, our partner in any given country. And with Sincere, we’ve been growing together for all these years and we’ve gone through ups and downs together. Sincere is very creative, just like we are creative. As I said, selling a watch is another craft, which is beautifully mastered by Sincere. I like to say it’s like bread and butter; one without the other is not so good.

So, the fact is, over the years, we have a proven track record together and this is because there a lot of similarities between us. We are both family companies and Sincere is very good at promoting our own values (because they are close to if not actually Sincere’s own values) in the market with clients. I think they have done a particularly good job in specializing in watch collectors and connoisseurs; they really take the time to educate their clients, as we were saying before and I think clients appreciate that. It’s one thing to learn about watches (and get) information on the Internet or social media, if it’s the right information, and another thing having a great personal experience inside the shop…and a beautiful shop as well!

That’s a wonderful segue, because now I can ask why Damascus steel here?

Well, first of all, why not? Secondly, because in the past, since we have had many milestones together, we’ve done tourbillons, the Cintree Curvex, and gem-set pieces. It was only appropriate for us to expand on this new material which we had presented in 2023 for the first time. This was a novelty for us, and we were all very excited about this great new material. And together we pushed it even further by using it inside the movement! I think it’s also appropriate for the market today because we don’t want to be doing so many tourbillons right now.

And it’s also a very creative experience for young watchmakers to enjoy a new material. We’ve seen a big trend in in the market enjoying new materials so yeah, it was just a natural step forward.

So, it was not a special request from the market then?

Well, Sincere is very good at bringing the information from the market up to us in Geneva so we appreciate the feedback and the knowledge of the local market. Of course, they listen to watch collectors everyday. From time to time, they send us this important information, but to be honest in this case (of the Vanguard Damascus Steel Sincere Platinum Jubilee Edition), we did not respond to the market; the watch was a result of us being creative and wanting to do something different in our watchmaking. Creativity, complications and designs are our number one priority. Because we have no shareholders, we also don’t need to worry about chasing margins every quarter. It is really about (the watchmaker) Franck Muller’s DNA, which is strongly embedded in the Watchland manufacture and the spirit of the brand itself. Many of our staff have worked with him (he retired in 2002), and we all treasure that.

This article first appeared on WOW’s Festive Issue #76

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