In this series that is featured every month, “Day & Night” focuses on individuals or brands that have impacted the world of haute horlogerie positively… In this issue, our spotlight is on Richard Benc, Founder of Studio Underd0g. Many a dark cloud has a silver lining and one such of the COVID lockdown was the efflorescence of talent that was the result of many people sitting at home. One horological brand that resulted is the Studio Underd0g. Officially launched in the March of 2021, the marque has established its reputation among horological aficionados with its irreverent take on the serious world of watchmaking, with thousands of people expressing interest as soon as their website announces a new piece
A designer by choice
Richard Benc confesses that he had no interest in watches earlier; it was the world of design that fascinated him. “I have a background in industrial product design and, when I was studying that, I didn’t know the watch world existed. I had no interest in horology. But when I was designing products, whether it be a shampoo bottle or a golf trolley or anything else, I always gravitated towards designing smaller objects. When I graduated, I was keen on designing small objects because it’s all in the details – the kind of refined design choices that are subtle. Sometimes, you don’t know why you appreciate a product, but you just do; it could be due to the reflections, or a facet here, or a chamfer there.”
Though he was always drawn towards smaller objects, Benc never connected that with watch design until Lady Luck played a role in bringing them together. “I was applying for roles in London. That’s where I wanted to live once I graduated and started working. It was difficult to find any sort of design consultancy roles in London. I was looking and applying at different places, and I ended up stumbling into a company that designs watches – fashion watches and character watches for various brands. And even at that point, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself in for. I borrowed my dad’s watch for the interview as I didn’t have an understanding of watches.”
New horizons open up
But as soon as Benc bagged that position, his eyes opened to the endless possibilities. “Once I was able to appreciate horology, I started to discover all the things that I loved about the industry – discovering new micro brands that were coming to market and refining my design skill sets. I was working in a consultancy company that designed watches. It was a licensing company and some of the first projects I worked on were under license – a lot of character watches, such as Minions, Star Wars, Peppa Pig. They’re cool and they are fun watches, but very different. Most brand owners that you speak to, will have trained for years in horology. My first watch was a Minions watch. You press a button, and a disc would fly out – a good children’s watch.”
It was then that Benc experienced an epiphany and discovered something about himself. “This was me. I figured out how much I enjoyed designing watches, whether they were for six-year-old kids or for serious collectors; the design process is similar. That was my discovery of the industry; I enjoyed the process and spent a good 5-6 years working for the German brand Braun, which has a Bauhaus vibe – very minimalist in terms of its design. That’s where I was able to refine my skill sets.”
Kickstarting the brand
Life often throws us a googly when we least expect it, and this was no different for Benc. A change came through by means of the pandemic. As he puts it, “It is also a little bit about timing, it was the right time and the right place for me when the lockdown happened. I was stuck at home. I had nothing to do. All the pubs were shut, and I couldn’t see my friends. So, I set myself a design brief. I said I wanted to do something different. Bear in mind all the design work that I had been doing up until that point was Bauhaus, in terms of its style. We are talking black or white dials only, nothing else really. Considering this background, I guess me starting the brand in the way I did was a form of rebellion against that; I wanted to use colour. I wanted to be playful. I wanted it to be fun while still working towards a serious piece. By this point, I was very much into the industry. I was starting to collect pieces of my own. I realised that there are a lot of refined decisions that one makes as a customer or as a collector, and it’s all in the details. It can just be a small little bit of text on the dial or a slight alignment of a chapter ring that that can throw you off. It is these micro decisions that you make as a customer, and these have to be considered at the design process – at the infancy of the brand. So that was the kind of brief that I set myself. I wanted to design something fun – a whimsical watch that could also be considered as a serious piece – to kill the extra time that I had and increase my skill set.”
Stand-out factor
The watch industry has seen a huge number of new watch brands on Kickstarter, but sadly around 90% of them haven’t made it past the first year. What is astonishing about Studio Underd0g is that though it featured on Kickstarter only three years ago, the kind of demand and growth that the brand has seen since then has been pretty incredible. Benc explains it as, “I’d say one of the most unique and key factors that led to the success of the business was that I wasn’t thinking commercially. I didn’t set myself a brief to design a watch that could sell as much as possible. My brief was I wanted to give myself a design challenge. When I set myself that brief, I didn’t even have any ambition to launch it. I wanted to do a design project and I was hoping that if the response was good then maybe I could continue developing it. But as far as I was concerned, it was just a design project and after I completed some renders, I posted them online.”
“I thought that was going to be the end of the project, but because they got such good feedback, it developed as a step-by-step process. I decided to work with some suppliers that I knew. Through my industry experience, I had already been to Hong Kong, China, Switzerland, and had a network of suppliers. So, it developed in steps. First, it was ‘Let’s make some samples.’ When people liked the samples. ‘OK, let’s see if we can do a crowdfunding campaign to introduce this product.’ This was the essential difference of how studio Underd0g started versus other brands. A lot of other brands would have looked at the market first. They would have researched which dive watches sold best? Were automatic watches selling more? Or manual watches? What colour dials? And so on.
“Because I wasn’t thinking commercially, I came up with a watermelon-themed column wheel chronograph. If I had consulted any business expert, they would have asked, ‘Where’s the market for that?’ I think that was what made us stand out, allowed us to be different and led to our continued success. I was massively surprised when I posted the designs and the content online before launching. I was getting good feedback, but it’s a different thing, asking people to crowdfund a brand that doesn’t exist. Would people really want to put their hard-earned cash towards something like that?”
Incredible growth
Benc admits being quite surprised with the initial response, and fact that the Kickstarter hit its goal incredibly quickly. This allowed Benc to start the brand as this was proof that there’s a market where people liked what he was doing. This went up a level, once the product was ready and because Benc already had a good network of suppliers, people were getting their watches and wearing them. “It has really snowballed since then, and the brand has grown incredibly fast.”
Now that Studio Underd0g has unveiled its Series 2 collection, it is no longer possible to buy any of the Series 1 watches on their website. This, Benc admits, is because “Production hasn’t caught up with the demand.” Benc’s first step in dealing with this issue is “Honesty and transparency, so I communicate not just issues we’re facing but the limitations in terms of production also. I wouldn’t call it an issue or a negative, as this assures our clients that we are building watches to the highest quality that we can. We are assembling our watches in the UK now and in our first month we’ve managed to assemble over 1,000 watches. A year ago, we were assembling a few hundred only. We have definitely scaled up but, as we scale, the visibility of the brand and the demand also scales up, so we’re always kind of playing catch up.
“We’re very open about what we are doing; the way we do things now is, rather than introducing a limited quantity of watches, we open up the order book for a limited time. The last time we opened our order window was in March, when we opened it up for 9 hours. Anyone can place an order in that time; we then closed the order books after those nine hours and just put all our energy, all our efforts into fulfilling those orders and getting our watches on people’s wrists. We’re probably not going to reopen our order window until towards the end of the year, as we are now sold out for the next 6-7 months.”
The time frame for how long they are sold out for is based on the demand that the brand sees. Benc explains, “If we had sold 100 watches within a couple of weeks, we’d be releasing products again. But we sold slightly less than 6,000 watches in the last drop in March, which was incredible. This is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, which means now our full concentration is on the assembly and the fulfilment of those orders”.
Challenges
Now that the brand is assembling its watches in the UK, one of the major problems faced by Benc is the lack of trained watchmakers locally. “Historically, London was a centre of watchmaking, but that has completely disappeared. Now there is a push to put London and the UK back in the horological world. It’s challenging, it’s difficult and we essentially had to grow that talent ourselves. If you want to assemble a watch in Switzerland, for example, you have ample suppliers. But if you want to potentially work in the UK and want to assemble 1,000 watches a month, there is nothing available. We’ve had to grow that ourselves. When I started Studio Underd0g, I had one watchmaker, Raphael. He was assembling all of my watches pretty much in his living room. Now he’s grown a team of around 14 to 16 people, of whom 8-9 are part of the assembly team and we’ve been able to build that.”
“The challenge is not only finding the talent, but train everyone to build that up. This means that we’re quite proud to say that our watches are assembled in Great Britain. This is an interesting kind of dilemma and something that I’ve been thinking about. The Swiss-made label carries a lot more value, whereas assembled in Great Britain is of lesser value. It does not carry a huge cachet, but for me the ‘Assembled in Great Britain’ message is something that we have worked hard to build. It’s something that we feel is quite an important part of our brand because it’s not easy to do; it is a challenge and for those who appreciate it, it makes a difference.
Studio Underd0g creations are available in the region at Perpétuel on https://perpetuel.com/
