How Christopher Ward Became One of the Most Exciting Modern Watch Brands

Welcome to The Micro Collector, a podcast where I talk with the founders and operators behind some of the most exciting microbrands and independent watch companies. I'm your host, Justin Dorfman, and in today's episode, I'm joined by Mike Pearson, Senior Vice President of North America and Global Retail at Christopher Ward. Christopher Ward is one of those brands that has been hard to ignore over the last few years.

As a collector, I've watched it evolve from one of the original online disruptors in watches into something much bigger — a brand making serious, creative, technically ambitious watches while still holding on to the direct-to-consumer value proposition that made people pay attention in the first place. I've also seen Mike and the Christopher Ward team in person at collector events, and what always stood out to me was how human the brand felt, how well they connect with collectors and let the watches speak for themselves.

In this conversation, we talk about Mike's path into the industry, his time at Bremont and Zodiac, what brought him to Christopher Ward, and the brand's growth in North America. We also get into the showroom strategy, community, pricing transparency, and the watches that best show where the brand is today and where it's going. If you enjoy the episode, be sure to subscribe for more conversations with the people behind these incredible watch brands. And with that, please enjoy my conversation with Mike Pearson of Christopher Ward.

All right, Mike, welcome to The Micro Collector podcast. I am super excited to have you on today.

Thanks, Justin. It's going to be a great chat, I hope, as well.

Yeah, no, I've been looking forward to this one. I think my listeners — people who listen to or watch this podcast — I think you need no introduction. You and your brand need no introduction. We've all been to the WindUps and the various conferences, and we've seen your team, you and your team, in action, and it's an absolute marvel to watch. You guys are just incredible, so I was so excited to get you on.

Hear a little bit about your background and how you got into the watch world. We'll obviously go deep into what you guys are doing at Christopher Ward, but that's sort of the plan today. I guess for those maybe that don't know you so well, maybe give a little bit of an introduction to yourself. And I always like to ask the question of how you first got into watches, maybe personally before professionally.

Yeah, sure. Well, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to chat today. I've been in the industry for 20 years — way too long, which is crazy. I've been in America now for 20 years. If you were looking at how I got into watches, like most of us, it was as a young boy — you see your granddad wearing one. My dad was not a watch person. My granddad was gifted one after a certain amount of service at a metals works in the middle of England. I am from England and I live in America — I don't know if that was clear — but yeah, you see your granddad wearing a watch, a black dial, gold with a nice black tapered strap, and you just think, he always looks good. Guys of that generation always dressed well and I always felt that was fantastic.

Getting into the late '80s and early '90s, it was very much a case of just finding a bit of style. I liked how it looked on my wrist. My first watch, I'm not ashamed to say it, was an X-Files quartz that I got for like £20. It was tiny, but I've still got it. And then you go through the gears of size and you find an Adidas one or a Nike one, and some of the fashion ones that looked a bit more pricey, that sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. So there was Fossil,

and then there was Storm, which the Brits who are listening might know what that brand is. It had a really cool camera shutter for the dial to see it. And then, going into the career side, I worked on cruise ships and that was how I got my start into luxury. But the first watch I bought which had a real Swiss nuance was a TAG Carrera three-hander, white dial on a bracelet. And I loved it, but it was only until someone said, why did you buy that?

And then I had some questions about myself and found what I liked about it. And then asking reciprocal questions — why you might have bought that Breitling, or what does this Rolex mean for you? Or what is that brand, I've never heard of it? And at that point I was screwed. And by then I was working in it, and then I just never looked back really.

Very cool. And I've seen, obviously looking at your background, we know you as the face here in the US of Christopher Ward, right? But you've worked with some amazing brands actually prior to Christopher Ward as well. Two that really stand out to me are Bremont and then Zodiac — one that I'm personally very passionate about, and actually I'm wearing a vintage Zodiac right here to celebrate this conversation.

But tell me a little bit about those brands and the experiences of working with them, and maybe what you learned there that's influenced the way that you're now building Christopher Ward.

Wow. Well, there's a lot of years and a lot of experiences and a lot of stories within both of those brands. I've been with a couple either side of them as well. When you're going through your career moulding, when you're a young fella not from the country, you're still trying to find what's your brand. It's like, what's your style, what suits you? I joined a very small brand before Bremont, but we did a good few years there. I lived in Michigan and it was a brand called Ernst Benz, and we really launched it in a big way through the recession of '08.

So we were learning through mistakes, and we were learning at a time where no one thought that they could grow, should grow, but we did — through a lot of hard work and maybe naivety, in the best way, just kind of went for it. But it was only until I met Nick and Giles in Basel where you kind of — I think this is my first time really having a bit of a fan moment. Basel was brilliant for me, especially if you remember those late-2000s times, you could walk around and see Thierry Stern, you could see Hayek, you could see all these greats of

the industry. Segway had a drink in the Swiss Hotel next to Gérald Genta — hero moments, but I was so young that they didn't really hit me until all these years later how special it was. But I always remembered it. Nick and Giles were these two English guys — and I'd been in America for a few years — who were trying to bring back British watchmaking. They've lived a very, very full life. They were guys who liked cars, planes, boats, and bikes. We all do. And I just wanted to go up and say,

well done. Doing something different. Never any ulterior motives. It was just a case of I wanted to say hi. And we just hit it off. Within that next year, we got closer and I realized that I should really pivot and maybe see if I can grow something which I'm passionate about. There was something within me that I didn't know was there, which was — I'm a very proud Englishman and I know how to live and speak in America. Maybe this is the right thing to do. Nick and I both said, hey, let's just do six months and see, because I was

thinking about coming back to the UK, and that ended up being almost a decade of my life. It was the most exciting time to learn America. I always say that I did it through sport and music. The watches were the third part of it because I had no idea where to go, and I did it all from Michigan really. I did it from a place that was maybe undersold in terms of watches, but it was my fortress of solitude. It was my way of escaping watches, and you'd go to these great places, New York and LA and wherever, and then you'd come home

and people would just chill, and I'd go watch the soccer in my local pub and go walk around a lake in Michigan, and it just brought you back down to earth. But those times taught me who I was as a person, as a professional. It also taught me — which is probably the thing that's led me into where I am today — the power of community. We all have, especially when you do traditional selling, you've got to find those partners that can become your voice.

But there's nothing more powerful than a gent who has invested time to research you, seek you out, ask the questions, trust you with $2,000, $5,000 and say, you're my brand and I did this because of you. And those first few interactions, especially with Bremont, were life-changing in many ways because I learned my voice. So yeah, Bremont was probably the most impactful, important part of my watch journey in terms of the growth of myself. But I also made mistakes along the way.

To look across the tracks, you start to think, is this right? You also see that when you are a gent over in a certain part of the world, so much is going on at head office — are you really part of it? How can you affect it? So you learn yourself and you learn self-doubt, you learn self-motivation.

You also learn the power of a work ethic here in the US that maybe was never within you before, because it's necessary. There's a ton of competition, but more than anything, it's needed because if you don't answer the phone to a customer calling you,

they are used to a certain speed, and at that point they would say, I'll look at Bell & Ross, I'll look at Breitling — why would I care about this brand if that guy doesn't care to answer me? So really basic, but it really put the building blocks into hopefully how I work today.

To move into Zodiac — obviously we all went through a pandemic. I left Bremont, I came back, pandemic happened. They couldn't keep me, they couldn't keep a lot of us. It was really sad. And in all honesty, I fell out of love with watches. That was the one moment you're like, actually, I'm good. I've done my bit. That's my moment. Bremont was what my little legacy was in the watch industry. But no, the universe said, you've got some more to give. And I was approached by Zodiac — well, the Fossil Group. They had this really small

part of their business, and at one time Fossil was, what, a three-billion-dollar company, and they bought Zodiac, which is one of the first dive watches ever. They were like, we've got this thing, we do great with drops, great with color, but we want to get bigger and maybe you can help us. So it was consulting, which was going to be — I was going to do my own agency, but the more I had those chats with the team, I was like,

this is the best part of my day. This is the best part of my week. Let's do this more. Don't worry about the payment, let's just talk more.

And it kind of went from there, and then they offered a position, and it was one that was global, one that was impactful, one that could really, really make a difference. And so I did it. And we came to Dallas, to head offices for Fossil. I loved it. It was brilliant in a way, because all the things that I'd done with Bremont, it was like you were starting again but you had massive history — where with Bremont, you had all of this passion and all of this attitude, in the nicest way, but you were fighting

against all these brands that were saying, who are you, where are you from, why would you matter? Whereas Fossil, I say this with respect, they are the custodians of this name. This is what this name means to me, this is what it means to the Swiss industry, what it really means to America as well, because it was on so many wrists during Korea and Vietnam and it was a massive part of all of that.

And I loved it. It was an absolute pleasure. And I don't think anybody who works within the group would mind me saying that it didn't quite have the same ambition that maybe I did, and it's not quite doing what it did. At that time, Christopher Ward and Mike France had approached me quite a lot. And I love that they did that, because they saw in me something that was possibly missing. They saw what I'd done. Mike France is one of the smartest men I've ever met — but grudgingly

saying so, because when we have the chats he makes me feel that way as well.

But also, when he trusts you, what is brilliant is that he listens to you and he gives you the rope. So in the end, joining Christopher Ward was probably the best thing I've ever done, but I couldn't do what I'm doing now without the lessons that I've learned before.

Yeah, very cool story and very cool journey. And what a place that you landed, with Christopher Ward. What was sort of the role, the mandate for you when you joined Christopher Ward? And what did you find intriguing about it? What was it that pulled you towards saying, you know what, this is the next step in my journey?

Well, a lot of it — Mike knew that I had a voice in America, and he knew that I believed in community. That's what I truly believe he saw within me.

They'd done a few WindUps, and I'd been past and across the booth with Zodiac and walked through different halls and seen them. I say this in a few of the podcasts over the years: I had my British blinkers on. I was the guy that grew Bremont — I can't look at other British watches. But the more you see them working together, it wasn't a 2D screen. It was not an online brand. It was direct-to-consumer and you could only really buy it on christopherward.com.

But when you meet the people and you hear the stories, there was a humanity that was missing. And so I felt I could bring that humanity to the States. I could tell Mike and Peter's story. I could talk about the team that does the marketing and people that have been there forever, like Declan Strange and Olivia, who came to all of those events. And when I saw how they worked — one day Olivia was just holding one watch and I picked it up, first time I'd ever picked up a Christopher Ward. It was a bronze scratch dial Trident. And I went,

how much is this? And you know, I'm used to other brands, I've been around a lot of brands, and they said, that's about $1,300. And I didn't get it until that moment. The reason why they're growing is because of the value and everything like that. But I do not want to talk about the money.

I felt the quality. I felt that a lot of the community needed to handle this watch, to have that moment that I had and go, how the heck are they doing this? And it's all 22 years old of — it's the power of three: whatever it costs, we increase it by three, that's how we get a retail price. And all I saw was opportunity to go to different cities and towns and states and watch groups. And instead of going to retailers, I went to the people that would become the ambassadors.

And when I joined, they already had a fantastic community. They'd already had the Bel Canto. There was already so much momentum.

But what I felt was really important — the Bel Canto wasn't Christopher Ward. That was just the catalyst of showing what the rest of it should be, which is Sealanders, Trident, and Twelves. They're the lifeblood of what the brand is. And I wanted the world to understand that. Because if you put your head above the pulpit and you've got a Sonnerie au Passage or an in-house movement or a moon phase of your own in-house module, that's amazing. But that might just be one tiny part of what this brand was.

And it had to be with the community activation. So my chat with Mike was that. I said, do not worry about me. Do not try and put reins on me. Listen to the places I'm going to go. There's a strategy there and we'll go for it. And my God, did we go for it. So the last almost three years now have been a whirlwind. A lot of people joke that there's two or three of me, which nobody in this world needs, but I do travel and I move fast. But I also

know that this can't be like this forever in terms of my energy. Not because I'll burn out, but because I want to do other things with the brand, and that could only happen with showrooms. So we've now got four of them with a fifth on the way and a very ambitious plan to put a lot of them across North America, so we can take the 2D page into people's hands. And the team, who I'm really proud to have assembled, might be some of the best people I've ever met.

And that's an extension of, I think, what Christopher Ward represents.

Yeah, it's really interesting to hear about that journey. And I know what you're saying — I always think, man, Mike is everywhere. I see you on Instagram and you're at every show, you're at all the watch collector groups, and you've also built an amazing team around you, right?

Yeah, that's the best part of it.

which, you know, you go to the shows and there's only one Mike — there's, you know, a hundred people standing at the Christopher Ward booth. So you need those people around you to be able to, and I've engaged with them at the shows and I can see that the quality of talent that you've put around you and the training that these folks have gone through is working. I mean, it's amazing to watch. But to your point, one thing that I've noticed — Christopher Ward as a brand was one of those first direct-to-consumer online brands. And now there seems to be a clear extension of that strategy, I would say.

Yeah.

which is the showrooms. And it seems like you guys are going full in on that. I think now you have, what, seven showrooms, is that right?

In the world, there's three in the UK and four here with a fifth on the way, yes.

So tell me a little bit more about the thinking behind that. Obviously you guys are investing heavily in it. What are you hoping that investment will lead to? What's the purpose behind the investment? And obviously it must be a new learning for you, setting up all these showrooms. What have you learned so far? What are some of the key learnings that you've had so far in that process?

It's hard. That's the first thing. But it's actually been the skill set that I never thought I'd enjoy the most. So finding a space ended up being one of the passions of mine,

because I don't want us to be in traditional shopping areas. I think we've got to be a little bit adjacent, because there is an investment, but I'm also very aware that if we're first-level shopfront, next to Lululemon and Victoria's Secret or Nordstrom or Watches of Switzerland, you're going to be paying for that. Whereas I believe that Christopher Ward people had to find us on the website. They'd had to go to the socials or get the Loupe magazine. And then they have to trust — do I buy this?

I still believe that people do that, but if you are in a catchment area of two, three hundred miles, some people will come. So if you — let me take Dallas, for example. I found an office building which has got dentists, mortgage advisors, and then underneath there was a really great bourbon bar. There's a really great diner. But

if you walked up the stairs and walked through the door, you'd go, I'm in a Christopher Ward showroom. It didn't matter where you were, because it was easy to get to, there was parking, it was safe, and there was no need for glass. There was no need for pretentiousness, with respect. And it was a case of, welcome to our home, let's go for it. What do you know? What do you need to know? What have you always wanted to try on? And it ended up being that really beautiful kind of natural flow of experience and experiences.

And it was more about listening than talking. In this scenario, I'm talking a lot, I'm aware. But when it comes to listening to the customers, it's brilliant when they just say, I've been following you since 2010. I've seen things on Reddit and it's intrigued me, but how can I give $1,000 if I think it's going to be not great?

Well, come on over, let me show you what we are today. I've got a box of watches to show you what we were. Let me tell you the journey we were on. It's just so nice, but it's very much hand-holding and passing around. I always say that in our showrooms we get your steps in — we definitely walked our floor. Once Dallas worked, which was a passion project, we were able to build some more. Very quickly we found one in Northern Virginia, just outside of DC, and New York City — basically on the same trip, I found a place.

Peter wanted Brooklyn. They saw what we did and they go, Brooklyn's cool. I'm like, but if you're going to do New York, do New York. So we found a place in Soho, but instead of being on the floor, we went to the fourth floor. Is anyone going to know we're there? Well,

if you go to a good speakeasy, you're always going to tell your friends if you have a good time, right? So we're like the above-ground speakeasy in New York City, and that's my flagship. That's my gold standard. And again, it leans into not polish, but you feel like you're in Soho and you feel like you're in a Christopher Ward showroom. And then we did the same thing for Chicago. But what I think my proudest thing about that is that you find

people who are better than you. We've got a great architect, we've got a great designer, and we've got a good design language. I'm pretty good now at finding the people who can build this, and our contractors. The legalities — we've got a lawyer, we've got Peter Ellis, who is a machine, he just knows what's going on. But there's a lot of moving parts, and when I'm doing that,

I can't do the events and I can't build the brand in a different way. So we are looking to add to my team, which is going to help me be able to find the next spot. They can take that project and we can move faster. So I wouldn't be able to do that part unless I slowly learnt what was needed. And we're going to take, you know, a five, six month project to get one open, and we'll try to get that down — not because we're in a hurry, but we feel like right now there's a lot of people that want to see

and feel Christopher Ward. And next week I'm going to be in Miami and the amount of people like, about time, where have you been, why haven't you been here yet — I'm like, now I need to get cloned, because I feel like I'm letting people down. And so I just don't want anyone to feel like we don't care. So these showrooms will be attainable and hopefully easily reached by the end of the next five years, just about everywhere.

Very cool. I'm excited. I haven't actually been to one yet, and I'm really excited to check one out. I'm going to be in New York for WindUp in a couple months, so I'll check out the showroom there. Maybe that'll be my first experience in one of the showrooms.

I think that's going to be nuts, because the show of New York — there's 10,000 people that go to that show, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And it's in Midtown, and so we're not too far away in Soho, but I think that the showroom's going to get absolutely blasted.

Okay, we'll see. You know, at some point you're going to have to bring one here to the West Coast. I'm—

That's next.

—in the Bay Area, so I think there's definitely a crowd waiting for the showroom here as well.

Well, Justin, that is not too hard for me to say now. If it all works out well and touch wood, we'll be coming to you next.

The other sort of transformation — not transformation, but I'd say evolution — that I've seen of Christopher Ward: there's sort of online to in-person experiences. The other is, Christopher Ward, you kind of touched on this, has always been seen as this value brand — you get a lot for what you pay for. But I think you guys are taking that to an extreme now, with some of the watchmaking chops and the technical ambition that you've shown.

Maybe you can tell us a little bit about that transformation as well, the thinking behind it. And maybe for those that aren't as familiar with the collection — if somebody's going to go to the website after listening to this and they want to see that in action, what are some of the models that really stand out and kind of show where Christopher Ward is going in terms of that technical ambition?

No, that's a brilliant question. Really loaded as well, so I'll be as brief as I can. I said at the beginning, there's Sealander, Twelve, and Trident. Sealander has got that really lovely fixed-bezel GMT or the polished-bezel automatic watch. This has had a really big refit recently. A lot of them were entry-level, but the automatic had the SW200, which is a great workhorse, but there was some refinement that that collection needed and it now has it. So the GMTs come in 36, 39,

or 42mm. The automatics do 39 and 36. There's an array of colours that really, really stand out. But the best thing about that collection is it shows, for me, the best thing in Christopher Ward, and that's our case work. If you turn the watch to the side — we call it Light Catcher — the way that it moves on the wrist, the best example I can say is that if you take some of the heritage brands, a lot of those brands want to look like heritage watches, which means they are kind of caught in that middle of, it has to look like the old watches,

which were slabbed or round-sided. That's how metal was done back then. To do anything that was handcrafted or to have more shape and nuance, it was very much more on the artisan side of things. Whereas Christopher Ward, as long as we can mould it to fit the wrist — I mean, this is the Sealander Extreme on my wrist now, this is a little bit more brushed, but 41 millimeters — look how that sits on the wrist just there. I mean,

they should hug you, they should fit you, but also, as much as we take pictures with it straight on, when I'm holding my wife's hand or I'm driving a car, when the light moves on that case — that for me is what makes Christopher Ward special. The Sealander does that in abundance. Trident is where I love to introduce younger people or people who want to get something of size. Trident is a dive watch which can go anywhere, do anything — a lot of high polish to it, lovely ceramic bezels, great dials, matching color date wheels, but you've got size in there as well, legibility. And that's probably the biggest part of Christopher Ward now, because you've got it not just in steel and sizes, you've got the aluminum version,

you've got the bronze version, you've got titanium with better movements, but between $800 to two and a half grand you can go to town. And then there's The Twelve, which is that 1970s architecture that Gérald Genta introduced to the world, but done in our way — steel and titanium, different sizes. And that was the fire that was burning after the Bel Canto, because as much as the Bel Canto, which we'll get into, changed us, that model showed what we can do in terms of fit and finish, design, everything about it kind of showed the best of Christopher Ward. So they're the three

pillars that we stand on. When you look into the past of Christopher Ward, this year celebrates 12 years of us having our own in-house movement. It was called SH21.

That's now been rebranded to CW001. But then in the last few years — this kind of shows the fast-forwardness of us — we have a six-day in-house power reserve, our own free-sprung balance wheel. That's called the Loco, and that was a revelation. We had a movie about that on YouTube. And then very recently we came out with the True GMT, which has got that five days of in-house power.

We're one of only 12 brands in the world that's got that. So between those in-house movements and the core, the thing in the middle is, for me, the magic. If you were going to say what's the best of us — the in-house nuts and bolts, what we are, the core — but what gives a collection its own differentiation would be what it does. Our own moon phase module or our own jump hour, or the superstar of the show, the Bel Canto. We—

I had no idea that it would sell like it did. It sold out on its first day, where we thought it would take a year to sell that many models. So the next day we showed a picture and it sold out again within the hour. So in essence, we'd sold two years' worth of stock, hadn't built any, and the next job for Christopher Ward was to grow up. And I think that's now where we are —

grown up. And to go back to the point, we're not limited by design because we've not come from a heritage. We're also not limited with the kind of watches we can do, or the scale and scope of the collection. We're not sitting in a six-foot showcase or three-foot showcase. We're sitting on the internet, and these showrooms are an extension of that. So,

120 models — some things go away, new things come all the time, but we're very fluid. We've got a lot of fun within us. And I always say, if you've never held one and you've got your preconceived ideas because of how we sell or the price, just come and have a look. And if you don't like it, great. But if you can get to see a collector or a friend of yours that's got one, or near a showroom or a show, give us a shout. We'd love to show you how special the brand really is.

One thing that you touched on that I think is so interesting about Christopher Ward, that is a huge differentiator, I think, is that 3x production cost sort of pricing as well. You touched on it a little bit earlier, but maybe for those that aren't familiar with that side — now that we've given them a good overview of the collection, maybe tell us a little bit about that. And the question that I have for you is, as the brand continues to grow and evolve and introduce new models, is that something that we're going to continue to see? How important is that to the essence of the brand? Has it been challenging maintaining that? And where do you see it going in the future — is it a core pillar that remains?

It is a core pillar. It isn't changing. The watches have got better, which means at some moments you might say, that's more than what Christopher Ward was.

But also, when you look at what this watch is — under two grand — and it's phenomenal. And I know what this would cost in other brands. And I also know that the other brands, when they sell traditionally, they're inside of a store, and that person deserves to get paid. They market globally, that needs to be paid for. They're in these really beautiful boxes or presentation cases in the showroom, they need to be paid for. All of that goes into the cost of the watch. What we did — and that's 22 years to today — Mike France, Peter Ellis, and Chris Ward said, if you can build a

watch like this and we sell it this way, as in on the internet, the power of three gives us enough money and gives the customer the best watch. It's attainable luxury, hopefully for all. Or at least it's somewhere that you can see where you've got your G-Shock to your Seiko to your Citizen, to jumping in — we can be in that conversation. But I think 22 years later, we can also, because of the in-house movements or the in-house modules or just the quality of the core, you can find guys and girls who are buying all the big boys with a CW sitting in

there as well. So it's really, really important. It's not going anywhere. We just don't have the margin for it. And as much as I love retail, if we go into a retail store, it becomes a different conversation. I always say, with respect, if I'm inside of a store and you want to sell us, we just wouldn't be able to give you the margin to make it worth your time. So what we're doing, for us and for our consumers, is keeping that clean all the way through. We have had challenges. The world is going through what it's going through now. And I think the biggest challenge that we all had

recently was, firstly, COVID, obviously, and we navigated that pretty well because we were already an online brand, and during COVID people started to trust buying things online more than ever. So in terms of us understanding the internet when people were catching up, we were okay, and that's been beautiful that we could come through it. It was scary when you talk to Mike and Peter through those times and the people that were working there, but they found a way and we managed to get some watches on a lot of great people's wrists, which has stood us in good stead.

And I also think people understood our mantra and our model through COVID more, because you couldn't help but go online and do your research, which is an old thing that Mike loves to say. And so the internet was a friend to us when it was so unkind to so many. But then obviously this year we faced, all of us, new American tariffs, which — for right or for wrong, it's in place, and navigating it has been difficult. So what we wanted was to never kind of put those prices on our consumers.

As much as it's a value-for-money brand, 39% on top of our brand was a lot. So we found a way of sending the watch into ourselves — because usually we just send straight to you, and the tariffs went off of retail price. We sent it into ourselves, took the hit of the tariffs on wholesale, and that power of three helped us, which meant that the prices did not need to go up for our customers. And away we go. And honestly, the last five years, we've only ever had a 5% increase in, I think, cost to build.

That's been keeping it as close to the margin bones as we can. And so when you see a watch that comes in at six grand, that's because it's an in-house movement, it's got everything going on. But if you look into the core of Christopher Ward, we're still sub-$2,000 for the majority of what we sell. So it's a special place. It's still a chunk of change, but I think that we've lived up to the hype — because people talk about us — by showing, hopefully, that the watches have got legs.

You had mentioned earlier, when you were talking about your experience at Bremont, your learnings there and how you took it forward — as you sort of look at this point in your career at Christopher Ward, what are some of the biggest learnings that you've taken from this experience so far?

Gosh. We were a bigger brand than we were a company when I joined, and catching up is a really important thing. Customer service has always been key to me, but putting yourself out there has been a really important lesson, and also empowering the people around me to know that it's okay to talk, and to loosen the fear of being honest and open and having empathy, having sympathy. The Swiss industry is beautiful, but sometimes it can be a little bit stuck up in certain places where we don't need to

be. We can say sorry, we can move on. So the basics have just been reiterated, but the power of community — as much as it was massive when I started, more than ever, they're the people that you have to listen to. On a business sense, I've learnt more about how to manage people than I ever thought possible, because you could find a great salesperson that's going through whatever they're going through in life, and if they're not happy, how can you make the customer happy? And so, again, it goes back down to basics, but every single level of

your career — forget titles or whatever you do — I do think it's down to people, and I'm still learning about them. I'm learning about myself, and long may that continue.

I was going to ask you on that front. Has it been hard for you to delegate? I mean, personally, that's one of the biggest challenges.

That's a great question.

It's one of the biggest challenges I've had in my career, right? And seeing just how good you are at what you do, I think people with that trait, it's hard for them to delegate. It's hard for them to put that responsibility in other people's hands. You're just talking about the importance of people and surrounding yourself with great people, enabling great people, managing great people. How has that process been for you? Has it been challenging, or what have you learned in that?

Yeah, it is challenging, I think. I'll go on the worst side of it: when these events are on, I position myself in the middle — not because of ego, but I feel like I can see the room in a different way because of the experiences that I've got. I also love to welcome people. And then what I have found within those tables is, we've delegated down the road, because I feel like that team member can talk about that project. I'm not there to say everything about everything. I'll go into a room that's now got a great manager and a great team, and our customers in there, I don't have to say, hey, how are you, what are you looking at — and that's

just my personality trait. But I'm also like, Jacob's got you, you know, Martha's going to come and look after you now. I'm doing better. But the events — the one telltale sign that I was really proud of is I

gave the event to other people. Like, I'm not there anymore for all of them. And that showed the world the sky's not going to fall because I'm not there, but I really do care. And that all comes down to a trust of one person. I think Mike France trusted me here with his baby in the biggest market. And he found me a guy called Trey — Trey Foote. He came from Richemont Group. Anybody who's met Trey will know that he's the salt of the earth. He is a really special person. And what was great is, when we started to build this showroom together, he came in

when I found the space. I'd already built it, but we needed to cut the wood. We added the walls — we have someone to do that now, but we didn't have the budget then,

and he took off his shoes and we built the furniture. He held the wood while we nailed it in. We really did build that first showroom together, and I trusted him from that minute on. What was great — and this is probably the big telltale sign of how it's become easier to delegate — is that once we opened the showroom, we had to obviously sell the watches, and we didn't have the processes that we do now, and we certainly will have better processes of selling going forward. But that first day, we were not too far into ever being able to do that.

In our recent past, we've never really had an American showroom, obviously, for this type of level of selling. But he was brilliant, and I said, right, you do that. He said, what do you mean? I said, if I get down and dirty into the nitty-gritty of those systems, I'm going to be in them all the time. But if you know this, and I'll build this, and we come together on what process means and how I think it should look — let's see how that works.

So every single time we onboard a new person: how you doing, my name is, this is the brand, let's go. Trey's going to train you on this, and I'm going to train you on that. And then now we've got these great managers and they're doing it as well. And so for the first time ever in my life, I knew that there was something I wasn't brilliant at.

And it's not — I'm not brilliant at everything, at all — but that side, I knew that he was one million times better than me. But I also knew that if I didn't have the ideas to help with what I thought it should look like, he couldn't build it, right? So there's been a really lovely camaraderie. So I would say that that man there — and you always find one person, maybe in a relationship as well, sometimes you talk to them more than you do your spouse — but yeah, that guy's been brilliant for me, and he's taught me that you've got to delegate. So I am getting better. I am not the finished article.

Yeah, well, you inspired me. I gotta find my Trey.

Yeah, we all need a Trey. Get a t-shirt: I need my Trey.

Awesome. Well, to close things out, maybe you can give us just a quick glimpse into what's coming next for Christopher Ward. I know you can't say specifics necessarily, but what can we expect? And I always also like to ask, what's the next major milestone or next big thing that you guys are hoping to achieve — the next ambition that Christopher Ward has? Is it expanding the showrooms to more? Is it a new model milestone? What's sort of the next big phase for the brand?

Well, anyone who knows Christopher Ward knows that we're not just going to say that's us done in the summer for watch releases. We've definitely got a few more to come. There are some pieces within our collection that will be evolved. There'll be some maturation throughout the whole of the line. Not to give anything away, but the end of this year might be my favorite ever expansion into any core that I've ever seen of any of the brands I've been with. I'm a big believer in the stuff that's coming out. And I know — we're recording this mid-August, so end of August you'll see the start

of that, and that'll carry on through the year. So watch-wise, no matter what question you ask me or anyone asks me, I know that Christopher Ward has no worries on the watches, and I'm so proud of the direction we're going in, because we stand on 22 years, I think, of a really wonderful pedigree. In terms of my personal ambition within Christopher Ward now, it's the showrooms, but it's also the people within the showrooms. So I've alluded to the West Coast — let's go. I'd love to look in the middle again, and you think about Atlanta or Arizona or Colorado, or down south

in Florida — there's so many places that want us to go and see them, and we just haven't been able to just yet. But if we can get some good dots of wonderful showrooms, I think we're going to reach more people than ever. And here's the big one for me personally, an ambition: to have someone who can help me do these events. I think if I can find someone who can take that load off of me and delegate more, I think that we'll have more scale and scope to have some fun and make sure these showrooms and these experiences are different. But as a brand,

probably I would say we are hugely popular in the US now, and we do really well in the UK — obviously it's home team — but I think that if we can look at places like Asia, the Middle East, mainland Europe, Australasia, and get a real good footing in there because of the processes we're building now,

I think we've got a real special chance to really grow even more. We entered into the top 50 brands in the Morgan Stanley report this year. That brought a lot of questions like, who the hell are you, where have you been? But if you looked at us in the grand scale of things, nine out of ten people on the high street still don't know who we are, which is exciting because it means we've got more stories to tell. But I see nothing but wonderful things — if we can stay humble, keep the watches growing as they are, and find really good partners,

quite proud of the direction.

Well, Mike, this has been such a great conversation. I was really looking forward to this. As I said, watching you, watching the brand over the last couple of years, has just been amazing. So hearing a little bit of the story behind it and getting a glimpse into how the inner workings work has been just a pleasure. So thank you so much for taking the time, sharing your story with us, and have a great rest of your day over there.

Thank you. The questions were brilliant, and I loved our time together.