The best piece of advice I’ve ever received came from a shirtless, fire-breathing hippie named Tyson.
One evening in my early twenties, for a reason I can’t remember, I was having a hard time. My friend Tyson walked up to me and with his dreadlocks flowing in the breeze, said to me, ‘Mitch, if you’re ever stressed out in life, all you have to do is focus on your next breath.’ Wise, if a bit obvious, words from someone who was perpetually barefoot.
Remembered well, his advice has pulled me through hard times and accompanied me on good ones too. Making sure you’re still breathing is an important part of life after all. Although Tyson works at a bank these days, and probably wears shoes, he’s the closest thing to a prophet I’ve ever met. If there is such a thing. In hindsight, what he was talking about that night was the benefit of slicing our lives up into smaller more manageable chunks, so as not to get overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. Or maybe he was just high… I’ll never know.
Almost twenty years later, I visualise his concept a little differently now. Our pre-set intervals of time, 60 minutes, 24 hours, 30 and 365 days I see as the rungs of a ladder. Rungs with which we can use to climb through our lives one step at a time. I try not look too far past the next step or I’ll lose my footing. The only step that matters is the next one. Make sense? We can do almost anything if we break things into small enough pieces.
Minutes, hours, days. Using these predetermined measurements is a useful, albeit, sterile way to live our lives. But what if we could measure our moments differently? What if we took a leaf out of Tyson’s magical book and used a more romantic interval of time? Something more akin to poetry than the 60s and 24s we’re used to. Well, Neufchatel-based brand Kerbedanz may have just what we need, with a little sparkle thrown in for good measure.
This is a story about an important birthday, a brand-new CEO and a watch that gives you something to look forward to, once every 65 minutes and 27 seconds.
First section done, breathe…. On to the next one.
The Kerbedanz Most Important Personalities
Kerbedanz was founded in 2011 by collector and marketing man Kalust Zorik, and artist, designer and engineer Aram Petrosyan. In the early years, the brand almost exclusively produced one-off creations for what they call MIPs, or “Most Important Personalities”. This was a group of discerning collectors that the brand was cautious to choose.
Mr Zorik mentions on their website;
“We chose our audience, which we called MIP, or Most Important Personalities”, “They were the most demanding watch lovers, who wanted, through watches, an expression or their values, worldview and personal symbols, they encouraged and followed us”.
The confidence possessed to only sell watches to people that you select is monumental on Mr Zorik’s part. Usually, a new brand would sell to anyone with blood in their veins and a heart beating in their chest. Imagine saying no to someone because they weren’t right, when your brand is only a year old. Confidence is everything.
The idea of having a curated collector base is an interesting one that, when I think about it, brands like Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet do today almost accidentally. Although deciding who they sell to based on prior spend is a different beast to the philosophical and personality preferences of Kerbedanz. Perhaps there’s value in this selective growth, there’s certainly value in selective allocation. I like how Zorik and Petrosyan didn’t just open their taps into the sink in their early years, they filled up their favourite cups first.
When I look at the 65’27’’, it makes me think of all the ways I use intervals of time in my life. I count the minutes until my wife comes home, remember how many years I have left with my kids, and try not to take anything for granted.
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Learn MoreInterestingly, Mr Zorik also mentions on their website that although they had these chosen MIP’s, the traditional watchmaking ‘value chains’ or production methods weren’t set up for the kind of ultra-niche watches they wanted to produce for them. This makes sense, developing one-off watches is incredibly inefficient. Think about developing tooling and skillsets for a piece-unique, then never using it again. It’s not great for the P&L.
To combat this, they invested early in specialist machinery and a team that was capable of working at a minute scale. Focusing on individual optimisations instead of volume. For their future projects, this puts them in an incredible position to uphold their independence and have the creative and technical freedom that a man like Aram Petrosyan requires. For him, creative Flexibility is key. You don’t want anything so frivolous as an MOQ or accounting limitation getting in the way.
By 2016, that brand had produced 200 pieces for their MIPs, with 160 of them being tourbillon and a vast majority also being unique pieces. With no economies of scale, they didn’t even have a catalogue until 2014, it must have been like starting again every single time. Exclusionary customer selection works well, who would have thought.
These days, Kerbedanz still offers these one-off creations, now called ‘Singularities’ but have gone on to introduce a more commercial collection, if you could call it that, of enormous tourbillon watches and mono pusher chronographs. By the way, when I say enormous, I mean it. The Maximus’ Central Tourbillon cage is 27 mm across and takes six minutes to complete a full rotation. It’s officially the largest tourbillon in a wristwatch. Bonkers. You can see Aram Petrosyan’s school of thought when it comes to design here. Big, bold and uncompromising. Which is why their new watch, the 65’27’’, comes as such a surprise.
The Kerbedanz 65’27’’
Just like my friend Tyson told me all those years ago, the 65’’27’’ is all about making the passing of time feel special, important, and easy. Looking straight on, it’s incredibly simple. We have a Breguet-style minute hand and a rotating disc with a diamond indicating the hour. The dial itself is clean and was developed with the help of Comblémine, Kari Voutilainen’s dial workshop. Seems simple enough, but it wouldn’t be an Aram Petrosyan-designed watch without something that makes you lean in a little.
As the hour disc rotates, the diamond will be magnified by the circle on the minute hand at intervals that at first don’t make any sense. Instinctively, my brain assumed that they would overlap once an hour. Seems obvious now that I think about it, but it’s not true. This is where the watch’s name, 65’’27’’, comes in.
There’s some maths involved here, so buckle up. The overlap of the minute hand happens 11 times every full rotation of the hour disc. So 12 hours / 11 meeting points = 1.090909… × 60 = 65.4545 minutes. 0.4545 × 60 = 27.27. So, every 65 minutes, and 27 seconds (approximately), the diamond and the minute hand line up perfectly. Giving you a completely organic feeling moment.
But wait, there’s more. The mathematical universe must be on their side because those numbers, 65 and 27 show up in Mr Petrosyan’s birthday. 65’’27’’ = September 27, 1965. What are the odds? 0.033%, or about 1 in 3,042, apparently. I never thought I would enjoy maths but here we are.
This may have been a happy coincidence, but I like to think it wasn’t. Sometimes things should just work out how you want them to.
Vahe Vartzbed And A Wild Departure For Kerbedanz
Just this year, my friend Vahe Vartzbed left HYT to take over Kerbedanz as their new CEO. Vahe, in my view, is exceptional at taking extremely creative, larger than life brands and translating them into something that more people can enjoy and have access to. His time at HYT brought with it the introduction of the T1 collection. A more wearable version of their larger fluidic module-equiped pieces. I’m not saying that Petrosyan wasn’t working on the 65’’27’’ before he arrived, he most likely was, but having someone like Vahe who knows how to market this kind of watch is going to do wonders for the brand.
The 65’’27’’ itself measures 38 mm, a full 11 mm smaller than the Maximus. 11 mm! With lugs that are almost non-existent, the case has a futuristic, techno-pebble-like shape to it that I really love. The polished sections add a visual identity that halts claims that this is anything resembling a normal round watch. A 2 o’clock crown symbolises the NW direction of the sunrise from Mr Zorik’s hometown, and its slight onion shape represents his favourite vegetable… Only kidding.
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Turn the watch over and there’s no view of the movement, instead, the entire surface is an oscillating mass that holds three diamonds and what looks like a second minute hand. This confused me a little. At first glance it looks like the hand on the rear is some kind of function selector, with arrows pointing between each diamond. After thinking about it, however, it’s more to show you where you are, where you’ve been and where you’re going. That's my interperetation anyway.
Text reading ‘Rendez-vous dans 65 minutes et 27 secondes’ sits at 6, below the diamonds. Translating to ‘See you in 65 minutes and 27 seconds’, it’s my favourite part of the watch. The symbolism and meaning as it relates to Mr Petrosyan in the 65’’27’’ has been turned up to 11. But what I like about this and the rest of the watch is that it’s all somehow been done in a way that makes others derive their own meaning from it. It has a brand-led identity, and an owner led one too.
When I look at the 65’27’’, it makes me think of all the ways I use intervals of time in my life. Counting the minutes until my wife comes home, remember how many years I have left with my kids, and trying not to take anything for granted.
I know I shouldn’t romanticise too much when I write about watches, but with the Kerbedanz 65’27’’ I really can’t help myself. It reminds me of my family, the time I’m yet to spend with them and the time I have left. The inscription ‘See you in 65 minutes and 27 seconds’ is a reminder that I have things to look forward to.
This quote from Seneca feels relevant.
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”.
I honestly thought my angle for this article was that this watch would help me get through things I was struggling with. What I’ve actually realised, and what I think Aram Petrosyan was getting at when he designed it, is that he wanted to create something that would remind us not to waste time. To make us aware of it passing so we can take full advantage of its potential. Watching the minute hand line up with the diamond on the dial of the 65’27’’ is a reminder that the time we have left is precious, and we should treat it that way. One diamond overlap at a time.
Cya in the next one. X
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