Nicola Andreatta has been in the high watchmaking industry for many years and has been the CEO of Roger Dubuis since 2018. We had an interview with Andreatta, who came to Istanbul for Roger Dubuis’ new store, about the young brand and his career.
When did your passion for watches began?
Indeed, I was born into watches. I never known it is a curse or a good thing. My father wanted to me do this job, wanted to me with watches. And now, there was not a good thing take care of watches. It is a beautiful object, incredible way to display who you are. It is special thing that talks about you. When you get fine watchmaking, it is an incredible universe. I was born into it, still I am within this world. And I enjoy every single second of it.
I am half Italian and Swiss; I enjoy both the precision and creativity.
What is the good side of being in watch industry?
For me, it is all about my background. I am half Italian and Swiss; I enjoy both the precision and creativity. We craft something from nothing. We built an object that we can design it, engineered it. At the end, we have a watch with several functions, which is part that I enjoy most.
What makes Roger Dubuis watches stand apart?
We have plenty of things. I think the question should be: What doesn’t make Roger Dubuis watches stand apart. We try to do something very particular. We have only 28 years of history but through these years we made numbers of incredible things. For instance, we made perpetual calendars more than 40. We are master of all the complications that belong to Haute Horlogie from minute repeaters, perpetual calendars, split seconds chronographs to tourbillons. What we are is a particular Maison within the watchmaking world with our ambition to somehow invent the future of Haute Horlogie. We fond the way to define that, which is “hyper horology”. It is an expression we treat the market and only belongs to Roger Dubuis today. “Hyper” symbolizes what we do, which is always going beyond, challenge to boundaries in watchmaking, finding something innovative. I believe that today we only Maison that do kind of work.
You have been CEO of Roger Dubuis since 2018, what has changed under your direction since then?
I would say many things changed, but of course I didn’t revolutionize the brand. Because I think that the DNA of brand is really important, and the key is not to disrupt it. At the same time, I focused what we stand for. I wanted to somehow be reworked at messaging, reworked on all values of Maison to make sure that our message is clear. Today we have four very well-defined pillars within our assortment. As I said, we have been made clarified territories of expression of the brand, we have more sporter one side, and urban culture another side. We have very clear claim, we have a mission and a lot of things that were not present, were not as clear as they are today. We evolved our distributions. I think, today much more solid statement Roger Dubuis than a few years ago.
Could you tell us about your novelties at Watches and Wonders 2023?
We have been approaching Watches and Wonders with a very clear objective, which was showing what we do best. And so, we decided to concentrate everything we have at Roger Dubuis with each single timepiece. And we came up with this concept watch, which is our Monovortex Split Seconds Chronograph, which not only based on one of the most complicated calibers you can have in watchmaking. Yet, we have other three different patterns: A new tourbillon system which fights against the gravity to improve performs of the watch; a new rotor; a new oscillating mass which work in totally different way from the past we believe that it is more efficiently the way it uses forces of gravity. A new way to display to chronographic minutes much more intuitive way that you see the numbers. And we didn’t satisfy, so we designed completely new case, which is showing evolution of our Spider collection and we used different material to craft it, which is MCF developed within Roger Dubuis. Lighter than ceramic, lighter than carbon fiber and red. As you can see, red is very dear color of Roger Dubuis. All in all, we able to show innovations, performs and craftsmanship in a single timepiece.
Which is your favorite piece from Roger Dubuis?
Next one. We always move forward; we have attitude to look future. Personally, I have never look back, always look forward. And also, it is kind of question that asking a father to his favorite child. I love all products we made, so it is a difficult question to answer to me. That’s why, I would say, next one.
