- 2 days ago
Why fill a mechanical watch with oil? In this episode, we sit down with Ressence founder, Benoît Mintiens, to discuss why he ignores 200 years of watchmaking tradition to create the "impossible." We dive into the physics of the oil-filled Type 3, the new Type 7 GMT, and the brand's 15th-anniversary book, "Ahead of Time."
In this episode:
00:00 - The frustration with traditional watchmaking
02:45 - The Ressence Orbital Convex System (ROCS) explained
08:30 - How oil-filled watches work (The "Wat
In this episode:
00:00 - The frustration with traditional watchmaking
02:45 - The Ressence Orbital Convex System (ROCS) explained
08:30 - How oil-filled watches work (The "Wat
Category
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00I don't want you to grab for your phone. I want you to check your watch and that's why I
00:05need to
00:05make sure that the watch I've designed and that your have on your wrist is doing his job in the
00:12most efficient possible way. A knife that doesn't cut well is not a good knife even if it's beautiful,
00:17even if it's nice in your kitchen, even if your kitchen looks better with that knife in it,
00:22it's not a good knife if it doesn't cut well. Resolans is an elite watchmaker that refuses
00:26to do things the traditional way. As the brand celebrates its 15th anniversary, we're joined
00:31by founder and CEO Benoit to discuss a decade and a half of challenging the status quo. Benoit,
00:37thank you for taking the time to chat with Man of Many. Thank you. That sounds a lot. Decade and
00:42a
00:42half. Well, I mean, you've achieved a huge amount in that time. In that 15 years, well, I guess,
00:48can we start with what inspired you to create the brand to begin with? It comes from a frustration.
00:57That I walked around at one of these huge trade shows, these watch trade shows in Switzerland.
01:05And I thought, how is it possible that these enormous companies that you see, all the brands
01:13that we all know, that are there since so many years with so many points of sales, so many productions,
01:21so many employees, how is it possible that they are still selling products that were designed
01:2750, 60, 70 years ago? As a designer, you cannot understand that. Now I understand why. But at that
01:36time, I couldn't get around it. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to design a watch for myself.
01:44Basically, that's how it started. As you alluded to right there, many watch brands feel compelled to
01:52kind of pay a constant tribute to their own heritage and tradition and that kind of thing,
01:56which does, to a certain extent, box them into doing things a particular way.
02:00Wrestling doesn't have any of that. What does that free you to do?
02:03Well, it's not that it frees us to do things. It's more that our background is very different.
02:11And because of that, we think very differently and we approach the watch, the mechanical watch,
02:19in a very different way. And this is more the logics behind it. It's not like I perfectly understand
02:30watch brands that have a certain heritage and that have a certain way of looking at watchmaking.
02:37It's logical very often. It makes a lot of sense to them. But to us, it doesn't make sense. It's
02:43not
02:43natural for us to think like that. We think differently. We think like industrial designers
02:49would think. And that is different than a watchmaker. And so, obviously, the result can only be very
02:56different. And so, one of those major points of difference for you is the ROC system that you
03:02developed, for those unfamiliar, is the Ressence orbital convex system. If you could just give us
03:08a brief explanation of what that's all about. That's the system that displays the time on a
03:14Ressence. So, normal watches have, mechanical watches, have a dial and hands that turn around
03:22on top of the dial and to show the time. And Ressence, we have another way to do it.
03:28And so, we have a set of disks, a combination of set of disks that are all coplanar. And they,
03:38yeah, obviously rotate around each other. Otherwise, they would not be able to turn. And that's the way
03:45Ressence shows the time. So, there are hands to show the time on the Ressence, but they are graphical
03:51hands between brackets printed on the disks. And so, the result, the graphical result of that is that
04:00you have a one surface indication of time instead of having different layers, because hands are in
04:09different layers on top of another layer being the dial. And there are some ergonomical reasons that we
04:16do that. One of the other points of difference of Ressence is, while some brands will try and
04:22showcase the complexity of their watches, you go the complete other way and kind of create this
04:26seamless effect where, while they are definitely these incredibly complex creations, you almost mask
04:32that from the user and it is purely about the experience. Why was that important to you?
04:37That's a logical thing for a designer to do and a lot less logical to do for a watchmaker.
04:47I explained that. When you're a watchmaker, the beauty of your craft lays exactly in the fact that
04:55you are able to solve or develop or create a very impressive, technically complicated mechanism.
05:08And that's, that's why, that's the why of your brand very often. That's, that's why you do this.
05:14And so, the, the, the whole idea for us is, is really more to focus on the functionality,
05:23the final functionality of a watch. We try to reduce or take away or hide everything that is not adding
05:32or helping you to read the time in the most efficient possible way. That means that we hide the
05:39technology. It's, it's there. I can tell you it's very complex, but we hide it because when you read
05:46the time, when you're rushing to your train station or whatever, you just want to know the time. And I
05:54don't want you to grab for your phone. I want you to check your watch. And that's why, um, I
05:59need to make
06:00sure that the watch I've designed and that your have on your wrist is doing his job in the most
06:08efficient possible way. And that kind of ties in with something you've talked about before, which is
06:13the relationship between the wearer and the, and the watch, um, having worn this beautiful type one,
06:19night blue all day today, which I'm going to find very difficult to give back. I can speak to, to
06:24how
06:25that, that relationship might feel even, even briefly, it's an extraordinary thing. Why is that
06:30relationship important to you? And, and you've also had a, not to make the question too long, but you've
06:35also have a natural kind of element to it where it feels more like a pebble than a traditional watch,
06:41which is something you've alluded to before. We relate to products as humans in a very similar way as we
06:47relate to humans or animals. So our brain was not formed to have a certain way, different way or
06:56a separate algorithm or whatever to, uh, to interact with products. And so we interact with products like
07:06we would interact with any other human being. It's a bit weird to say that, but think about it.
07:11You'll notice that people have, for example, a relationship with their car, or they have a,
07:18a, a strong relationship with maybe their phones. Some bit, many people, their smartphones are, are
07:23becoming, uh, excessively, I believe present, uh, in the lives of people. Um, but in the end, why, uh,
07:33why is it like that? It's because the relationship has been designed with these products. Uh, why do we have
07:41such a good relationship with our smartphones? Well, because the people that designed them,
07:45they think about that and they made sure that our relationship was good because you will use it again
07:51and again and again. And that's the idea. Why do you make a product? Not it's, it's to use it.
07:58So the,
07:59the relationship will generate, um, a stronger bound with you, with you and the watch or with you and the
08:06product. And I believe that as an industrial designer, you have to consider that as a central
08:12element in your, uh, in your design process. And so when you refer to, for example, the organicness
08:19of our watches, yes, it increases the price a lot. I would say, would we make flat watches? They could,
08:26they would maybe cost half of it because making, going from 2d, what all watches are to real 3d,
08:35what the resource is. Um, well, it means you're not only going from 2d to 3d, you will have
08:43other machines that are like three times more expensive. You have not only the machines,
08:50but the people that run the machines, the all engineering behind it, the precision that you have,
08:56you have a third dimension you have to manage, uh, you have other types of work makers,
09:01et cetera, et cetera. So the whole thing changes. So why do you do it then? Why do you make
09:06your
09:06watches, uh, organic? Because they could have been cheaper to make when they would be flat. Well,
09:12it's again for the relationship. We're cavemen still in our brains. Some people think they're not
09:18anymore, but I know I am. You, you, you, you are a caveman. Well, most certainly, most of a caveman.
09:24Anyway, uh, the idea here is to say, um, that our natural tendency is that we would, we would feel
09:34more attracted to organic shapes than to geometrical shapes. And that is why a resource watch is, has an
09:43organic shape. It's just the relationship is just better. I feel like it would be fair to describe
09:50Ressence and the incredible designs that you've come up with as a, as a future facing brand. I don't,
09:57I don't know how you would feel about that. Um, but as you move from, from one project to it,
10:02to another
10:03and you, and you're kind of heading in that direction. Uh, what's, what's your North star?
10:08Yeah, the North star is for us, um, still, and I think it will always be. Otherwise I believe we
10:16lose a little bit of who we are is the idea that, uh, good design, the principles of good design
10:24are
10:25always applied to our products. Uh, certainly to the core collection can be that sometimes we do
10:31collaborations with artists. Okay. Then you can, you can move away a little bit from that principle,
10:36but the whole idea is really to apply the principles of good design, or at least thinking
10:42of industrial design to find watchmaking. Um, and that's something that's my North star. I will always
10:49follow that, uh, principle. This feels like a fitting time to introduce the book that you've just
10:55launched, uh, ahead of time. Yes. Uh, do you feel that residence is ahead of time?
11:01Um, we are certainly a contemporary brand. Uh, um, I sometimes give the example, imagine yourself,
11:09there's no watchmaking. What would a watch look like today? If you would design it from scratch
11:13and there would be no biased info thing from the past. And I always hope it will look like a
11:19resource.
11:20Right. Um, okay. You will never know. Nobody will ever know. Um, but the idea, uh, behind, uh,
11:30the brand, the logics that we follow, the vision that we have, the design culture that we apply,
11:37uh, is all going in that direction. Um, maybe not ahead of time, but, uh, certainly contemporary.
11:43Um, if, if something is ahead of time, uh, in what we do is the idea that we make watches
11:51that will
11:52stay relevant in time. Um, that I believe is something important. And how can you be relevant
12:00as a product? You can only, in my opinion, again, uh, you can only be relevant as a product.
12:06If the function that you execute is done properly, a product has no sense. It, um, has no meaning as
12:15no reason of existence. If it does, if it doesn't do its function in a proper way, a knife that
12:21doesn't
12:21cut well, it's not a good knife. Even if it's beautiful, even if it's nice in your kitchen,
12:26even if your kitchen looks better with that knife in it, it's not a better knife. It's not a good
12:31knife.
12:31If it doesn't cut well. And that means that you have to think about your products for the future.
12:37Let's not forget. We are, uh, considered fine watchmaking. We are a fine watchmaking brand.
12:43What is one of the definitions that you could give to fine watchmaking is that we make products and
12:49certainly, uh, real luxury products. Uh, they should be in my opinion, uh, things that are designed
12:57uh, to use a long time. Um, when we design our watches, we think always like they, this thing,
13:07this way of doing this should be okay for 25 years. Who's doing that? No, there's no industry
13:16that's thinking like that anymore except the music industry. I'm talking instruments. So the logics
13:23that we apply is really to say the designs that we have, um, we all always think, okay,
13:30will this be relevant in number of years from now? Will we see this as a good design? Maybe you
13:39will
13:39see, okay, it's not exactly from now. It's maybe a little from some, sometimes in the past, but it's
13:46still relevant. It's still, the proportions are good. It still does its job well, et cetera.
13:52Right. That's maybe the ahead of time part of it. Okay. Sorry, I'm a bit long. No, no, no, no,
13:58that was great. Um, ahead of time, the book comprises conversations with leaders from a range of
14:04industries, um, which include, you know, creativity, technology, uh, and, and also just kind of
14:12people. Uh, how did that come about? What was the inspiration for that book?
14:18Actually, it's, um, someone in our office that came with the idea, Simon, um, and, uh,
14:26we had the idea driving back from watches and wonders, uh, in 24. Um, it's a long drive,
14:33you know, it's eight hours in the car together. Eight hours is nothing in Australia.
14:37I know in Europe you're on the other side of Europe. Um, but, uh, so it was, it was a
14:45nice
14:45conversation. So he came up with the idea we should do a journal if I remember well,
14:50and, and by brainstorming in the car, you know, Simon is also a designer. So, uh, we like to
14:55brainstorm. And so, uh, finally we came to the idea, let's do a book, let's do a book about,
15:02um, because it was his idea to do a book about the future. And so, yes, it was, um, it
15:08was, uh,
15:08I think a very good way to illustrate who the people that are attracted to the brand,
15:17who they are and how they think, because in the end, a resource is also a little bit cerebral.
15:23Is that English? Uh, exercise. And, um, it means you need to be open-minded. You need to be curious,
15:31at least to discover new possibilities. Uh, watchmaking is very often a repetition of
15:38the same thing. And, uh, when you enter a world like that and you come with something completely
15:45different, willing to accept the fact that status quo can be challenged and is challengeable,
15:54um, and not for the sake of challenging it, but really to say, okay, we are now 150 years later.
16:04Can't we do something more in 150 years than everything we have done so far? Uh, and, uh,
16:12but something more in a sense of really changing the architecture of a watch
16:18or the system architecture of the watch. Can't we do something else? So that's, that's, uh, that's
16:25the basis. As we mentioned multiple times this, you're celebrating the 15th anniversary of Ressence.
16:30When you look back on that time, did you imagine that you'd wind up where you are? Did you,
16:36did you kind of have that, that level of ambition or were you kind of flying by the seat of
16:40your
16:40pants and just seeing how it went? No, I'm not like that. Um, I'm not someone that jumps in
16:45the dark and it's not my, my type. Uh, but still, yes, you go into a direction. You feel that
16:54there
16:55is, there is something missing in a, in that field that you can, is that something you believe is
17:02missing or is it something everyone thinks is missing? That's, that's the question you
17:06cannot answer before you did it. And so it was more like this because, you know, before I did
17:14Ressence, I worked 12 years as an industrial design consultant. So I was in that environment of
17:20industrial design for so many years. And, and then you see the markets that are saturated with it.
17:27And then the markets that are absolutely not saturated with that vision and, uh, certainly
17:34fine watchmaking wasn't, um, when designers apply their, uh, skills on, uh, watchmaking,
17:45it's very often on the outside. It's just a shell. They, they, they, they redesign the case,
17:51maybe the dial, maybe the hands, it stops very quickly to maybe the elements that you see.
18:00It never goes deeper. At least I don't, I didn't, I don't have many examples. I can, I cannot number
18:06a lot of examples where industrial designers went further than that. And, and this is what really
18:12attracted me, uh, with watches is that I could really go in deep in depth in the watch, uh, and
18:20change the whole, the whole system, the whole architecture of the watch. Um, it's not so, there
18:27are not so many industries where you can just do that. It feels like the kind of thing that only
18:31an
18:31outsider could, could really do. Ressence is a brand that's built on innovation. Uh, just the, from,
18:38from the rocks to, to, there've been numerous other things you've introduced. One that I find
18:42particularly fascinating is the type three with the, the oil field design. Can you explain how that
18:47came about? As a kid, uh, we used to sail. My father and my, my parents basically rented a sailing
18:55boat in the summer times in, in the Mediterranean sea. And, uh, very often there was a, a night,
19:04a night shift to do, uh, because we had to go from one point to the other and there was
19:09no stop. It was
19:10middle of the sea. So we had to sail, let's say for 24 hours. And, um, as I was the
19:17oldest, uh, kid in
19:19the family, it was my job to do the night shift. And back in the eighties, because I'm that old,
19:26um, there
19:27was, there was no GPS, uh, on boats and middle of the sea, you have no reference points anymore. There's
19:35no land. So you use this pitch dock and middle of the sea at night. So your only reference point
19:42was
19:43your compass and it was an oil field compass, uh, always. And, and because it's the only thing you see,
19:52you know, they, they are like in submarines, they're red, they're illuminated red at night,
19:58not to blind you. Um, but it's still, yeah, something that's burned in your, in your, uh,
20:07retina, uh, to see that, that glass bowl with an object inside that turns, you know, it's inside,
20:18you know, it doesn't touch the glass, but still you see it on the outside of the glass.
20:23And so, um, I think it must be, must come from there. I don't see where it could come from.
20:31Otherwise the, the idea of filling a watch with oil. Um, and of course, yeah,
20:38you alluded to how there's almost like a screen effects to the watches and it really enhances
20:43that. It creates this, it's a fascinating thing to look at cause you, it doesn't look like it should
20:49work. It doesn't look like it can be real. It's an extraordinary thing. Yeah. It, it enhances
20:55something, um, I really like is the dematerialization of the watch. And, uh, and actually
21:03is exactly the opposite as most watchmakers would do. They would materialize the watch,
21:10um, and seen from their perspective, it's very logical thing to do. Um, but when you look at it
21:17from a, from a designer perspective, yeah, the dematerialization is, is a very interesting, uh,
21:25concept because you start to concentrate on the function and not on the support by adding the oil,
21:34you really hide all the physical aspect. You, you, you hide the physical aspect of the components
21:42doing the job and, uh, and you end up with a kind of screen, but if the parts are dark
21:50enough,
21:50uh, you will not see them. And so it gives an impression that it's kind of one thing, one,
21:59one volume, uh, without any reference points on where it starts or where it ends. It's just one
22:07thing is the fact that the, the refraction is gone between the glass and the dial. And so it really
22:14feels as if the glass has become the screen. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a, when you see it for
22:22the
22:22first time, it's hard for your brain to understand exactly what it's looking at. It, it feels like,
22:28it feels like, as you say, a screen, it feels like something that's animated rather than it feels like
22:32it should be pixels rather than mechanical pieces that are, that are moving around. Um, speaking of
22:38the type three, by the time our discussions released, you'll have launched a new model that was developed
22:44in collaboration with Australia's own Mark Newson. Yes. Uh, how did that come about?
22:49Uh, very naturally. Yeah. Yeah. So it is, um, a retailer in Hong Kong we work with that, uh,
22:58had the contact details of Mark. Um, so she, she gave me his, uh, contact details. Uh, Mark New
23:07Renaissance. Uh, he also liked it. And, um, so it was a very, very natural collaboration. I
23:16sometimes say that Mark and I made a baby together, uh, because the watch has really the genes, the DNA
23:26of both. And the result is stunning. I believe it's really, really nice watch. I really see
23:32in the result is he's, he's really a good designer also. And yes. So for me, it was, it was,
23:39um, it was
23:40very fluid. The whole project went really, really fluid. You know, I did his job for 12 years. I know
23:47how he thinks. I know I appreciate it as a designer. Of course, I appreciate that. But as a watchmaker,
23:54I also have to deal with the reality of making watches. And as a designer, then I sometimes have to
24:02I would say cut corners, but I need to accept certain things. I would, I would like to not to
24:08accept. And it was interesting, uh, with Mark because he said, okay, if we cannot do it this way,
24:15let's make it differently. Let's do it this way. But the result should be this. And, um, so for me,
24:22it was an interesting exercise, um, and very natural, as I said.
24:27So you reached out to him. What was it about Mark's work that made you confident it would be
24:32a good fit for collaboration? We have a, um, I think we have a common design culture.
24:39Um, he does it a bit differently. He has his own style, uh, of course, but the culture behind it
24:46is very similar. It's a culture of good design. It's a culture of minimalizing to the essence
24:54of the product. Um, what I also really like about his work is that it's very often organic.
25:02And I like that.
25:03You said that he has a different style to yours. How did that materialize in the final watch?
25:10Well, when you look at it, uh, you'll see it's, it's very organic. You can say a type three is
25:15a pebble,
25:16but the type three we did with Mark is a lot more pebble.
25:20Right. Okay.
25:21Uh, it's hard to explain that. What's the difference between a pebble and a pebble?
25:26But, uh, it's, uh, certainly even more, uh, a pebble. He also included a dimension that I usually
25:35don't do is the idea of, um, adding the instruments precision. So kind of scientific
25:46dimension to it. Like you will see on the watch, there are little lines and every minute is
25:52split it in X amount of sub sub things. Um, so it, it, he added this, this measurement instruments
26:05philosophy more than I would have done it. Um, but it's a Mark Newson design. It's not the Benoit
26:11design. Okay. So there's a new type three coming, which is very exciting. We can't wait to see it.
26:15There is also a new type one on the way, um, which comes in a, in a, uh,
26:21rose gold dial factor. Yeah. Yeah. Um, can you explain what the story is there?
26:28The story, um, of course it's, it's a little less deep than a collaboration with Mark Newson,
26:34but nevertheless, um, you know, at Ressence, the dials that we have are usually, uh, sandblasted,
26:42meaning they have a matte finish and there's a good reason for that. It's easier to read,
26:47but when it comes to the fact we are also in an environment, a luxury environment, very often,
26:56uh, what you see in fine watches is that they have, um, kind of metallic finish with special lines or,
27:04or, or special finishes. And here, and, and at Ressence, we only had one watch that had that,
27:10that was a blue dial for the type one little further with this type one gold. Um, so it is
27:16rose gold. It's rose gold plated. The dial is rose gold plated, and it has a combination of three
27:23different finishes, uh, on the dial. It has the outer, uh, bezel for the minutes is a sandblasted,
27:29uh, gold. And then you have the dial and that's a novelty for us. It's absolutely not revolutionary in
27:37watchmaking. Um, but for us to have a sunray finish, uh, is the first one watch we do. Um,
27:45it has to do with the fact that the dial of a Ressence, it has openings in it. Um, if
27:51you just apply
27:52a sunray technique on a Ressence dial, you would not have a sunray because the brushes that create
27:58the ray, uh, would get stuck in the holes. So we had to develop, uh, something different there.
28:06And then, um, the sub discs, uh, they also have a wave pattern in section. So it also gives it
28:13another
28:14refraction or reflection of the light. The whole thing feels, uh, very luxurious.
28:20Um, it, um, the finishes are very beautiful, I believe. Um, so in the end, um, and then we combine
28:28it with light gray to, to cool it down a bit. Um, and so it's this, yeah, it's the whole
28:35balance,
28:36of course, uh, product is never one thing. It's also, it's always in a balance of different things
28:41that you do. Um, so in the end though, yes, I, I really liked the product. It also feels very,
28:47very good on the wrist. Um, yeah, I like it. I mean, I, I like it too. It's, it's, it's
28:53sitting
28:54right here for those at home. Uh, and it's an extraordinary looking thing. It's quite an
28:57achievement. Um, before we wrap, I'd love to just revisit the unique positioning that Ressence has.
29:05Um, why do you think you've been able to, to go against the grain so successfully where I,
29:10I imagine a lot of similar ventures might fail, but you, you've been quite successful.
29:15Uh, successful, uh, when you're in the ship, uh, it still feels different. I can tell you,
29:21um, there's always challenges, uh, when you, when you create and develop a company. Um, but yes,
29:30uh, we're 15 years old and we're still growing every year and, uh, the team is growing and, uh,
29:36collections are evolving. I believe that, uh, it's our customers that made that possible. Our customers
29:42are not per se people that are attracted to the industry of watchmaking. Um, and what we offer
29:49them is a other vision on a product that is a watch, uh, but applied in a very different way.
29:58Um,
29:59and I believe that the customers that, that buy a Ressence watch, um, are those people that are
30:06attracted to products more than watches. It's, it's thanks to the customers we have that we are
30:14here. Otherwise we would not be here anymore. Um, so yes, swimming against the current feels very
30:22good, uh, for me, uh, depends on how you define the current. Yeah. Um, but for us, it's, it's the
30:31only
30:31way we can, we can do it. It's the only way it's the only natural thing for us. It feels
30:37against the
30:38current because it's not following the others, but for us, it's our natural path. Uh, we don't,
30:44we don't see ourselves going in another one. It would not be natural. Right. Absolutely. Well, um,
30:51thank you for taking the time to talk to me. I thank you for inviting me. I hope that we
30:55get to have
30:56this discussion again when, when you're celebrating the 30th anniversary of Ressence. We will be here
31:00thank you so much. Thanks Robert. It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much.
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