The little brand from Lully-sur-Morges has abandoned its own-brand caliber and slashed its prices twenty-fold, but still enjoys playing on the replica Breitling watches display of time.
What to do when you having a winning idea that isn’t the commercial success you’d hoped? Above all, don’t just push on blindly—instead rework it, adapt it, strip it down to its essence and jettison everything else with cheerful abandon. Which is exactly what the small team at Revelation has done. This young couple, based in Lully-sur-Morges amid the vines overlooking Lac Léman, started out with an own-brand caliber complete with a caroussel tourbillon, but switched to a Sellita movement without demur and without compromising their identity in the slightest. Anouk Danthe, co-founder of the business, describes their guiding principle as “prioritizing the information displayed by the watch, making it appear and disappear in turn.” A concept that can be interpreted in countless different ways, from mass-produced entry-level watches to exclusive pieces, crafted in the workshops of renowned Artisans.
At the beginning of the century, when Anouk Danthe and Olivier Leu decided to launch the venture, they knew they would need an original concept. And they found one through the methodical observation of a market dominated by the clash of two contrasting trends—that of traditional fine watchmaking and that of the independents, who are standard-bearers for a new type of watchmaking that was all the rage at the time. On the mechanical side, Max Busser, Urwerk and many others were regaling enthusiasts with complex displays, to such an extent that on occasions, the dial itself became illegible. So Anouk Danthe and Olivier Leu asked themselves how they could reconcile all of these ideas to develop a watch that would be by turns classical and innovative, legible and complex. They turned to the automotive world for inspiration, where concept cars, which often house incredible mechanisms under the hood, reveal nothing but sleekest lines once it is closed. And so their first production sported a hood. When closed, a set of polarizing discs meant that only the hour and minute hands could be seen. And when opened, the heart of the best Breitling fake watches was exposed, revealing a caroussel tourbillon with an outsize balance wheel. But beyond this watchmaking complication, the piece’s true originality lay in the two discs, whose nanostructures were developed with the CSEM (the Swiss electronics and microtechnology center).
Downsizing
This piece, whose price exceeded CHF 200,000, earned plaudits aplenty, but not much more. At which point Revelation began the delicate pruning operation that forced it to question its entire approach without abandoning its basic principles. The first victim of the process was the hood itself. Buyers were put off by its apparent fragility, and so it was abandoned in favor of a more playful and more traditional watchmaking component, the “magic bezel”. While making this change, the discs were moved to a position under the hands in order to offer a second level of time-reading. But even that was not enough. Although the product itself was impeccable, the couple still lacked the credibility required for buyers to pay the new price of CHF 150,000 without raising an eyebrow. Not to mention the concerns caused by an own-brand caliber in terms of after-sales service.
And so the downsizing process was taken further still. “We hung on to our concept of prioritizing information, but used it in a different way.” First came a chronograph by Dubois-Dépraz, followed by a self-winding Breitling fake watches equipped with a Sellita movement, still sporting the magic dial. Thus in barely three years, the brand had replaced the hood of its first piece with a rotating bezel, substituted a chronograph for its tourbillon, lowered the price of its new products from CHF 200,000 to CHF 10,000 and begun to review the size of its cases, beginning with unveiling a women’s timepiece in Basel with a diameter of 42 mm, which would be reduced still further to 38 mm in the following two years to suit an Asian clientele.
“We had to open up the concept, fill out the product pyramid and meet market expectations,” explained Anouk Danthe. But how far could the exercise be taken without calling into question the very foundations of the brand, and without affecting the concept itself? A question that was already asked of the pieces presented this year, which this time did away with the polarizing discs. Also gone were the nanostructures, replaced by an openwork disc which reveals or hides a large date on the sports piece (R07 Legend) or a ladybird perched on a clover leaf—all on a serrated ring, which in turn masks and reveals the date aperture on the women’s watch (R05 First Lady). The risk is now that clients may be unable to tell the difference between the Revelation and other watches with animated dials, such as Perrelet’s turbines and Albray’s mechanical games, not to mention (albeit in a totally different category) the travelling diamonds of Chopard or the poetic complications of Van Cleef & Arpels.
One hundred units in 2014
Revelation owes a great deal to its magic dial, including the support of the Confederation from 2013 for its nanotechnology and optical research carried out with CSEM, and, from 2015, that of Innovaud, the body that assists innovative businesses in the canton of Vaud by funding part of their marketing expenses or research studies for a maximum of five years, as well as helping them file patents. “Switzerland has the resources to drive innovation forward—it’s up to us to use them,” says Anouk Danthe, who is working on new variations of the polarizing discs in order to vary the color of the dial. “Our first attempts have been promising, but we’re still a long way from being able to use them on a new Breitling replica watches.”
So the future is in smaller cases and more affordable products. In order to reduce prices, Anouk Danthe has of course set her sights on increasing volumes, with a hundred units in 2014, and double that number planned for 2015, which would allow her to benefit from economies of scale. She also has some room for maneuver thanks to the rather lenient standards of the Swiss-made label. “For the time being, everything comes from Switzerland, but if our quantities were slightly higher, it would make economic sense to seek suppliers abroad, within the agreed limits. “