MB&F Founder Maximilian Büsser on Pushing the Limits of Horology

“We create only what we love, and we don't give a flying F if people actually like it,” says Maximilian Büsser founder of MB&F and one of Switzerland’s most eccentric and outspoken watchmakers. Brought up in the home of fine watchmaking, one might assume that Büsser was destined for a career in horology, however this was never his ambition. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a car designer, but nothing turned out the way I planned,” he says. As it turns out, this would become a very good thing indeed.

Büsser landed in the watch world by chance. While studying engineering at university in Lausanne in the early 90s, he had a random encounter with Henry-John Belmond, then the MD of Jaeger-LeCoultre, who convinced him to join the watchmaker upon graduation. At the time, the mechanical watch industry was in turmoil and Belmond was tasked with the challenge of saving the historic company. “Henry-John asked me: Do you want to be one amongst 200,000 people in a big corporation or do you want to be one amongst the three or four of us who are going to save Jaeger-LeCoultre?’”

Büsser accepted the challenge despite, admittedly, having no entrepreneurial background. “My dad was working for a big corporation and was very unhappy. I didn’t have any positive examples to follow, so I followed my gut which told me to go with this man because for the first time, someone appealed not just to my rational head, but to my heart.”

He stayed with Jaeger-LeCoultre for seven years, throwing himself into the role of product manager. “It was a romantic time of watchmaking,” says Büsser. “It wasn’t about trying to make money – it was all about the product. Every evening we would go to dinner and sketch on the table of the restaurant. As we were all engineers, we were really bad at marketing, but we were really good at two things: creating products and transforming those ideas into reality.”

In 1998, Büsser was poached by Harry Winston Fine Timepieces and assumed the role of CEO at the young age of 31. Over the ensuring seven years, he worked to bring his division back from the brink of bankruptcy after the Harry Winston brand was sold. It was a stressful yet transformative time in Büsser’s life. “From 2000 to 2005, we basically multiplied the revenue – and the team – by 10. We also created the Opus line which put Harry Winston on the watch map,” he says.

But his personal journey was even greater. “I learnt two things during this time,” he says. “The first is that I'm capable of doing this. The second is that the bigger the company is and the more successful it is, the less I enjoy myself. I realised I'd sold out. The young, creative artist I’d been as a kid had become a marketeer. I was creating because I thought they’d sell, not because I liked them.”

Buesser with MB&F COO Serge Kriknoff

So, in 2005, he left behind the corporate salary and lifestyle behind to launch his own company, MB&F. “MB&F is being able to create things I believe in without ever looking if the market wants it,” he says. The name is an acronym for Max Büsser and Friends in reference to the fact that Büsser only employs people on the same wavelength as himself. He jokes: “I didn’t know how to create an acronym of ‘Max Büsser and people who share the same values!’”

After starting alone in his flat, Büsser now has a team of 30 who’ve created 19 calibres. “It’s insane because brands who do a billion dollars a year don’t even make half of that in the same time,” he says.

The brand is renowned for creating timepieces which push the limits of timekeeping. Watches fit into one of two lines: Horological Machines and Legacy Machines. The former look more like art pieces than watches. Büsser calls them his “psychotherapy”. “I revisit my life and I create these 3D sculptures, which can be a spaceship, or a plane or a dog – you name it. It's all about me and my life. It's very egotistic in its creativity – and very exuberant.”