Lonely Wrist: All Things Watches & Horology
Lonely Wrist is a podcast that goes inside the movement, bringing you inside the world of watches through candid conversations with the people who drive it forward.
Each episode features in-depth interviews with industry insiders including Executives, master watchmakers, designers, collectors, content creators, and historians offering rare insights into the passion, precision, and business behind every timepiece.
From legacy brands to innovative microbrands, from movement architecture to marketing strategy, we explore the many layers of horology through the voices of those shaping its past, present, and future.
Whether you're a seasoned collector or just beginning your journey into watches, Lonely Wrist offers a unique perspective on the artistry, culture, and the industry of watches, one episode, and one insider, at a time.
Tune in bi-weekly and hear the stories ticking behind every Lonely Wrist.
Lonely Wrist: All Things Watches & Horology
From A Soviet Workshop To Modern Manufacture with Raketa's David Henderson-Stewart
A forgotten factory. Old machines humming. A movement that comes back to life after being frozen in Antarctic ice. That’s the energy behind our conversation with David Henderson-Stewart, the lawyer-turned-restorer who picked up Raketa when it was on the floor and made it tick again.
We talk about why he refused the easy route—outsourcing movements, buying CNC, copying Swiss design—and instead doubled down on authenticity. David walked every line, learned every machine, and built trust with master specialists who could hit micron tolerances by hand. He opened a watchmaking school to train a new generation, credited makers by name in every box, and set a quality bar that could stand next to Switzerland while preserving a uniquely Russian character.
Design is where Raketa’s DNA glows. Born in 1961 to honor Yuri Gagarin, the brand leans into space heritage and real tool needs: 24-hour dials for polar stations and submarines, counterclockwise displays, bold legibility that serves survival over fashion. These are watches worn in the ISS, tested in South Pole conditions, and shaped by archives of watercolor concepts that still feel shockingly modern. We dig into why Raketa avoids fragile showpieces like tourbillons, how in-house movement making defines identity, and why robust engineering, not gimmicks, earns trust.
We also explore the business reality: growing from roughly 7,000 pieces a year without letting quality slip, navigating global markets through word of mouth and transparency, and planning future launches—from astronaut models to wild archival revivals—without losing the soul that makes the brand stand out. If you care about watchmaking, culture, and the craft that turns steel into time, this one will stick with you.
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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode here of the Lonely Wrist Podcast. I am your host, as always, Blake Ray. And not only have we had so many incredible people on the show, but today we are hosting yet another amazing watch brand. Today's guest is not somebody who built a watch brand, but somebody who helped to bring one back to life. The brand we have today is none other than Rakhetta, which is one of the most storied watch brands and born out of the Petro Duretz, butchered the hell out of that. A watch factory who's been making time pieces for over a century. The modern Raketa is not only a fully in-house manufacturer building its own movements and assembling on site, but it's also staking its claim with modern and bold design language. Today we are sitting down with the man who took the leap to purchase and revive Raketa, turning a fading legend into a working, evolving watchmaker again. We're going to cover what it really means to inherit legacy and how you modernize it without red without erasing the brand's identity. And also what it takes to run a historic watch factory in today's market, and why, of course, you collectors should be paying attention to what Raketa is doing. Everybody, please welcome the man behind the brand, David Henderson Stewart.
SPEAKER_01:Hi.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you very much for having us, for having me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, no, thank you for coming on. This has been one that I think it's been about a year or so since we've met. Or maybe maybe less.
SPEAKER_01:We met in April last year. We met at Watching Wonders, if I'm not mistaken.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's right, that's right. So Ingenu. Yeah, it's been been quite a while. And you know, something that like really kind of gravitated me to you is first of all, like you're not traditional in the other sense of other watchmakers who are essentially just really design forward. You know, they're working on you know, just putting their products together, using third parties, things of that nature. But you guys are actually like the real deal. Like you have your own movement, you have, you know, your own factory, like you're you have much more strategic challenges than other watchmakers, you know. And that was something that really stuck out to me. And I think we talked about, and and something that I loved to hear you say, like when we talked was, you know, you talked a lot about like stories, you know, like you just kept saying the word story over and over and over and over. Not that that's a bad thing, but I just I loved it that that you actually get it, you know, you get that people connect to stories and not necessarily products as much as they do stories, you know.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, you've just listed every single reason why I started Rakheta. Raketa. I actually I'm not a watchmaker at all. I used to be a lawyer in a US law firm. And just for just out of opportunity, I moved to Russia because they offered me a good position. And then I discovered the Raketa Watch Factory just by pure chance, and the reason I took it over are exactly all the reasons you listed. It's incredible manufacture, their own, they they make their own mechanical movements, including the most difficult components, which are the hairspring, the balance wheel, I mean, all of the escapements. The design is really cool, and the storytelling amazing. I mean, when I in Geneva Watch Days or in Watch and Wonders, or I was lately in Dubai, Watch Week, I mean, it's amazing. I mean, every watch, I mean, I tell stories, as you said, all the time. And this is something that really makes us stand apart from many other brands, is that every single watch that we do has an incredible, authentic story to tell. And I I could talk about every single of our watches for at least 10 minutes, and and I believe that I did that with you. And this is something that makes us really different, and for all of these reasons, basically, I decided I thought, wow, this is amazing. And it was just lying on the floor, it was dying, like you know, these every single old watch Soviet factory just died. It they didn't survive this difficult transition period from the Soviet communist era to the modern capitalistic era, and Rakheta was basically dying, and I just you know picked it up.
SPEAKER_00:And it it's crazy to see, like, you know, obviously, like I have a couple Soviet watches in my collection, I have a Russian wife, but you know, Raketa is a brand that like most watch collectors already know. So because of the history, because because of the lineage, like now you're just going through the process of kind of modernizing it and showing people like, hey, we're we're going into a new a new direction.
SPEAKER_01:It was huge in the Soviet times. It was there were more than 7,000 watchmakers, they produced more than 6 million mechanical watches every year, and they exported a lot of watches. You know, the Soviet Union needed currency, hard currency, they needed dollars. And so they exported a lot of watches. So there are a lot of watches on the market. There are still a lot of collectors of Soviet watches all around the world, and the designs are really quirky. I mean, Russian Soviet design is very much different from very often different from what you can find in Switzerland, and that's also one of the reasons I thought, wow, this is so cool. Yeah, and all of the designs that you all of that designs, all of the designs that I showed you when we met in Geneva, we didn't invent them. These are old Soviet designs. We were just inspired by these old Soviet designs. Obviously, we completely redesigned them, but the inspiration is still there.
SPEAKER_00:Something too that like really kind of stuck out to me as like, you know, I think you also understand that like the people that work at the brand are also the face of the brand, you know. And I remember you have like a stack of business cards, and like, you know, I I think I took two, and then there was one person, like one of your employees on the back of one, and then another employee on the back of the other. And like, you know, people who have been at the factory for ages, it sounded like.
SPEAKER_01:Actually, it's not a business card, it's um we cherish and we respect and we value so much our specialists, I mean our watchmakers, because I mean, I I come from a system, I mean, you you come from the same system, the Western system, where you know, if you're not a banker, a consultant, a lawyer, I mean, these professions are very highly valued. But if you're just a simple worker in a factory, you are you are at the bottom of the you know of the social uh structure. But what I discovered with Raketa is that these workers, these specialists that we have, are so much more important than even I am. I mean, they do incredible things with their hands, they produce these incredible small little components that are then assembled into a watch, and then the watch has to work. What they do is so much more difficult than what I did as a lawyer, as a corporate lawyer. And so we really value these people, and in every single box that's you know, a watch box, we we randomly put a photo of one of our watchmakers, and at the back of the photo we give his name and what components he produced in your watch. So it really gives a human touch to the watch, and people actually love it. People collect these photos. So we we invited a quite a well-known, actually British photographer. He's called James Hill, H-I-L-L, and he took a photo of every single one of our workers, and so people collect these photos now.
SPEAKER_00:So cool, that is so cool. Like, I love that.
SPEAKER_01:You know, it I think it starts. But once again, the reason we do that is not just because it's cool to do it, it's just because it's we really value these people. Without them, we would not exist. They produce uh uh watches, our mechanical movements, and they have an incredible know-how, which very few people in the world have have, you know. There are very few brands that can produce their own, for example, Hairspring. It's it's very it's a very rare difficult operation. And we've invited over the past 10 years so many watch bloggers, watch journalists, I mean, mostly mainly from Europe and the Middle East. And a lot of them said, you know, we never saw these operations in Switzerland because Rolex would never either let you in, or if they do let you in, they will just show you how, you know, they assemble, but they'll never, never, never show you how they produce a has ring, for example, and we show it. So these people are just incredible, and so we and so we put try to put them forward as as much as we can.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, especially I've I've toured a lot of watch manufacturers, and and some of them are like really proud about like stamping, right? Like, because they're such small parts, and it's like, you know, it's much easier for somebody to outsource those parts and get them, you know, get them in than it is for you to actually stamp them. So, you know, some brands are so proud that they're doing their own stamping. You know, hairsprings is you know, the biggest supplier of hairsprings for the longest time was actually Bregay. You know, they sold hairsprings to everybody, and now, you know, it is something that they just they buy right off the shelf. There's no point to produce their own hairsprings, but it's it's insane that you guys are doing doing that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, well, the reason one of the reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed, it was it was very badly organized. Its economy was completely centralized, and every manufacturer produced everything in-house, which is really not really rational. Wow. Uh, it's not a very efficient system, and that's one of the reasons why the system collapsed, I think. It's much more efficient to work, as in Switzerland, where you have a network of you know ultra-specialized suppliers, but things are as they are, and so we inherited a manufacture which, under its own roof, produced everything, but it was dying. So we had to take difficult choices. What do we continue doing? What do we you know discontinue doing, and we just buy? So we continue producing approximately 80% of the components that I wear on my watch, which is quite amazing. And out of these, the biggest part is the mechanical movement. We still produce 100% of our mechanical movements, and it's not just any, I mean, it's I didn't want that, it's just we inherited that technology and the specialists and the machines and the raw material and the technical drawings, the technical process. So I just they already did that when they discovered the manufacture. And it's it's a miracle that that the manufacture didn't collapse before. Because most, you know, the Soviet Union had approximately I think 10 watch manufacturers, very big watch manufacturers, and all of nearly all of them collapsed. They all went bankrupt, nearly all of them went bankrupt. That's crazy.
SPEAKER_00:So I'm curious as to like you, corporate lawyer, like living in Russia, like how did you find out about Raketa? And then where did you consciously say this is something that I want to do or something that I want to invest my energy into?
SPEAKER_01:Well, as I said, I started as a as a corporate lawyer in a US law firm in in Europe. And then one of our clients, one of our clients was was a Russian oligarch, as you call, as you call them. And we and he offered me to join his group in Russia. So that's why I left the law firm and I moved to Russia and I started working for him. And then eventually I got I got bored of working for this big Russian group, and I but I really liked the country. And I said, you know, I have a choice. Either I go back to Europe and I become again a lawyer, working difficult hours, you know, day and night, weekends included, you know, as people work in US law firms, or I stay a bit longer in Russia. And just to this, you know, uh working for this Russian guy, I worked so much also that I I hardly had the time to visit the country. It's a big country, very rich culture, very incredible, you know, museums, uh, geography, landscape, arts. I mean, and people are very nice. And so I decided to stay a bit longer, but I didn't want to work in a group anymore. I want to do something for myself. And I was always surprised at a country with such an incredible culture, such a fantastic history, and didn't have any brands. And I thought, you know, this country should have really brands because very often, you know, big brands are based on culture, legacy, history, traditions, and Russia has all of that, didn't have any brands. And I started looking for some brands. I didn't look into watches particularly, but everyone pointed me in the direction of watches. Everyone said, I actually, by the way, I knew nothing about watches. I never wore a watch. I knew absolutely nothing about watches, but everyone said you should look into the direction of Soviet brands because Soviet brands are really cool, they're quite famous worldwide, and maybe there's still something that exists. And I thought that's really cool. I started looking around and I discovered the braquetta. And I did a little, I mean, the whole thing is completely crazy. I mean, I knew nothing about production, obviously, but I thought, well, I kind of at that point of time I kind of understood that it was quite cool to have its own manufacturer. I understood that I did a bit of research, I spoke to a bit of people, a few people, and everyone said, you know, no one has manufacturers anymore apart from you know Rolex, Patek Philippe, Oudmar Piget. And so I so first I thought they have I discovered they had they still had their own manufacturer. I thought that was this is really cool. Then I started looking up the designs, and they had really quirky designs, you know, with counterclockwise, triangular hands, 24 hours, and I thought that's really, really cool. And they also had this incredible history, and I thought, wow, this is amazing. And I didn't really buy it, I just picked it up. It was kind of dying. You should try to try to imagine yourself, go back into the past 15 years ago. No one would have invested a dime into Russian watch brands. And I was I had this kind of irrational vision that there's no reason why a Russian watch brand should not become interesting and maybe as interesting as Swiss brands because they have this the manufacture, the design, the the history, the values. And but I was very naive, obviously, at that time. I mean, if I knew how difficult it would be, I would never have started.
SPEAKER_00:Well, no, I appreciate your honesty. And and yeah, I mean, I'm sure you probably ran into a lot of weird little things, especially the what the watch industry and the watch community. Like, we are like picky, like we're geeky, like, you know, obviously, like, you know, you talked about how you just it it just kind of like it seems like you know, you just kind of landed in your lap is kind of the the the way that I took you know your your words now, but like you know, even acquiring the IP and acquiring the factory, and like, you know, that all probably had to be incredibly difficult and challenging work, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'm sure that uh the process of actually acquiring of buying the company was quite easy. But I mean, my audit of the production of the factory was very limited. I just um I just walked around the factory, I saw that um the machines were running, and I saw that they were assembling mechanical movements, and I saw that the hands turned around the dial and the watches, you know, did tick tock, tick, tock, tick-tock. And I said, wow, this is really cool. The production you works perfectly well. I'll just do a bit of marketing and and I'll become very successful worldwide. Obviously, things turned out to be like a billion times more difficult. Obviously, the most difficult thing was the production. I I completely underestimated how difficult it would be to modernize this the Soviet old school factory, especially that I knew nothing about it. I had no idea how to from which you know how to start the whole thing. And obviously, I completely also completely underestimated how much people no one wanted Russian watches at that time. And first and foremost, Russians themselves. You know, it was a time when Russians were a bit ashamed of their country and they all wanted all the Russian guys wanted to move to the West, all the Russian girls wanted to marry. I mean, I'm exaggerating, obviously, but everyone wanted to. Right, right, right. It was a time when the Russians really looked up to the West and and were kind of really ashamed of their country. So they didn't certainly didn't want to buy Russian watches, and basically the market for Russian watches were basically tourists coming to visit Russia, and you know, as a tourist, you always want to buy a souvenir, and there was nothing much to buy except you know for Russian fur hats and the Russian Metroski dolls and Soviet watches. So really that was the market, and so but I was very extreme naive, but the idea was really cool. So basically, what drove me was this incredible idea that there's really something we can do out of it. You know, there's no reason. We have the manufacture, we have the incredible design, the history. I mean, this is incredible. It's like a gem that's just lying on the floor, it's dirty, it's ugly. No one pays attention to it. I just picked it up and I've started you know cleaning it up, clean, clean, cleaning it up.
SPEAKER_00:That's so cool. Something too that like so I'm curious, it brings up the question, and then I have another follow-up, but it's transitioning. You know, you talked about modernizing the manufacturer. Like, like, how did you even like start that process? Like, like how like how did you look for inefficiencies when you don't even know what to look for?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, as as everyone else, I thought that you know, I wouldn't trust the Russians, the guys at the manufacturer, to tell me how to modernize it because I thought, you know, only the Swiss know how to properly produce watches. So I flew to Switzerland and I I started looking for consultants, someone who could, you know, who could advise me what to do. And that was very difficult because no one took me seriously when I said, you know, I have my own, I own my own manufacturer in St. Petersburg. They said, Come on, that's impossible. No one has no one has his own manufacturer. And then eventually I found some consultants and they came over. And I mean, to make it really short, they basically said, you know, you have to throw all of your Soviet machines, buy a super excess expensive Swiss modern machines, you know, CNC machines. And but that was too expensive. I didn't have that money. You know, every CNC machine is like half a million dollars or a million dollars. And that was one problem. Second problem is all of my guys in Russia, they didn't know how they did not, they did, they did not know how to operate CNC machines. And so I ended up saying, you know, what should I do now? And eventually I had a choice either to shut down the manufacture and do as many other brands just by like the movements in Switzerland or the rest kind of in India or China, and just to keep like A little atelier open to pretend that I do something, or I could choose the difficult path is to keep the manufacturer and try to, based on the existing machines, the existing know-how, the existing technical process, try to gradually step by step modernize it. And that's what I did. And today, 90% of our machines are still servite machines. And what at first seems to be a disadvantage, a liability, has become like a really big asset now in terms of because we still produce old school. It's a very old school production process where we set the machine by hand, you operate it by hand. It's a really semi-manual production. And we've invited so many uh bloggers and Swiss journalists and specialists to come and visit our manufacturer. And they all said, Wow, you know, we you you still produce watches like we produce watches in Switzerland 60 years ago. And please don't change anything because this is really unique. This is really old school production. And this is one of the things that you know our community really appreciates and likes about Raketa is that we're not only just a manufacturer, but it's manufactured old school, it's semi-manual. And anything that is done by hands, as you know, is more precious than something that is done by a machine. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So something too that kind of brings this up or perfectly segues is I think in the watch community, watch collectors kind of have this stigma that Russian watches are like, and and you look at other what Russian watches out there, right? I'm not gonna say names, but generally they're cheap, they're generally unreliable, right? And you know, you buy them, you wear them for two years, and when they break, you just throw them away. You know, that is not a Raketa watch. Like you're doing the exact opposite.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, the vision from the very first day was there's absolutely no reason why Raketa could not be at the same positioning as a Swiss brand. And the mechanical movement that we have is perfect, you know, the construction is very reliable. It was just a question of relearning how to produce every component exactly in conformity with the technical drawings and to assemble it in the best conditions. So that's what we did, and uh the the vision from day one was to reach to reach twist quality, not just in functionality, but also in design, marketing, and everything else. So we did a very difficult job actually of you know, whilst keeping this old school production process, we kind of we we did the best that we could, and we still do the best that we can to produce every single component exactly in conformity with technical drawings and to assemble the whole thing, you know, in the perfect conditions. So the quality of our watches now is completely up to standards, completely up to you know Swiss standards. And that's and that's basically one of the reasons why, despite the whole situation, we are still invited in in the most prestigious watch exhibitions all around the world, is because Raketa is recognized, is acknowledged as a very serious, reputable brand, a premium brand, in terms of you know marketing, design, quality, and so on, so on. Otherwise, we would not be invited. Yeah. And actually, very often Raketa price-wise is is is at a very attractive price point, and very often we are one of the first entry prices in all of these big watch exhibitions where you have all of the biggest brands, but in position-wise, they acknowledge that we are the same level, you see, because we are as you know, as as I'm not going to name any other brands, but we have an incredible history, manufacture our own like we produce our own, you will not find our mechanical movements anywhere else. You know, we are like Rolex, we produce our own mechanical movements for our own brands. This is really, really unique.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy just your story and to hear this. And you know, something too that probably you had to deal with and maybe you've never talked about, is you know, putting yourself in the shoes of of your watchmakers, right? This foreign investor guys coming in, trying to change the brand, a lot of uncertainty. Like, like, how did you get in there and modernize the brand without breaking the soul that like was already there?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, first of all, I very quickly understood that they did like magic with their hands. They produced, like, actually, just to go back, when I realized that I couldn't afford buying Swiss machines and that I decided to keep the Soviet machines and try to build on that, when all my family went on holiday during the summer holiday to Europe, I stayed for two months and I lived in the manufacturer. A bit like I mean, without any a bit like Elon Musk and Tesla. I mean, every time I hear Elon Musk saying, you know, I sleep at the factory, that's exactly what I did. I worked at the factory, I worked behind every single machine, I did myself every single operation to try to understand what's wrong with this machine. And very often, nothing was wrong with the machine itself. Something was wrong with you know, the temperature, the environments, the humidity, the raw material that they used, the cutting instruments, and so on, so on. And actually, I forgot what's was the question. I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, like how how did you step in? You know, obviously. Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And one of the facts, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm so so exact. Yeah, and and I lived with the what with the specialists and I started really valuing them. I I really understood that these guys did an incredible job and they produced magic with their own hands. So I respected them from day one. And when I kind of understood that I couldn't go into the direction that the Swiss consultants told me to go, you know, you know, buying Swiss machines, then I didn't have any other choice than to work hand in hand with the Russian guys, the Russian specialists, because I knew nothing about watchmaking, so I had to learn how to trust them. And and that's what I did. And it took me some time to be accepted, obviously, because especially at the beginning, you know, most of these specialists watchmakers were very old people, obviously. And for you know, as any old person, for them, what was in the past will always be better than the present. There was this kind of mentality that okay, he's trying David is trying to do something, but anyways, it'll never be as good as it used to be in the Soviet times. And it's kind of normal, every old person is like that. But very gradually, we started hiring young people. We we opened our own watchmaking school because that there are no more watchmaking schools in Russia, and very gradually they started seeing results, and they started seeing that our watches were being sold, not only in Russia but worldwide. And step by step they started seeing wow, something you know, maybe there is a future for this manufacturer. Wow.
SPEAKER_00:But it was difficult.
SPEAKER_01:Sorry.
SPEAKER_00:No, go ahead. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:Uh obviously, I'm just making it really short, but I went through very difficult times, you know, and uh it required a lot of determination. I mean, there were a hundred very good reasons every single year for the first first six years why I should just shut down the whole manufacture and just just buy Swiss movements and just pretend that they're Russian made, just tweak them around, add a bit of you know, maybe a complication, change the decoration and just pretend it's Russian made. But I didn't like this direction because it was fake. And I really understood that the really, as you said correctly, the soul of the project of Raketa was the manufacturer, it was our legitimacy, it was, and that's what people really valued and cherished in Raketa is that it's really authentic. When we say it's Russian-made and it's has its own mechanical movement, it's really Russian-made with its own mechanical movement.
SPEAKER_00:Did you have any resistance from? I mean, obviously, you have these RTs and you know, watchmakers, legacy craftspeople who like have been in the same conditions, the same factory, under the same leadership for so long. You know, like how did you get the buy-in and support from these people? You know, okay, this British lawyer is coming in to take over our company. Like that, you know, like how did you legitimize yourself to your your staff? You know, did you ever have any resistance or like yeah?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, the kind of difficulty that I had is there were two kinds of difficulties. Like during the first three, four years, I completely I was completely dependent on these old watchmakers. You know, when I say old, it's 70 plus, because all the young ones had left. So it took me took me some time to find young people, and all of these young people were untrained, so we had to train them. So I completely relied on these old people. And whenever I told them, listen, we'll work a bit differently now. I mean, I came from a capitalistic system where you know I required efficiency, I required long hours, I required, I had a business plan, I required results, targets, none of that works. You know, and I that was one of the reasons I said I'll just shut it down because they kind of lived in the past. And and I thought, and I was completely incapable of bringing this manufacturer into the management system that I was taught, you know, in these law firms and so on, you know, efficiency, productivity, targets, results. And I had to adapt to they had a very slow pace of doing things, you know. In my first business plan, you know, new models had to come out every two months. Today, do you know how long it takes to to to to to uh release a model? A year and a half, two years. A year and a half, two years. And it and it's not just me, it's every single brand that I know. Every brand. It takes between the idea and the release, a year and a half, two years, sometimes even more. And the reason for that is it's watchmaking is incredibly difficult. You know, the tolerances that we use to produce our components are sometimes a micron. A micron is you take a millimeter, you divide, you divide it by a thousand, that's a micron. So, and it's incredibly difficult, and they have to reach these tolerances, you know, with a semi-manual production. So, watchmaking is extremely difficult. So, I had to adapt to that slow pace of time, literally. And and I started respecting them because, as I said, they did incredible things. You know, I very quickly understood that producing mechanical movements is is is an incredible achievement, and they did it every single day. So I started listening to them and I started listening to their advices, and very gradually, step by step, we did some progress.
SPEAKER_00:That's crazy. Yeah, I mean, which makes it even more impressive that you guys are still doing things the old school way. You know, you're not bringing in these crazy automated computer CNCs that like you can just literally dial down to those microns, which is absolutely crazy. This is a question for the watch nerds, but now that you're in the watch industry, like how has your relationship with watches kind of changed from you know, not only just being like an outsider, but I mean, do you consider yourself as a watch enthusiast now, or do you just I'm just a guy just trying to try trying to run a watch brand?
SPEAKER_01:I I do, but I'm I'm kind of special, I'm kind of apart from many people I meet in Switzerland. Is that I never wore another watch than Raketa. I never wore watches before Raketa. And since I've started Raketa, obviously I never wore a single other watch. So all of my knowledge of watchmaking came from Raketa. Obviously, I didn't have any particular feelings towards watches when I started. I just I just thought the idea was cool. But very gradually I discovered that watches are very sacred, and I'm not ashamed of using that word, a sacred product, because it's linked to it's linked to time. Time is one of the most sacred things that we have in life. Our ancestors read time, the dial of our ancestors was basically the sky, and time came from them, you know, when they read, they looked at the movement of the planets, the the stars, the moon, the sun. And they believed that all of this was given to them by God. So there was something really sacred about it. And a watch literally gives you time, gives you the most important things that you have in life. And that's I also discovered that you know all of the things that we use in our day-to-day life, most likely we will lose them, sell them, break them. But even the cheapest watch, even when it breaks down, like a quartz watch, I don't think that anyone throws it away in a dustbin. You don't throw a watch in a dustbin. Why? Because it's something to do with time, you know, and as Patek Philippe really rightly says in that slogan, very often the watch is the the only thing that you give to the next generation.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So there's something very special about watches that I gradually discovered. And that was actually one of the reasons that prevented me from shutting down this manufacturer, is because a manufacturer that produces watches is basically produces an instrument that gives you time. It produces time. There's something very special about it. So I have a lot of respect for watches now.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm curious too. You know, you you just allude or you just mentioned, you know, like so you have this Rakhetta way, if that's what we're gonna call it. And and now you're modernizing the company, the the manufacturer, and you're teaching these like newer watchmakers, like you know, the old traditional ways. Like what would you say is like the most challenging skill that you've seen to pass from generation to generation, you know, within your manufacturer?
SPEAKER_01:The most difficult challenge that I've had was to hire to persuade younger generations to join the manufacturer. Because I would first of all, they came without any knowledge. It's not like in Switzerland, you know, these manufacturers they hired people who went through watchmaking schools, so they have the basic knowledge already. In our case, I just hired people that came from you know other professions or without any profession, and we had to teach them the science of watchmaking. That was incredibly difficult. Because to become a you know very highly qualified watchmaker, you need at least uh five, six years. Very, very difficult. So it was a big challenge to persuade young people to come to us and to learn a profession that no one else in Russia really would use. So if we went bankrupt or if we you know fired them for any reason, no one else would need the qualification that it would take them so long to get in in Raketa. That was very, very difficult. In terms of what operations are the most difficult, they're all very difficult. I mean, I wouldn't say the headspring is more difficult, produced in the headspring. Like in Switzerland, you know, everyone says, oh, the headspring is like the most difficult component. It isn't really. When you know how to do it, when you have all the technical process, the machines, and the raw material. The raw material actually is like gold, it's very difficult to get, either you have it or not. Basically, we have 80 kilos of raw material to make the headspring, so that's enough for the next 200 years. Wow. But making the headspring is not more difficult than any other operation. Basically, the other thing that was difficult with the younger generations, you know, all the younger generations come from this you know modern world where TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, everything has to be quick. And being a watchmaker requires a lot of patience, a lot of focus, all of these qualities that don't really exist in our modern world. So that was a big, big, big challenge, I would say.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, something too, like, you know, obviously, I'm gonna step back here. I I jump I jump around so much on my podcast, but I think it keeps the conversation interesting. You know, you sat down in these roles at every, you know, you said that you sat down at every single machine in your in your manufacturer, you sat down on roles, you know, you slept at the manufacturer, which is crazy. What do you feel like is the most human step at your factory? Like the most maybe you can call it romantic or you know, but human, right? That that you will never, ever, ever, ever look to automate.
SPEAKER_01:But that's a difficult question because there's there's a lot of humanity in the manufacture because you have all of these incredible people doing incredible jobs with their hands, they all work with their hands. This is something that's very important. Raketa is is it's it's it's it's a handcraft job. I was uh I and the whole thing is is extraordinary. All of these people are amazing, and they're all very important because every single component is important, you know. Even if like in the watch, I I'm wearing on my wrist approximately 300 components. I wouldn't say every single component is important, even if there's just one single little screw that's missing, we will not be able to assemble the watch. And there's not a single professional specialist that is less important than anyone else, even someone who's working in the department that is you know cleaning the components because they have to be very clean before, you know, one would think you know that's his easy job, it's not so important. It's not, it's very important because even the most minute that has to go away. And this is I don't know if I really answered your question, but uh it sounds like it sounds like none of it.
SPEAKER_00:Like it sounds like you, you know, obviously, as technology advances, you know, you have to at some point probably, or maybe not in your case, advance the manufacturer, you know.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, no. I mean, obviously, very gradually, yeah, we we will bring in some modern machines. I mean, now it obviously it's a bit difficult because it's a bit difficult because of the um geopolitical situation for us to buy machines from from uh outside Russia, but uh eventually we will start buying modern machines. But you know, we have 400 machines, like we've counted every single one of them from the biggest to smallest, we have 400. So it'll take a lot of time before we actually one of the advantages, one of the biggest advantages that we still use is old service machines is that they don't have any software, so we so we don't depend on software. Upgrades, for example, they're very simple to operate. In a hundred years, they will still be working because that's so simple. So, on the one hand, we rely uh the difficulty is that to operate, you need to be very highly qualified specialists who know how to set them and to operate them. But on the other hand, the machine itself is unbreakable. In a hundred years, every single one of our machines will still be working because there's no there's no electrical system, there's no hydraulics, there's no software. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_00:It's insane. I want to talk about design because when you think of a raqueta watch, like design, you know, we've already we've already talked about the artisanal craftsman, like high quality like products that you guys are putting out, but design is what sticks out, and you know, raqueta literally just translates to like rocket, you know, space a space rocket. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, how does that space age kind of like symbolism, you know, shape the the creative direction of of the brand?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So the brand was created in 1961 when the first man flew into space. That was Yuri Gagarin. He was a Russian Russian astronaut or cosmopot as they called him in Russia.
SPEAKER_00:One of the most famous, too, right?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, he was the very first guy in space. So and that was such an incredible event for humanity that the Soviets decided to create a brand in honor of this his fight in 61. So they created the Raketa brand, which literally means a space rocket. And so in the DNA of the brand, space is obviously very, very important. So we have quite a lot of watches that are linked or inspired by space because it's so important. And once again, we didn't invent these designs, they already existed. But design that that was one of that was a big challenge, obviously, because it took us some time to because at the beginning, when I started Raketa, the Russians, as I said, they wanted uh Swiss watches, so they wanted Swiss design. The tourists, they wanted you know Russian kitsch design. They wanted, you know, the Soviet star, they wanted Balikis, they wanted some basically I had two markets. I had the foreign market and the Russian market that saw the brand completely differently. You know, the Russians they wanted Swiss design, the foreigners they wanted some kind of Russian kitsch design. And it took me a lot of time to find the thin red the thin line that would be good for the for foreigners and Russians. And but that was very difficult. But basically, every single watch that we have now is we didn't have any normal watches. You know, if you went through our collection, if you remember, we didn't have any normal watches. All of our watches are really quirky, and all of these designs are completely inspired from survey designs. It's the big zero instead of the 12 at the top of the dial, it's 24 hours instead of 12 hours, it's counterclockwise, it's uh, and so on, so on, so on. We don't have any normal watches, and that's what really sets us apart from and that was really the vision from the very beginning. I did not want to do, I did not want to copy Swiss design because I thought that's completely uninteresting. Swiss, they do Swiss designs much better than we do, and we have to remain. I mean, we have to we have to keep a look. I mean, they did such incredible things in the past that we have to we have to keep this tradition. So we have incredible design here. And all of this design is not just designed for the sake of design, it's very often designed based on a storytelling. You know, 24 hours is not just oh wow, it's cool to do a 24-hour dial. No, they did 24 hour dials because people working in extreme conditions uh with very difficult professions, like in a North Pole, South Pole, in submarines were in space, they need to survive a dial a watch to distinguish day from night. So that's why they need 24-hour watches to survive. So it's not just a fancy watch with a 24-hour dial, it's actually a real tool watch. So it's a complication that is serves a real functional purpose.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I read that, you know, because obviously where there's you know, there's not the same solar calendar or solar rotations that we live on, where people have no idea if it's going to be day or night. Well, no, no.
SPEAKER_01:Well, actually, it's more interesting than that. Is a normal 12-hour dial will say like it's three o'clock, right? But it doesn't say is it three o'clock in the morning or at night? Yeah, yeah. To know if it's a m or p.m., you have to look through the window. If it's nice time, if it's dark, okay, it's 3 a.m. If it's light outside, it's 3 p.m. That's how you understand it. But if you're in a submarine or in space or in a south pole, you can't look just look through the window. Anywhere in your submarine, there's actually no window. So you need a 24 hour, a 24-hour dial. So if it's 3 p.m., the hour hand will be pointing towards 15. And if 3 a.m. it will be pointing towards 3.
SPEAKER_00:Also in space, space, yeah, amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Same in space. Yeah, because if you live in the ISS in a space station, you root the orbit around the earth 16 times every 24 hours. So you're completely confused. You can't look through the through the little window to see if it's day or night. So you need a 24-hour watch.
SPEAKER_00:It was my understanding when I was doing research for this podcast that you know, obviously, you talked about the 24-hour dial, beautiful watch, and you know, the Arctic expeditions that kind of like uh were the inspiration behind producing this tool, you know. And then it was also my understanding, you know, that the challenge became making a movement that can withstand like the harsh like conditions of Antarctica. Is do I understand that correctly? Or exactly.
SPEAKER_01:And all of our tool watches, not just as I said, fancy tool watches, they're actually worn by by by by by submariners. They, as we speak now, they are worn by Russian astronauts in the ISS at this very minute. And as you correctly said, Russian scientists living in a South Pole in very harsh conditions, they were our watches and they sent us films and videos and messages saying that our watch withstands you know temperatures going down to minus 60 degrees. And we have videos showing that they still continue working. They actually did an experiment where where they put our watch in a glass of in a in in a can of water and it froze, and they kept it like for three hours outside by minus whatever 40 degrees in the South Pole. Then they took it back into the station, they broke dice, and and the watch started working again. And we have this video because because because the raketal movements is very robust, you know. Anything that the Soviets did was very robust.
SPEAKER_00:You should use that in your marketing, like that right there is a marketing board.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, we should, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, get on it, get on it. Yeah, I mean, it's such a storied brand, you know. Like, you know, I guess the challenge becomes like how do you balance the nostalgia, you know, that that you live in every day, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Well, we are completely, you know, we are true to the past, and every single watch is based on on this design, but it's a modern watch. You know, we look towards the future, and the watch are completely up to standards in terms of quality, design, marketing, the modern standards. And it's not there's no nostalgia in our design, you see. When you look at the watches, they're completely modern. You wouldn't see any nostalgia in our designs in the colors that we use. Do you see what I mean? Yeah, it's a completely modern watch.
SPEAKER_00:It yeah, it definitely expresses that.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I I mean, I Russian astronauts wear our watches in space, so uh they would not wear them if there were just you know watches, just uh retro watches, uh small manual movements, small case plastic um glass.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, watch watches are really modernized, especially you know, within the past 30 years, 35 years. Like you you see a lot of collectors that are really into vintage pieces, but but you know, owning a vintage watch and taking care of a vintage watch is another challenge that us watch collectors face. Curious, and you kind of touched on this very briefly, but you know, I got the idea that that communicating that like, hey, in Russia we take watchmaking seriously at Raketa, you know, like how do you communicate that, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I actually in Russia apart from Raketa, you have Chaikin. Chaikin is quite famous.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You have Anton Sukhanov. I mean, Russia has a very strong history of watchmaking, very, very strong history. For many, many reasons. Obviously, there are very few of us left in Russia making watches, but historically speaking, that there was a lot, and our marketing is very traditional, by the way. I mean, we we use a lot of social media, we we before like up to like three years ago, we did a lot of press tours, like a lot of you know, journalists, bloggers, people came to visit our manufacture, which is in St. Petersburg, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. St. Petersburg is a city, it's a bit like Venice, it's a city built on the sea, so there are a lot of canals, very beautiful city. So we, I mean, we communicate. Obviously, communicating now for us is a bit more challenging in the West, but we still sell all over the world because we don't touch politics, uh, we just do you know very nice mechanical watches. So we we don't have any particular problem now, and uh people really appreciate the the craftsmanship, the history, the manufacturing side, the storytelling, the design. And if you look at our content, the content that we do is yeah, I lots of people say you do really good content, and we do films, really good photos. Every year we try to do better than the previous year. Do you and and we've learned all of this from scratch because none of no one in the design team, in the marketing team, in the contents produce production team came from the watch industry. No one. So we had to learn from scratch how to you know take photos of watches. Just a simple photo of watch is extremely difficult, as you may know. You know, very difficult.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, yeah, it's it's like uh it's like lighting a teapot, you know. It really is. I I I I always I obviously have like my own little system here, and and I see people that are doing it way differently, but you know, you know, I'm not I'm not a media outlet that sells watches, you know. I don't I don't get monetized off the content that I produce, you know. I'm out here as an enthusiast, a passionate enthusiast. You bring up something really interesting. You know, you talked about international, the international market, international sales. Like, do you generally think that people are buying Raketa, not only just for the story, but the aesthetics and the engineering? But like, have you noticed that the reasons why people buy Raketa are different, like for different regions of the world?
SPEAKER_01:Well, a lot of people, you know, when I when we exhibit when I exhibit in these international watch exhibitions, a lot of people say, you know, thank you very much for continuing producing watches in your manufacturing St. Petersburg, because the watchmaking world would be much you know sadder without much more boring without Russian watches. If every single watch was just Swiss Swiss, it would be very, very boring. So thank God you have English watchmakers, German watchmakers, Japanese brands, Russian brands, because every country, every watch is based on traditions, legacy, culture, you know, mentalities. And obviously, since we make Russian watches, this obviously has it translates into the design, the storytelling, the way they make the mechanical movements, the way they decorate the mechanical movements, and it just makes the watchmaking world so richer. So people really like that. And the watches are all about emotions. You know, very few people now buy watches just as a uh as a time-measuring instrument. And people like raqueta for many different reasons. First of all, they kind of appreciate that the mechanical movement is very different from what you get in in Switzerland, like eta movement, for example, it looks different, it's decorated differently, the functions are different, like the counterclockwise function. Some other people just like the design, which is really quirky. Other people like and so on and so on, or the storytelling. They like, you know, when we do watches for astronauts, cosmonauts, people know that it's we actually Russian cosmonauts actually really wear them. So it makes the the brand is really authentic. You see what I mean? When we say that we make watches for cosmos, they are really made for cosmonauts. When we say we make watches for and so on, so on, we don't lie about the origin of the brand. It's really made in Russia. We don't lie about the mechanical movement, it's really our own mechanical movement. We don't lie about the storytelling of the watch, the purpose of the watch, the design of the watch. It's really a 360-degree marketing, which is makes the brands very authentic. And that's what I think people really appreciate in Rakheta because it's a very small niche brand, very different. We stand out from the big crowds a lot because we're very, very different, very quirky, and but very authentic. And that's why we kept the manufacturer life, otherwise, we would have lost this authenticity.
SPEAKER_00:Do you do you feel that you know navigating like the global luxury market that like you know made in Russia like means something?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, anyone who knows about watches and knows uh knows that uh Russia has a strong legitimacy in watchmaking, I think. So it's not like out of the blue, we made a Belgian watch, for example. You see, Belgium has no legitimacy in watchmaking, or like that would be a bit strange. In our case, people know that there is a history of watchmaking, so they're not surprised. And we've been around, we've we've been gradually building up our marketing, our communication over the past you know, 10 years. So people have gradually heard of us. And I very much believe in organic growth. You know, we don't have the budgets as these big brands, you know, to buy billboards and to buy articles in you know these big media corporations and so on. So the way we do our marketing is very much actually, it's the best marketing, is the is the one that you can't buy. It's just word of mouth marketing, you see what I mean? And in the case of in the case of Raketa, it really, really works. Our best ambassadors are people who wear our watches and say listen to to their colleagues, to their friends, to their family. Look at our watch, it looks completely different. Look at the design, look at the storytelling. And someone who wears a raqueta watch can actually talk about his watch for at least five minutes, really. There's so much to say about we have a very small collection. We have, I think, one of the smallest collections of models in in the market. We have like 12 active models, that's it. But every model has a very strong storytelling, very strong design, very strong decoration, and there's so much to tell. That's so that's that's the way I see our groove is very step by step, word by in a mouth kind of phrase, organic groove.
SPEAKER_00:Something, you know, that maybe maybe or has or hasn't happened, but you know, obviously you're taking a storied manufacturer, modernizing it, and kind of revitalizing it in the sense, you know, you know, there's tons of vintage Rakheto watches out there everywhere, you know. I'm curious if you've gotten to see the reaction in real time, you know, from maybe you know, somebody a watchmaker at your manufacturer, or maybe a customer who, you know, has only worn a racket watch for as long as they live, and then you know, seeing what you're doing now with the brand just you know inspires them or you know, creates a new sense of of glory for them, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Are you talking about foreigners or Russians? Either. Either. I mean, well, no, I I'm I once again, I just came back from Dubai in November. There was this big Dubai watch exhibition, and a lot of locals came up to me and said, Hey, I was given a servant racket to watch by my father, and we I like it so much, and we're so curious to see what you what you do, and uh and it's really great. And they won't necessarily buy one of our modern watches because they think that what they have is really cool, and I'm perfectly fine with that, you know. But uh, people are very curious, and you're perfectly right. You know, there are a lot of Raketa watches from the old times, and so the brand is relatively well known amongst quite a few people, so it makes people very curious to see what we do now, and they really appreciate that we kept the link with the past. You know, it's not when you look at our modern watches and the Soviet watches, you see the link. It's not like we decide to do new brands. There is this legitimacy from the past, which I think is very important and which I think most people really appreciate. And and in terms of it in and people, yeah, are very happy, as I said, that the manufacture hasn't closed and that it still exists, these the movement is still produced. Yeah, I think I think it's it I think it's really great in terms of it brings a lot of you know it makes, as I said, you know, the world of watches more interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Where where do you want the modern Raketa brand to kind of sit in those enthusiasts' minds, you know, not necessarily whether it be like like a tool watch or design object or like a cultural artifact or just well something that we didn't even list.
SPEAKER_01:Everyone says, you know, since you have a manufacturer, why don't you do tourbillon watches, for example? And I say, you know, tobillon is not is not a is not a Russian thing. Toubillon is a very fragile, complicated complication, and that's really a Swiss thing. The Russian thing is more robust. More so we will not go into this direction, you know, very difficult complications. Actually, we will not even necessarily go into the direction of complications at all. For the moment, we only have two complications, it's a 24 hours and counterclockwise because they fit in our storytelling. But we will not do a complication for the sake of doing complication just to prove that, hey, we can do things. You know, many brands they do complications because they buy the base movements and they have to prove that they also do something. So they just add on top a layer of uh complications.
SPEAKER_00:Modules, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We don't have to do that because we do the base movement, and the base movement is so much more difficult than any kind of complication that you add on top. You know, the escapement just giving the right time is so difficult. So we would not necessarily go into the direction of difficult complications. We will stay, we will keep the legitimacy in terms of design with the past. That's I think is very important. And in the past, they produce, as I said, you know, more than six million watches a year. So we have an archive of designs that will keep us going for the next 50 years. There are so many incredible, for example, oh, I won't even tell you because we're working on so many different designs at the moment, but basically we we we have a lot of in terms of design. Like we will never do a watch, for example, linked to golf, you know, golf like Odmar Piget. Why? Because it's not a Russian thing, it's not a Russian sport. So what we will continue doing is always tell Russian storytelling. And that's we have enough material to keep us going for a hundred years. You know, Russia, and everyone knows about it, has done incredible achievements in science, in art, in in in ballet, in science, in space, in under the sea, in basically in every single direction, every single field, Russia did incredible things. So we can we can connect to to all of that. And also we will not go into expensive watches because one of the reasons why a racketa watch is you know affordable is because we produce in Russia the cost of production producing in Russia is way lower than in Switzerland, because obviously for salaries in Switzerland are the most expensive in the world, I think. So people appreciate that you can buy a manufactured watch with strong design, strong storytelling at a very reasonable price point, and we will try to keep it that way. I mean, obviously, prices do go up because there is inflation worldwide, and so on and so on, but we will it'll always be reasonable.
SPEAKER_00:What would you say the next like five-year strategy for you know the brand is what you know, you you alluded to like you know, you just talked about complications, not on your roadmap. What about new, like, you know, more output, or like, you know, you talked about using modules, you know, you didn't seem like you're interested in that, but like maybe new movement design or you know, just this deeper design integration and deeper all deeper cultural integration with Russia. You know, what you know what what makes the next five years look exciting for you?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, for example, in our collection now, we don't have a watch with astronauts because we discontinued the last model uh to a year and a half ago. And for the past two years, we've been working on a new design that will come out early next year, hopefully. That's a big, big model. Really cool design for astronauts. In the archives, there's a manufacturer, there's a really cool model with a Geiger counter, you know, a counter that measures the level of radioactivity, and the watch is really, really quirky. Like the design of the case. I I would love to reproduce it, and I really want to do it. There are so many things that we can do. Uh uh, you know, in my office at the factory, I have all of the old archives. Today, all of our designers they design on computer. Back in the past, they designed using watercolor. So I have these, you know, more than I have 300 watercolors of different designs. And sometimes I just look at them and I say, Wow, this is so cool, this is so cool, this is so cool. My my biggest problem is to decide what to do. I mean, we we have such a huge choice in terms of designs, in terms of uh storytelling. There's so much we can we can we didn't have any lack of ideas. The biggest difficulty is to um choose which ones to do.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, it's a great place to be in. You know, obviously, as a business owner, like you have to keep the manufacturer doors open. And I promise, you know, I'm sure you're ready to get to dinner with your wife. This is the last couple questions here. You know, how do you as a business owner measure success, you know, outside of you know, like units sold or like brand awareness, or like like what you know, what is it for you that you say, hey, okay, cool, like we're on the right track. Like, how do you measure that?
SPEAKER_01:I I I obviously I come from a world where the measured success was always measured, the standard of success was always measured by money. Yeah, yeah. Um it took me a few years to understand that uh watches is not about money. I would have been much, much richer if I stayed a you know, a US corporate lawyer, uh working for a US corporate law firm. So watchmaking is definitely not about money. And and everyone will say that to you in Switzerland, I think. Watch is about something else. Watch is something that's terribly interesting. I mean, when I get up in the I mean, I had so many, I had so so many good reasons to shut down the whole thing. What kept me going was just this passion of when I get up in the morning instead of being depressed by all the problems that I encounter every single day in the manufacturer and in watches in general, because it's difficult. I I won't uh it's difficult. What keeps me going is just it's incredible, incredibly interesting. You know, we talk, we we deal with culture, design, history, craftsmanship. It's just incredibly interesting. And that's that's my measure of success now. I'm we're very proud that we uh we modernize the manufacturer, not in a sense of new machines, but we just made it um, it works, it doesn't lose money. Uh we hire new people, people don't you know leave us, people are enthusiastic to learn a new skill, to produce incredible watches. So the that is an incredible achievement in itself, incredible achievements, and that makes me really proud. Then there's something else that we can be really proud of, is that as I said, when we started 12 years ago, no one would have put a dime in uh in Russian watches. Today, Russian watches are very legitimate in the watch, worldwide watch industry. We sell all over the world. That's incredible achievement, by the way. Incredible. Because and and but it's certainly not about money. It's not about money, it's about other things that maybe it taught me that money is not the most important thing in the world. And I really insist on that because I come from a world where everything was based on money. But uh Raketa and any watch brand and watch manufacturers is so much more than that. And the success and the level the the measure of success is the the standards of success are completely different.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that makes sense. You know, obviously, you know, you're talking about 64 years. I think it's 64 years of 1961. Um what do you hope, you know, another 64 years or maybe even another 150 years down the road? You know, I know it's hard for you as a as a logical business owner to think about that, but like, you know, how do you preserve a brand that's already been preserved as you as you acquired it?
SPEAKER_01:Well, what's what's difficult is every every model that you that you launch has to make people, you know, has to bring emotions to to uh to people. And that's quite difficult, you know, because it's not just the design, it's also the storytelling, it's the content, communication, marketing. Watches are about emotions, so you have to give emotions to people. People don't buy watches to read the time really anymore. So you have to keep that emotion alive, and every time you have to, whilst being you know, uh true to the past, you always have to surprise people with something new to bring new emotions, and that's the most that's one of the challenging things, you see what I mean. Every model has to bring a lot of emotions to the to the to the community, and that's quite challenging, by the way. So so so so I would say I mean our ambition is not to become like Rolex, obviously. We we we still produce only we produce 7,000 watches a year. The reason we produce so few watches is because we having your own manufacture is on the one hand an incredible marketing tool, you see. On the other hand, it's it's a huge bottleneck because if I need more watches, I cannot produce more watches. So we increase our production capacity by maybe you know 10% every year, but we can't do more than that because that wouldn't require hiring new people, training new people, buying more machines, which we can't, and so on and so on. So we will never produce a million watches like Rolex. So yeah, so sure. The ambition, as you within the next few years, is to gradually ramp up the production without affecting the quality. Because one of the biggest enemies in watchmaking is to put press. I could very well say to my manufacturer this, I want you to produce two times more watches tomorrow, next year, but it will be to the detriment of quality. So you have to find this right balance between increasing the production without affecting the quality. So once again, the strategy is very step-by-step, organic, slow growth, and obviously opening new markets. The fact that we don't have enough watches prevents us from opening the Asian market, for example. There's a strong demand for racket in Asia and China, but we just can't, we don't have enough watches. All the seven watches that 7,000 watches that we produce are completely sold between our three existing markets. It's Russia, Europe, and the Middle East. And obviously, we sell in the US, we sell in all the rest of the world through internet, but we don't have any points of sell. And the reason for that is just we don't have enough watches. The demand is higher than what we can produce. So that's one of the challenges for the next you know, 10, 20 years is to gradually increase the production. That's difficult.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, I can only imagine. David, I want to thank you so much for spending so much of your time with us, like just learning about the journey that you've been on, you know, the brand. Obviously, we're gonna link the you know, Raketa here in the show notes, you know. Obviously, for everybody listening who's made it this far, you know, I would highly encourage you to go check out Raketa. You know, it didn't take me very long to realize that you know, you have something special and and and you're doing something special, and you have a very special product, and and to see the you know, passion, you know, that's something that kind of stuck out to me that lives with you, you know, reviving this brand that you know you didn't you didn't found, but you know, I can see that the passion is there for you, you know, which is what sticks out. So thanks a lot. I think that's a great place to to leave you, and I'm sure you're ready to get to dinner with the wife. So nice.
SPEAKER_01:And I would love to come and visit you in in Las Vegas.
SPEAKER_00:Please.
SPEAKER_01:I've never I've never been there, never.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And next time you're here, I will certainly show you the city and show you everything we have to offer. That'd be amazing. So I think people people know that like I'm I'm the watch guy of Vegas. So it's the thing, I think, I think. But but no, it's it's a cool city, it's a great, it's a great market to be in. And and yeah, I just love being here.
SPEAKER_01:So cool. Thanks a lot for having me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, thank you for coming on. I'm glad we were able to finally get this scheduled, and and I'm certainly gonna gonna follow up with you here very soon, of course.
SPEAKER_01:So okay. Let's keep in touch. Thanks a lot, sir. Bye bye bye bye.
