Edouard Meylan: Not stuck in time

How the CEO of independent watchmaker H Moser & Cie uses humour and a Marie Kondo-like obsession with decluttering to woo a new generation of collectors

I understand irony, let me in. This is the prompt to enter the Pioneer Chronicles website introduced three years ago by Swiss watchmaker, H. Moser & Cie. If you are not feeling the vibe, click on I have no humour, let me out to exit.

Much has been written recently about humour being employed as an effective tool to market luxury. But the irreverence you now see in a Valentino or Gucci online campaign was served up much earlier by the almost 200-year-old independent watchmaker based in Schaffhausen. Edouard Meylan, H Moser & Cie’s CEO and owner since MELB Holding Group took over in 2012, is considered by some as a provocateur in the watchmaking world. In 2017, the engineer and Wharton MBA made headlines as the Swiss CEO who fashioned a fine watch out of cheese, an inside joke protesting the Swiss government’s legislation at the time to define what is ‘Swiss Made’. Moser’s Swiss Mad Watch had real Swiss cheese in resin for the case, a strap from domestic cowhide and the price tag of 1,081,291 francs (Switzerland was founded on August 1, 1291). It was auctioned at Christie’s.