Elite Traveler March-April 2015

Most consumers just want to know they can wear their watch while swimming and snorkeling

or some watch companies, the testing process behind their timepieces looks more like a scene from a blockbuster adventure movie than an exercise in quality control for an investment- caliber piece of wrist jewelry. Britain’s Bremont Watch Company, for example, partnered with ejection seat manufacturer Martin-Baker to ensure the durability of its MB Range of aviator watches. They are tested by being strapped to a high-tech mannequin that is attached to an ejector seat and then dropped from a moving airplane, thrown from an engine-backed sled speeding along at 600mph and violently shaken for hours to simulate 40 years of excessive wear and tear. “It’s like being in Q’s lab in a James Bond film,” the company’s co-founder, Nick English, says. “We have learned a huge amount from the testing; in the end it has resulted in a completely new breed of watch.” Feedback from the adventurers who wear Bremont’s watches during their extreme exploits – characters such as Levison Wood, who spent nine months walking the length of the Nile, and five-time Olympic skier Graham Bell – are also part of the brand’s development method. The strap for one watch, for instance, was

tweaked in response to a suggestion from travel writer Charley Boorman after he wore it during a treacherous four-month motorcycle journey with his friend Ewan McGregor for The Long Way Round . “We do a lot more testing than 99.9% of companies do on their watches,” English says. “Any testing you can do on a watch is definitely beneficial.” Many brands are now integrating the most extreme practical testing with ultra-precise laboratory machines to ensure different watch functions live up to their claims. Part of Hublot’s testing process on the King Power Oceanographic 4000, which is waterproof up to 13,000 feet (4,000 meters), was to strap it to a diver wearing an Exosuit, a divers’ outfit that makes its wearer look like a cross between a giant robot and the Michelin Man. (The aluminum alloy garment, which allows divers to go as deep as 3,200 feet while maintaining mobility, was designed to be worn by archeologists combing the sea floor for shipwrecks.) The company also relies on highly technical machines at its headquarters, one of which cost a million dollars. “We conduct scientific testing that corresponds to the reality of the consumer wearing the watch,” says Ricardo Guadalupe, Hublot’s CEO. While the feedback from the Exosuit- clad divers is useful, his company avoids more theatrical testing such as dropping watches from airplanes. “That’s more for marketing,” he says. “I would not say it’s serious testing.” At Tudor Watches, in addition to laboratory testing, professional divers in Lake Geneva, near the company’s Swiss headquarters, helped try out the company’s Pelagos model, a diving watch that promises to

withstand depths of up to 1,640 feet. “They told us about how when you go deep diving, your wrists reduce in size, due to the pressure, which means that typical watches become loose,” says Davide Cerrato, Tudor’s director of marketing and product development. “We worked with our engineers and designers to develop a unique folding clasp that has a mechanical system of coils inside that shrinks when you go down and expands when you come up.” Breitling, strongly linked with

“Scientific tests are what is really going to prove

that a watch can last, not dropping it out of an airplane”