Tag Archives: salonQP

Fears Watch Company

My first contact with Nicholas Bowman-Scargill was through Twitter, he thanked me for mentioning their here in July. Fears Watches is based in Rotherhithe only a sort cycle away from Greenwich, the home of Grinidgetime. Nicholas suggested we meet after the “summer” and he would tell me all about the brand and show me the watches.

Holidays over and we finally met. I must say meeting people that are following their passion is always interesting, Nicholas certainly didn’t disappoint.

Nicholas told me his life story so far, about his interest in watches and trains. After graduating in Economics  he went to work in PR for a few years, this he realised was not what he wanted to do for the rest of his life, his passion led him to convince Rolex to take him on as an apprentice and he worked with them in their after sales department in London for five years.

He still had an “itch” to scratch and was discussing with his family about what sort of business he could set-up for himself, his Mother suggested “why don’t you revive the family watch company – Fears?”

Nicholas knew there were watchmakers in the family but he didn’t realise there was a brand.

Past glory a 1940's Fears

Past glory a 1940’s Fears

Nicholas is great-great-great grandfather founded the Fears Watch Company 170 years ago in Bristol. After passing through the business the business wound down in the 1950’s.

Now after two years Nicholas is ready to re-launch the company at this years Salon QP. He does as much possible within the company himself, he explained how for example he had been on a course to master Adobe rather than employ an outside agency to produce his promotional brochure.

I have seen and tried the prototypes. The watches are very nicely proportioned with a, on trend ( I keep hoping), 38mm case. Nicholas wants to keep the details quiet until the official launch. Nicholas says he wants to remain true to the company’s products and market a well designed watch with a Swiss movement at an affordable price.

I wish him the success his efforts and enthusiasm merit. I still have my doubts as to how much space there is in this segment of Anglo-Swiss watches.

Salon QP

I visited the exhibition on Saturday which is probably the busiest day but it is not always so easy to find time. Despite the number of people you could get round and see what you wanted to see.

Unfortunately, some things/people I would have liked to see were not present this year, the most notable being Pinion and Robert Loomes which was a shame. As you can imagine events like this are not really the place to have a conversation especially on the busiest day. From my “day-job” I have learnt that the best strategy is to make a face to face introduction which can then be followed up on later. To this end I think I had a pretty successful afternoon, I did get to speak to Roger Smith (objective N0. 1), Richard Hoptroff and very briefly Alexandre Meerson.

As you can imagine the Roger Smith, stand was pretty well attended. You will remember from my previous post that Roger was showing his series of four watches for the first time, but “shock-horror” the watches were show watches not the actual working models.

scho

I also managed to have slightly longer chats with the man I spoke to last year on the Schofield stand and try on their latest watch, the Signalman Silver Top (above)  which as you can see is a pretty hefty piece. One feature I had not previously appreciated on this watch is the GMT sub-dial which could be pretty useful for international travelers.

Then I made an un-expected find, Dennison a revived British brand that is due for re-launch in February. Dennison famously made the cases for Sir Edmund Hilary’s Smiths Everest watch. THe revived brand will rely on Swiss movements – watch this space for more news.