How to Revive a Sleeping Beauty Watch Brand

The dormant Danish watch company Urban Jürgensen was “resurrected” in Los Angeles on Thursday following a $25 million revamp that its US backers hope will land it a seat at luxury watchmaking’s top table inside five years.

Acquired by a group of investors led by the American Rosenfield family in 2021 for an undisclosed sum, Urban Jürgensen was originally founded in Copenhagen in 1773 and is revered by watch connoisseurs and collectors. But outside that bubble, the name is largely unknown.

According to its co-chief executive Alex Rosenfield, the bubble needs to burst.

“We think that what we’re making are watches that people who love and care about watches will love and care about, but the world of people who can enjoy what we’re doing is much larger than that,” Rosenfield told the Business of Fashion. “Too often, watch companies make you feel like if you don’t understand the escapement, we don’t want to talk to you. Our goal is absolutely the opposite. It has to be beyond the obsessives.”

Rosenfield is new to the watch industry. Qualified as a lawyer, he held a number of brand strategy roles in media and fashion before joining Guggenheim Partners, the US investment and financial services firm, which says it has more than $345 billion of assets under management. Rosenfield’s father Andy is the firm’s president and also an avid watch collector, buying his first Urban Jürgensen watch in the 1990s. Rosenfield Sr, who will continue to advise the company, and his philanthropist wife Betsy hosted the relaunch at their $33 million Brentwood mansion.

Rosenfield, who is based in Los Angeles, said his family had never intended to buy a watch company but stepped in to acquire Urban Jürgensen after hearing it had fallen on hard times, so they could return it to “people who will love it and push it forward.”

The Rosenfields, who are reported to own 85 percent of the company, have assembled an impressive cast list. The company’s other co-chief executive is Kari Voutilainen, the Finnish watchmaker considered one of the finest talents of his generation. Voutilainen has a minority stake in Urban Jürgensen, as well as his own independent watch company, which makes around 60 pieces a year.

Urban Jürgensen’s brand identity was developed by Winkreative in London and Chandelier Creative in New York under Rosenfield’s direction, with a launch campaign called Time Well Spent shot by Ellen von Unwerth, the award-winning fashion photographer and filmmaker.

The company is set to follow the high-value, low-volume model set by many of today’s most successful independent watch brands. According to Rosenfield, in its first year, Urban Jürgensen will produce around 70 watches.

Three models were introduced at Thursday’s launch, with prices ranging from around $115,000 for the UJ-2 to $410,000 for the UJ-1, which will be limited to 75 pieces. Each has a new mechanical movement designed in-house by Voutilainen and hand-finished and assembled at the company’s Swiss facility in the city of Biel/Bienne, where watchmaking giant Omega is based. Currently, it employs 20 people, around half of them watchmakers.

“The idea is to bring the glory of the Urban Jürgensen of the 19th century back,” Voutilainen said, referring to a period when the company made watches for the Danish royal court. “This is just the starting block. Our aim is to make Urban Jürgensen a new reference point in fine watchmaking.”

The revival of Urban Jürgensen comes in a busy season of watch brand rebirths. The private equity-backed Swiss company Breitling has in recent years acquired Universal Genève and Gallet, two dormant brands now slated for a comeback next year. Last year, Silvercity Brands, a subsidiary of the Indian conglomerate KDDL, revived the 18th century company Favre-Leuba, while the US founding partner of the mergers and acquisitions firm Duffy & Sweeney, Michael Sweeney, reintroduced the American watch brand Benrus in April.

Rosenfield said he believed the recent glut of acquisitions and relaunches of forgotten dial names was sign that luxury buyers want a human connection to their purchases. “We’re so estranged from work with our hands and hand-making and things that are human, and now I think we need this [these brands] more than we ever did,” he said.

Initially, Urban Jürgensen watches will be sold direct to consumer. No pre-orders had been taken, according to Rosenfield, who said that in time his strategy allowed for a few “pop-ups and offices that serve as showrooms” that would be “places to entertain as much as to sell”, a model that has proved successful for Audemars Piguet, which has more than doubled its revenues over the past decade through its network of laid-back AP House concepts.

Voutilainen said the ambition was to grow to between 1,000 and 1,200 watches a year in five years, putting it in territory currently dominated by a small number of high-end independents such as F. P. Journe, which was founded in 1999 and is now thought to turn over more than $100 million a year, according to Morgan Stanley estimates.

With backing from the Rosenfields and Voutilainen overseeing product development, experts said Urban Jürgensen would shake up the luxury watch industry, currently dominated by Swiss companies.

“This is the best revival of a watch company since A. Lange & Söhne in 1994,” said Wei Koh, founder of the watch media brand Revolution, referring to the German brand now owned by the Richemont Group.

“I hope the Swiss companies are looking over the Atlantic and asking themselves what just happened,” said Kristian Haagen, the Danish founder of Timegeeks and author of multiple books on watchmaking. “There’s something really good and refreshing about it, something extremely un-Swiss. The Rosenfields are extremely wealthy, but they also know their watches.”

Recent revivals of historic dial names suggest the omens are good. In 2015, the billionaire Scheufele family that owns Chopard introduced Ferdinand Berthoud, named after the 18th century watchmaker. The company has won a number of prestigious industry awards with its small-scale watches, including the Aiguille d’Or at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) in 2016, widely viewed as the highest honour in fine watchmaking. It was followed the same year by Czapek & Cie, a name from the 19th century. It too has won a GPHG award and grown a client base with its short-batch collections of hand-finished mechanical watches.

The luxury watch industry’s current travails appeared not to concern Urban Jürgensen’s new owners. While many watch businesses have reported declining sales and volumes over the past 18 months, the pain has been at the lower end of the market. “At the higher price point, it’s not that big a problem,” said Voutilainen.

Rosenfield acknowledged that the industry was in better health than it is now when his family acquired the brand in 2021. ”The [relaunch] timing was not planned for this moment,” he said. “But our view was, when the watches are ready, we’ll introduce them. And that is now. There will always be a market for things that are beautiful and unique and made to the highest standard. It just has to be something people want.”

He added that his family’s investment in Urban Jürgensen was long-term. “Our hope would be to never sell it,” he said. “We want to pass it down through generations.”