Final month, I had the chance to hop on a aircraft (then a practice, then a automobile) to Glashütte, Germany to spend just a few days with the Nomos staff on the 2024 Nomos Discussion board. The staff offered a number of novelties, together with the controversial Tangente 2date and the Orion and Tangente neomatik doré series, and a few extra stuff to be launched. What I used to be most trying ahead to, nevertheless, was the chance to have a look behind the scenes of the manufacture.
Now, earlier than we get to the meat and potatoes of this photograph report, just some takeaways:
1) The staff is small. Now, that should not essentially be a shock, however Nomos has at all times mentioned that they’re the biggest producer of mechanical wristwatches in Germany, by numbers produced. With that in my head, it was shocking to see particular manufacturing and meeting duties relegated to single particular person watchmakers, not groups as I might have thought. It is a testomony to the model’s watchmaking effectivity.
2) Talking of effectivity, I took observe of how the staff gave the impression to be very open concerning the strategies they take to supply comparatively reasonably priced watches virtually totally in-house. Pay attention to the a number of machines that exchange hand work relating to extremely menial duties like putting rubies right into a motion plate or oiling these jewels afterward within the manufacturing course of. Steps like these permit Nomos to allocate their comparatively small watchmaking staff to the locations the place they’re most wanted.
3) Their manufacture is break up up into two components – one is the Chronometrie constructing, the place you will discover the groups accountable for R&D, the in-house Swing System escapement meeting, and extra. The second is their constructing a 10-minute drive away in Schlottwitz (the official title of the city, although it belongs to Glashütte) – that is the place the inspiration of their in-house capabilities lie, the place they produce the parts that go into their in-house calibers.
4) Nomos watchmakers put on Nomos. All Nomos staff get a basic Tangente ref. 101 on mortgage once they begin on the firm, which then turns into theirs to maintain after the primary six months. Nevertheless, most of the watchmakers I noticed clearly had some private Nomos collections of their very own, with a few of them sporting lesser-known restricted editions from the previous. I wasn’t capable of seize all the pieces, however I obtained just a few wrist pictures in.
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