PRESS KIT
2015
THOMAS MERCIER
+33 1 44 54 03 47
2, rue de castiglione 75001 PARIS
www.popandpartners.com
MACHINES TO TRAVEL THROUGH TIME
It often feels that time is speeding up, in a permanently connected world demanding constant attention. The new klokers brand seeks to reclaim that fleeting, precious time. To do so, it designs, manufactures and sells Machines To Travel Through Time which provide creative, original and inspired individuals with an opportunity to express their uniqueness.
CONTENTS
KLOKERS: UNIQUENESS FIRST AND FOREMOST 04
PERSPECTIVES 08
1| ORIGINS 08
2| PRODUCTION 11
3| DESIGN 14
4| DISTRIBUTION 16
THE 2015 COLLECTION 18
THE KLOKERS ECOSYSTEM 19
KLOK-01 20
KLOK-02 21
PHOTOS 22
CONTACTS 28
KLOKERS: UNIQUENESS FIRST AND FOREMOST
klokers was created through contact. Contact between people, ideas and values. A new way of viewing the world and a determination to allow the contemporary man to show himself at his best. Adopting a position diametrically opposed to the traditional watchmaking industry for which time is only expressed through performance, occasionally ostentation and often convention, klokers allows us to choose our temporality. To find the right pace. The watchword of this brand is uniqueness. klokers invites you to look beyond conventions, to cast them off and to assert your personality.
klokers offers you the possibility to create your own style: the watch head and the strap are both interchangeable components. The watch head is attached to the strap by means of a patented system. The combinations of watch heads, straps, materials, colours and accessories, etc., are virtually endless. This also allows you to wear your watch the way you want, depending on the time of day: on the wrist, as a fob, on your desk or on your notebook. You are the owner and it's your choice. klokers is there to assist you, not to direct you.
klokers also highlights the uniqueness of the individual by flying in the face of time itself. Although it has become a universal standard to read the time using hands or numbers, klokers has come up with a very different solution: each item in the 2015 collection offers a new way to tell the time. For the first model KLOK-01, it's not the hands which go round but three dials - one for the hours, one for the minutes and one for the seconds. By using an alternative way of telling the time, the individual shows his ability to think outside the box and reveals his unique character.
Finally, the brand appeals to our memories and personal emotions. Each item is inspired by objects from the past, whose emblematic uses are still there buried away in the collective subconscious. And so it is that KLOK-01 brings to mind the circular slide rule, once used in mathematics. klokers timepieces are neither vintage nor retro but part of a transverse reality. They offer a means to travel between yesterday and tomorrow, being resolutely focused on the future.
These are the klokers Machines To Travel Through Time.
OUR ORIGINS
Ideas in notebooks, the combination of thousands of images on a computer, not to mention drawings. The reading of books by the physicist, Étienne Klein who specialises in time, the sociological research of Richard Florida into the creative class or the analyses of Seth Goldin, the man who conceptualised permission marketing.
Being there at the right time. Interacting with others and meeting the right people. One day the stars were right and everything just fell into place. And so it was that the klokers concept was born.
OUR MISSION
klokers has set itself the task of giving pride of place to uniqueness and defying or experimenting with conventions.
The brand invites you to assert your uniqueness. It is aimed at those who see the standardisation of styles as detracting from originality and creativity.
It can be quite a challenge to find your place in time and more particularly in your time. The latter makes it possible to specify duration, succession, simultaneousness, change, the future and speed, etc. The human brain is a poor stopwatch. This is the main function of the watch. To provide a point of reference. However, that feeling of time speeding up cannot be ignored. Klokers seeks to help us reclaim our time.
OUR AMBITION
Respecting the established watchmaking tradition but determined to reach out beyond it, klokers is aimed at those who reject the diktats of our age. The freethinkers, the creative people, the men and women who have chosen their own lifestyles, who embrace culture, innovation, change and liberty. klokers timepiecesbear witness to all of these special people.
klokers does not seek to impose anything. It proposes interchangeability, the possibility to mix-and-match, to hold time in your hand, innovative new complications to make you think about time differently and the technology to bring it to you. klokers has laid the foundations for an open relationship between the brand and its users. When the will is there, the story can begin.
OUR DNA
klokers seeks to be unconventional while making no concessions concerning the quality of all Swiss Made products proposed at affordable prices considering the level of complexity proposed.
klokers has taken the bold step of inventing a new form of gestural experience with its proprietary, patented attachment system. The fixed receiver has been designed as a jewel, finally making the strap a truly standalone item. Freed from its constraint, the timepiece can now exist as a separate item, attached to a writing block, a table, a bag, a belt or worn as a fob watch.
klokers has achieved a great leap forward in the design of watch movements by investing in innovative micro-motor technology. In doing so, klokers has created a visually attractive way to tell the time thanks to watchmaking complications displaying retrograde seconds and minutes, jump hour display, GMT or a balance wheel to mark the passage of time. These timepieces are based on the three key aspects of: technology, movement and the spatial and graphical conveyance of information.
klokers is also innovating with its distribution. A global crowdfunding campaign was launched on Kickstarter in September 2015. The exact date was announced by the brand a few days before the launch. This immediately became a global success. Web surfers reserved their models in advance, the first ones of which are numbered. From November 1, the klokers.com e-shop will take over, offering a novel experience for the whole community of klokers. The first orders will be delivered from February 2016 onwards. The traditional store-based distribution network will be set up at the same time.
OUR CREDO
klokers makes effective use of memory without being outdated, nostalgic or vintage, but instead by being resolutely focused on the future. To achieve this, each model echoes an original item from our past: the slide rule for KLOK-01 and the time zones for KLOK-02. These items are projected, conveyed and metamorphosed in an impressive contemporary style.
THE TARGET AUDIENCE
The term klokers also refers to the members of the community. This is the origin of the name. KLOK - as a prefix of the name of each watch, and - ERS - as the suffix, denoting membership of the community. Free, unfettered and seeking new experiences, these are the discoverers, the people who explore the world around them. Richard Florida nicknamed them the creative class. The discoverer rejects the risk of uniformity by developing his own time and his own free space in which he can create. The originality of the styling, the uniqueness of the experience and the sheer finesse of the detail and life encapsulated in the dial all contribute to making klokers timepieces a vibrant symbol of these discoverers.
THE FOUNDERS
klokers is the result of contact and interaction. Interaction between ideas, values and people. The interaction between Nicolas Boutherin and Richard Piras, who shared the same vision of a future watchmaking concept.
One day, the stars were right and klokers became a reality.
Nicolas Boutherin, joint founder, president and artistic director, made his career in the field of communication, innovation and the media, from cartoons to luxury goods. As either an artistic director or general manager, he has worked in start-ups such as InVisio or in major groups such as Publicis, Canal + and Arpin 1817.
An alternative idea of the concept of time emerged after lengthy research and after studying the works of the physicist Étienne Klein, of the sociologists Hartmut Rosa and Zygmunt Bauman, and the author Daniele Del Giudice. Reading books by Richard Florida or the marketing analyses of Seth Godin also furthered his understanding of emerging needs and desires generated by our contemporary lifestyles.
After 15 years in the technological innovation, electric vehicle, aeronautical and medical devices sectors, Richard Piras, joint founder and general manager, began to rethink the notion of time. As an entrepreneur in the traditional Swiss timepiece sector, he contributed to pushing back the boundaries of this industry. Richard has always been fascinated by celestial mechanics and starry skies. In his view, time is a fundamental aspect of the universe but up until now no human being has been able to define time without the aid of a tautology.
PERSPECTIVES
1 - ORIGINS
With Nicolas Boutherin, joint founder, president and artistic director Richard Piras, joint founder and general manager
THE DESIGNERS
Richard Piras: I've been working in the timepiece industry for 10 years now with the aim of pushing back the limits of a trade which has changed little over the space of three centuries. My job as an engineer saw me working on technological innovations in varied fields ranging from electric vehicles to the biomedical sector.
Nicolas Boutherin: Richard and I have one major point in common: enterprise. Innovation, creation and the new technologies is how I would sum up my professional life. What guides me? Pleasure and a determination to push back the boundaries. Although I am not an engineer like Richard, I have a technological background which I seek to use for the benefit of society. How can I change the way that items are used, to make people's lives better? I came up with this watchmaking project by approaching it with a fresh set of eyes and adopting a new perspective. My goal was to remove all barriers between watchmaking and fashion. The idea was to build a polymorphous environment which takes account of uses and common practices in order to move beyond them and look to the future.
OUR MEETING
R.P.: Nicolas explained his very detailed and relevant view of watchmaking, which I shared but which is far from being universally accepted.
N.B.: With all due respect to the established watchmakers, I would sum things up as follows: "watchmaking is a giant technological tap dance". From the outside, I think the more the brands focus on the movement and the motor, the more we see the "guts", the more we lose interest in time and the way this is represented. The focus is on being technologically "showy".
R.P.: This vision fully reflects the way this fast changing sector is currently heading.
OUR VISION
R.P.: Having realised this, Nicolas wanted to give the watch back its original definition: as a timepiece! However, time is indefinable without resorting to a tautology. Consequently, we needed to put time back in the watch dial. Not to create a watch from a design but to allow time to once again take centre stage.
N.B.: That's right, my favourite area of expression and the one which fascinates me the most is the representation of time. Its physical, tangible portrayal.
R.P.: In traditional watchmaking, it can be very complicated if you want to change what happens under the dial as the architecture or watch movement is always the same, just like a car engine.
TIME TAKES CENTRE STAGE
N.B.: Time is rhythm. klokers brings movement and rhythm back to the dial. We are looking to create a visual curiosity and change the way people habitually tell the time, destabilising them and forcing them to question themselves in order to understand how to read the time. You have to "unlearn" past practices to escape from exclusive and restrictive paradigms. Additionally, our products are designed to help people take control of time again, to understand its value again in order to slow things down.
R.P.: This is why we call our watches Machines To Travel Through Time. It's an emotional process achieved through the use of memorabilia items which have an eternal place somewhere in people's memories.
MEMORABILIA ITEMS
N.B.: I was not looking to create a fake or marketing-driven story. These memorabilia items appeal to the brain and the way it operates as well as the memory. Even if we do not know them, we have a strange impression of déjà vu and a sense that we have seen them someplace before. These items convey emotional memories which sometimes belong to the collective subconscious, and are used by us to portray time.
OUR VALUES
R.P.: klokers does not seek to be peremptory and to impose its values. klokers is not a luxury brand. Our goal is to make things well and it was for this reason that we wanted a Swiss Made movement and to bring our klokers an elegant and affordable product.
N.B.: klokers is a brand but also the name of the community, of those who have a "KLOK". The klokers we are targeting are creative people, urban free thinkers and artists. They are mobile, curious and connected. This creative class, so dear to Richard Florida, has taken time in hand. klokers offers them the freedom to approach time their way and an opportunity to express themselves just like a Moleskine notebook or Lego bricks.