BRAND IDENTITY: Inside NORQAIN’s chocolate factory

Founded in 2018, in no time at all family-owned Swiss watch brand NORQAIN has found itself dining at the high table of horology, but has always thrived on being a challenger to the established order. Its ‘Enjoy Life’ watches are the latest chapter in the brand’s differentiation from the status quo, with one of the limited run of 500 pieces offering the owner a ‘golden ticket,’ which entitles them to an all-expense paid trip of a lifetime in the Maldives. Assuming the role of Willy Wonka, vice president Tobias Küffer spoke with Watch Insider’s Daniel Malins about NORQAIN’s alternative approach to watchmaking, and why it’s more important than ever to put a smile on someone’s face.

Watch Insider: How do you define ‘Enjoy Life’ and how do you strike a balance between having fun and becoming gimmicky?

Tobias Küffer: When we talk about Enjoy Life, what we had initially set out to do was basically awaken the inner child of the customers and create a watch which is only about positivity. We had so many nice stories around the world from people who bought the watch. This already showed Enjoy Life is more than just an ice cream watch. We’re going to use it as an umbrella to create watches which are fun and different and a bit quirky, without making it ridiculous.

We have the Independence, which is a very serious innovative sports watch. We have the Adventure, which is a modern functional sports watch. We’re not going to touch those collections with the Enjoy Life, which will remain in the Freedom collection. When we started, if that [Freedom] watch was 50 metres away, it could have been any brand. There was no real strong identity to it. I think now, with the Enjoy Life, I think we can use that to be fun, different, and colourful, and keep the serious watches in the other collections.

WI: I feel like in some ways all of your watches come from a starting point of youthful energy and a different take on what’s gone before. So you could say that “Enjoy Life” is almost a mantra for the whole company.

TK: As a spirit, absolutely. That’s why I think it also really resonated with our existing community. That being a bit different, being fun, bringing a breath of fresh air to a very traditional industry. Enjoy Life was just a perfect addition to who we already were, and it made sense. So yeah, I agree with what you say for sure.

WI: After Watches and Wonders, there was a sense that, from a design perspective, things had become more reserved and conservative, maybe to reflect the times. But microbrands, who are enjoying real momentum, have gone in the other direction. On the one hand, without those microbrands, NORQAIN would stand out as the one brand doing things differently, but on the other hand they’re helping build up a fanbase for irreverent and playful watch design that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Do you see those current trends as working in your favour or against you?

TK: I see it as an absolute positive for the independents in general. We know many of the guys, and it’s always nice to see success stories. It also shows that there is room for us if we do something cool and different, and I think that’s the tendency in the last, I would say, three or four years, even more than before. For people to say it’s not about wearing a watch which everybody recognises anymore, it’s now about wearing a cool story and something not everybody knows, that helps not only us, but all the independents. And I think competition is always healthy. We [NORQAIN’s founders] come from the sports world. If there’s no competition, you get lazy. And I think having other independents who are also doing great things keep us on our toes. That’s generally our spirit anyway, to not be happy with what we’re doing and always looking for the next thing.

WI: When you were talking about the reasons behind Enjoy Life, one of the points you made was about it giving a bit more definition and identity to your collections. But was part of it also about attracting a new type of customer and future-proofing the brand?

TK: To be honest, I wouldn’t say so. Because most of the people who jumped on it immediately were already NORQAIN customers. And then once Mark Wahlberg posted the watch, it created a huge buzz. You saw, especially in the US, a lot of people who hadn’t heard about NORQAIN jump on the train and join the party. But it’s not what we set out to do with it. We didn’t say we’re going to create the Enjoy Life to get a different customer. I think it was just to emphasise who we are and what we want to do with our watches. In a growth period as a young brand with any launch, you’re hoping to gain new customers, right? If you only stick with the existing ones, you’re quite limited. 

WI: I guess I just wondered whether the demographics have shifted a little bit since Enjoy Life launched.

TK: Typically the Wild ONE collection is not a 20-year-old’s first mechanical watch. It is somebody typically who already has a collection and is already a fan of mechanical sports watches. They will see the Wild ONE as a cool addition to their collection, whether for outdoor adventures, mountain biking, or any other sporting activity. Now, with the Adventure, we’re seeing more and more 20-year-olds who are buying their first mechanical watch from NORQAIN, which is a very cool development. At the same time, we have 70-year-old collectors walking in and buying a gold watch. So, I think our customer base is broadening, but from day one the main customer base was typically between 25 and 45.

WI: Thinking of Mark Wahlberg and Gary Neville wearing your watches, I can’t think of a situation where a fledgling young brand has been helped so much, in terms of publicity, by celebrity endorsements. How commercially explicit were those relationships originally? Was it something that started organically, or did you identify those two individuals from day one as being really good people to represent the brand?

TK: I’ll start with the first deal, which is Gary. We have [former Italian goalkeeper] Gigi Buffon; we have Sidney Crosby, who is the number one ice hockey player; and [Swiss tennis player] Stan Wawrinka. We’ve always had sports people in NORQAIN. Our co-founder is Mark Streit, who is a Swiss NHL legend. Another co-founder, who we don’t officially talk about too much, is Roman Josi, who is the captain of Nashville Predators. He was voted the best defenseman in the NHL a couple of years ago. Through those Swiss sports people, as we grew that turned into international ambassadors. 

We said we want to go against the classic ambassadorship — at least with global stars — where you pay them crazy amounts of money, and then after two years a different brand says: “Okay, I’ll pay you more.” We said that’s not authentic, which is a word that our community also likes to use when describing NORQAIN. We wanted to find the right people who are not only a famous face but have the same values as we do. We always want to be very humble, so no matter how successful these people are, we want to be able to put them in a room and they’ll talk with anybody. Also with business sense, not just a footballer who played good football, but actually also has business acumen. Gary [Neville] in the UK, if you look at what he’s been doing since his footballing career, has been unbelievable. We said this guy would be unbelievable to partner with in the UK when we created our subsidiary, which we launched last year. So, we contacted his management and it was surprising how quickly we came to an agreement.

So, instead of paying ambassadors, we wanted to have people who actually invest, become partners, and then build the brand with us in that region in the long term. We did that with Gary in the UK, we did that with Gigi Buffon in Italy, and we did that with Sidney in the US. It also gives them an opportunity to actually invest in a watch brand. Of course, they invest in the subsidiaries because our HQ remains family-owned, but it’s proven to us now after a year that I think we were on the right track. At Watches and Wonders, for example, Gary joined retailer meetings, helped introduce the brand to new retail partners, and supported the opening of new accounts and first collection orders.

Mark Wahlberg was a very special story actually. Stan Wawrinka, who is a friend and partner of NORQAIN and who knows Mark Wahlberg, was playing the US Open with the turquoise Wild ONE. Mark Wahlberg saw him playing with that watch and he texted him: “What’s the watch?” Now, in hindsight we know that we were very lucky with the colour code because the summer collection he had launched with his [lifestyle] brand Municipal was the same colour. He wanted the watch to fit the summer launch of Municipal, and that’s how it started. He got that watch from our NORQAIN US team, wore it the next day on The Late Show, and that’s when people started saying: “What the hell is going on? How much is NORQAIN paying Mark Wahlberg?” We haven’t paid him a cent. He paid for that watch. 

We did then give him the ice cream watch on his birthday. We were in Vegas launching it, and the last day of the show was Mark Wahlberg’s birthday. We know he lived in Vegas at the time, so we organised to send the watch to him with a thank you note for the support he gave, and we thought we’d never see the watch again. It was a steel bracelet, so we didn’t even get the links fitted to his wrist. The next day he posted it saying this is the watch of the summer. So, that was really natural and now there’s quite regular contact, especially with my brother [co-founder Ben Küffer] and him. But he still hasn’t received a penny from us, and we just enjoy him enjoying our watches.

WI: You mentioned keeping the Swiss operation sacred, in terms of the family ownership. How sustainable do you think that is? Do you think that that limits your growth potential? 

TK: I mean, you wouldn’t be business people if you didn’t at least think about it or talk about it. But I think for us it was always a very clear vision that what we are doing is a long-term project. If you would have told us eight years ago that we’ll be where we are now, we would have said that’s a bit of a stretch. We were never out to create an immediate huge success, and we don’t want to skip any steps. I think for us it’s all about healthy growth, and that we can manage very well ourselves, at least currently. Our demand is currently globally higher than our production, which is also something nice. So we’re working on increasing production as well. But all of that is step by step. I think in 2024 we did 12,000 watches. We’re not planning to go from that to 50,000 watches in two years. If you would get big investments in, that’s the kind of jump you would have to hope for, but that’s not what we’re in it for. We really want to build something long-term, and one day ideally hand it over to the next generation.

WI: That’s some early succession planning going on there! You don’t strike me as being on the verge of retirement…

TK: No, but our kids are here. It’s very effective to have a 4-year-old at the bar in the boutique! But no, it’s obviously a bit of a classical line that when you have kids and you say you’ll hand it over. But I think for us, that would be the dream scenario. If they want to do it, fantastic. If not, we’re still happy to work for a very long time — we’re not planning to stop any time soon.

WI: What are the key markets for you? Are they the same today as when you launched?

TK: US is by far number one.

WI: And that was true even before Mark Wahlberg’s involvement?

TK: It was number one before that, but not as clear as it is now. For three or four years now in the US, it’s just skyrocketed for us. And I would say in general the watch industry in the US is doing amazingly. Obviously not every brand, but in general there’s very nice growth, and we also jumped on that train. Then Switzerland remains a very strong market, obviously. We have just opened our third Swiss boutique in Interlaken, which is a hotspot for tourists, and we’re opening our next flagship boutique at the end of the year, which I can’t say too much about yet. It’s going to be our biggest boutique by far and going to be a big statement. And then number three is Japan, which has always been a top three market for us — we have 42 points of sale in Japan. I’m doing 18 events in Japan alone this year, where you have that engagement with the customers that they love. 

In Japan, firstly, it’s about the quality-price ratio, and they love an independent family-owned business. We only work with family-owned independent retailers, which I think is a strong reason for our success in Japan, and it also helped us in all of Asia. Because the Japanese customer is known to be very detail-oriented, when other countries saw that we were successful there, that opened up other markets for us. 

Now we have strong growth in Germany. India is growing crazy fast, where we have an exclusive partner in Ethos. They just opened their 100th boutique, and they’re aiming to get to 180. It’s a crazy speed which I’ve not witnessed in any other market. LATAM [Latin America] is growing, but numbers one, two, and three are still set in stone.

WI: I find the strength of the Japanese market for you particularly interesting. Did that popularity just happen organically?

TK: It’s a nice story actually. Ben [Küffer] was working at Breitling for 12 years and, amongst others, he was responsible for the Japanese market. There he worked very closely with Kenji Hamaka, who is now president of NORQAIN Japan. Kenji worked for Breitling for 25 years in Japan, so he knew the whole market, he knew the retailers. In Japan, a lot of business is about relationships and loyalty and trust. So, my brother called Kenji when he decided to leave Breitling and create our own brand, and said: “Kenji, I have a brand, I don’t have a product yet, I’m not sure about the name yet, but I’m going to launch my own brand and I want you to do it in Japan.” It was a two hour phone call, and after 25 years of working at Breitling and without seeing a product or knowing the brand name, Kenji said: “Okay, I’m in.” He quit his job at Breitling and started for us. And within 30 days he opened 35 stores in Japan because of the relationships and trust and loyalty he has with those retailers.

WI: What are the obstacles for you as a slightly smaller, family-owned company? What are the barriers to you achieving what you want to achieve? 

TK: At the moment, I think we’re happy to say that we’re swimming against the tide and that we’re on budget. We always have very high targets and budgets, so we’re happy in that aspect. But of course there are challenges. I think for us one of the biggest challenges is what’s happening with suppliers. We have very close, important relationships with suppliers, and we are currently increasing production but many of the big brands and groups are reducing, and these brands are the money-makers for those suppliers. We’re starting to become more interesting for them as well, but not compared to the big guys. If those guys are saying: “Tough situation at the moment, we’ll push our order to next year,” the suppliers are laying off people because of it. And if they’re laying off people, they say they don’t have enough people to work on our watches if we need to increase our production or we need something faster. 

Luckily with our suppliers, we have really good relationships, so we always tend to work something out and find a way to make the deadlines we need. But it’s becoming more challenging because of big brands maybe being a bit more conservative with what they initially had ordered.

WI: To what extent would that make you and your brother think about vertically integrating more of the supply chain? That’s a big investment, but brands have done it before.

TK: Yeah, that’s something we’re discussing in the long-term. Step by step we’re bringing more in-house and we’ve integrated more of our production in our HQ now. We have watchmakers in-house, so the Wild ONE watches are all assembled in our HQ. We’ve increased production of those pieces as well. If you truly want to be fully independent then you need as much as possible to be produced in-house. In terms of movements, this isn’t something we’re looking at in the near future. We go for movements from existing fantastic suppliers like AMT and Kenissi. If we decide to do in-house movements, the development cost alone will make that watch so much more expensive. And we can’t even say that it will be a better quality than the guys who have been doing it for 100 years. So we said we prefer to offer very good quality from known suppliers at the best possible price, instead of going for a higher price category just so we can say that it’s an in-house calibre. We’re still developing our own developments with AMT movements, which nobody else will ever have. Of course, there are things you can start to look into that could be integrated at some point, but definitely nothing too concrete in the next two to three years. It’s all more in the long term.

WI: What’s the future of Enjoy Life? And how would you really ‘sell’ the concept of Enjoy Life to anyone that’s reading this interview and still not quite understanding it?

TK: As I said before, Enjoy Life isn’t just an ice cream. What we’re saying, and it reminds you once a week, is treat yourself with an ice cream, or just treat yourself more generally and enjoy life. In a world with so much negativity, when somebody puts it on their wrist it creates a smile, and that’s really the target of this watch. 

With the latest Freedom GMT Enjoy Life “ Holiday” Limited Edition we’ve created a cool, fun GMT travel watch with the golden ticket idea. You have fun symbols on the dial and on the date. Every seven days you’ll have flip-flops, sunglasses, and pretty much the essentials you need for a nice holiday. But one of the 500 pieces is going to be different. Whoever has that watch wins a week in the Maldives for two people. It’s something different, something fun, which we believe hasn’t been done in the industry before. When I was on vacation last month, I sealed the deal with the hotel, which is going to be the special getaway. 

You get an amazing villa on the ocean with your own pool. So it’s really going to be an absolute dream holiday, which one lucky person and his partner are going to win. But of course, that’s just a side part of the story. The watch is all about spreading positivity and happiness in a world where at the moment there’s a lot more negativity than positivity. And ideally put a smile on the faces of the people who wear it.

This article was first published in the July 2026 edition of Watch Insider.