INDUSTRY MATTERS: The man behind the mainspring

Being a one-company man is one thing, but spending your whole career taking apart and reassembling watches for a living takes a special type of character and mindset. Seiko and Grand Seiko’s technical support manager, Rob Wilson, has forgotten more than most of us will ever know about the inner workings of a timepiece. From £300 quartz watches to Grand Seiko masterpieces, he’s seen all there is to see in his 40 years (and counting) of service. Rob spoke with Watch Insider’s Daniel Malins to discuss his labour of love.

Watch Insider: How did it come to be that you worked in the watch industry in any capacity, let alone as a watchmaker for Seiko and Grand Seiko?

Rob Wilson: It’s not a natural career path. I don’t think many people decide they want to go into watches. I’ve spent my whole career here, so 40 years at Seiko. When I first joined, my interest was in electronics rather than watches. At that time, many Seiko watches were quartz watches. That was the thing in the 80s, fewer mechanical watches than there are now, for sure. At that time there were several different types of computer watch which interested me. When I say computer watch, we are talking about the 80s, so these things were pretty basic but really, they were the first smartwatches that were made. What you would have was a LCD digital watch that would clip on to a separate keyboard and on that you could enter memos, phone messages, anything you wanted onto that watch. I found it really interesting at the time. It was early technology but it was great and they were really effective. Some of these watches still work now, 40 years later.

As time progressed, I stayed longer with the company and my interest in mechanical watches grew, and I went on to become a watchmaker. All of my training for that was all in-house, I didn’t go to any external courses. In time, I went on to train other watchmakers and technicians in the UK and also in other countries as well. Then, Grand Seiko launched as a global brand in 2010, so we needed the watchmakers to service these watches, and in 2013 I was the first watchmaker outside of Japan to be qualified to work on Grand Seiko. 

One reason I’ve stayed at Seiko is the constant innovation. We’re always making new watches, it’s not the same product over and over again. It’s something new, something interesting. That is what keeps me going really. Spring Drive I still think is absolutely fantastic technology. We are still selling it now all these years later – 27 years since it launched – but we’re still constantly developing it. [Grand Seiko’s Ultra Fine Accuracy] U.F.A, for example – 20 seconds a year accuracy is incredible for a spring powered watch. That really is fantastic. In a nutshell, that’s why I stayed and that’s why I’m here: innovation and interesting products.

WI: Picking up on your longevity at the company, how institutionalised do you feel at Seiko? To what extent are the skills transferable or, because you’ve learned on the job, is your knowledge a bit skewed in favour of Seiko? If you were thrown in at the deep end at Richemont or Rolex, for instance, would you be equally adept at servicing those watch brands?

RW: My own skills are with Seiko rather than with other brands. I’ve worked on very few other brands throughout my life, but most mechanical watches follow a very similar construction. They work in the same way. The things that differ between brands are lubrication and the way things are assembled slightly, but overall I think a watchmaker can generally work on other watches.

WI: Regarding the widely acknowledged shortage of watchmakers, how does this affect Seiko and Grand Seiko? Each year both of your brands produce so many additional watches, on top of the historical stockpile of watches that they’ve ever made. How do you stay on top of this without waiting times for servicing turning into a complete nightmare?

RW: On the amount of different watches, one thing the Japanese are very good at is providing us with technical data and technical information, so we have a massive library of technical guides. Maybe you haven’t seen a watch for six or 12 months, but you get our technical guide and that will walk you through the steps, which will probably come back to you once you start looking at it. 

But you’re right, there are thousands of Seiko watches, all different calibres that go back a long time, and we are very fortunate in that we have many of us at Seiko with a number of years’ experience. I’m obviously at 40 years and we have some other watchmakers that have been here for 30 plus years as well, so we do have a good historical background of personal information that will help us out.

Generally speaking we recruit and train watchmakers from scratch – we tend to find somebody who’s got good dexterity, good eyesight, and good mechanical skills, and train them in-house. One of our most recent recruits, Will, became a qualified WOSTEP watchmaker at the British School of Watchmaking, worked with several other brands, and is now a fully qualified Grand Seiko watchmaker – there are several routes into working with us.

WI: Seiko is stocked by hundreds of retailers – do they all have their own service departments, or do they generally use a third party service centre? Or does it all come back to you? This must affect how you’re able to stay in control of quality.

RW: All of the jewellery shops will send watches directly back to us. Generally speaking, we like to handle everything ourselves. We supply some parts to customers but very few. We keep everything in-house so therefore the quality stays the same.

WI: I guess that also means there’s a uniformity to the service, so there’s no sense that the customer is involved in a postcode lottery when their watch needs repairing.

RW: Absolutely right. All the watches will come to us at head office and will be handled in the same way, so there’s no difference. You get the same service whether you send the watch in directly yourself or whether you send it via your jeweller.

WI: Do you have a figure in mind, in terms of the amount of time on average it would take to turn a watch around? And, if you do have that figure to hand, do you know how that stacks up against the industry average?

RW: I do know our figures. The average service time is about four to six weeks. Many of our repairs turn around quicker than that, but four to six weeks is what the average is. 

Our customers tell us that we compare very favourably to other brands – we’ve heard it’s not uncommon for turnarounds of several months but it’s not just about the time it takes, it’s always the quality of the work. We’re very proud of our 4.5/5 review on Trustpilot for our high standards. 

WI: Presumably that four to six week figure would vary depending on whether it’s a super complicated Grand Seiko, for instance, rather than an entry level Seiko?

RW: To some extent, but not really. We have four watchmakers that are qualified to repair Grand Seiko out of a team of nine, so not quite 50% but not far off. So the Grand Seiko repairs would be turned around in roughly the same time as the standard Seiko repairs. 

WI: You and your team are handling goodness knows how many watches every year, so I can’t think of anyone better qualified to give feedback on patterns that emerge, in terms of defects. Is there a well-oiled process by which HQ in Japan would listen to your feedback and allow that to feed into their research and development for future product launches?

RW: Yeah, for sure. We have daily emails with Japan on any number of matters, and if any technical issues come up then we will contact them immediately. We also have technical seminars that we have from time to time, where we’ll discuss this kind of thing. I have to say we get very few defects. I know you think I would say that but it is a fact. We make small incremental changes if we do anything, rather than a sudden big change.

So an example of that, and this is an example of where we’re actually listening to our customers and working on providing what they want, on Grand Seiko this year we made a new three-step adjustment buckle for the U.F.A, which is something that our customers have been asking for for a little while now, and that has finally happened. There’s also been a redesign of the Seiko diver’s buckle recently, which gives you a quicker adjustment than you used to be able to have. All of these things are things that the company listens to, and they’ve made improvements and our customers are very happy about it.

WI: Do you suffer from the issue of the increasing sophistication of fakes and copies? If so, what are the coping mechanisms for how you spot them?

RW: Honestly, I have never come across a counterfeit Grand Seiko. You do see some counterfeit Seikos, but again quite rarely, but Grand Seikos, I’ve never seen one.

WI: How can you make sure that a fake doesn’t slip through the cracks? It’s not as big an issue for you as it is for some other brands, but you must still want to purge any fakes in circulation.

RW: Our assessment team are fantastic at identifying these. These are the guys that pick up the watch when they come in and assess what needs doing. I would say they are nearly as good as I am at discovering a fake or a forgery, they’re very good at it. Things stand out, there are certain things that the forgers never seem to get quite right. At face value they will look identical but a very careful look with an eyeglass will tell it straight away.

WI: You’ve been in the job so long, so how do you avoid it feeling like Groundhog Day? What gets you out of bed every day for work?

RW: There are certain things I enjoy more than others in the job, of course. Training people I find really rewarding and really good fun. When you’ve got a new guy and you can show them the new things that they don’t know, that’s rewarding and worth getting out of bed for. For Watches & Wonders in Geneva we meet press, journalists, and things like that, which is interesting. Travelling a bit by going to Japan from time to time, there’s all this interesting stuff that I love doing. Those things keep me here and keep me going.

WI: What are the niche skills required to operate on a Grand Seiko watch in particular?

RW: Due to the different technologies involved, some skills are quite unique. For example, the lubrication for Spring Drive, which is our own technology, is very detailed, and we use microscopes to ensure the correct quantity is used. For the 9S Calibre mechanical watches to obtain what we call the ‘Grand Seiko standard,’ which is a higher standard than the COSC industry-level accepted Swiss standard, we have to do a very fine adjustment of the balance spring. That skill takes a long time to master, typically three to four weeks of just doing a balance spring. Those are the two things I’d pick out as being difficult things to master here and that are probably different to other brands.

WI: It’s that quality about Grand Seiko that the watch community considers exceptional, and I think that reputation takes a long time to gain. That reputation feels as strong today as ever. I know there are commercial ebbs and flows for any brand, but I don’t think the quality has ever been questioned, has it?

RW: No, I agree completely. I can’t speak for other brands, but I just know that we do things as well as we possibly can, which ends up being a great result. For customers that are happy with our products, they come back to us. Once they’ve bought a Grand Seiko they tend to generally buy another one at some point. It’s one of the things we don’t want to ever stop.