Get Ready For Greatness Lip!

We left off with Lip and Besançon a few weeks ago and now that the watch makers holidays are over I wanted to finish up sharing my impressions from my most recent visit to Besançon and more specifically Lip itself. And no, gentle reader, this is not the end of the story - we are only getting ready for the bigger story that is coming!

Now about Besançon... 

In many ways it reminds me of La Chaux-de-Fonds. It is not a huge place, but also not small. It is the cradle of French watch making, and at the center of it all, at least in the past 100 years has been Lip. 

And the story of Lip is perhaps even more intricate and fascinating than the story of Besançon itself, full of intrigue, tragedy, and triumph. And there is no way I could ever hope to do it justice in the small space afforded by this blog.

What I will say, is that perhaps the single most important thing that ever happened for Lip (and I predict in turn, Besançon in the future) was the Berard's purchase of the brand, and returning it home to where it all began. After a few "bad relationships" Lip appears to finally be with the right owners. Pierre-Alain Berard has put a great deal of effort and planning into bringing Lip back to its former self, and if what I have seen in my most recent visit is anything to go by, Lip is going to be bigger and better than it ever was before. I can't go into any details here, but let's just say that fans of French watch making are in for some really, really cool things in the not-too-distant future.

I have been reading a very interesting book - American Flannel -

Courtesy of Penguin Random House

It tells the story of how the manufacture of clothing had once been a key industry in the US before  "Heritage Brands" like LL Bean, Woolrich, Levis, Pendleton and others began using less expensive off-shore manufacturers to make their products. It goes further to illuminate the efforts Bayard Withrop (American Giant) and other folks in the clothing industry working to bring textile and clothing manufacturing back to the US. And this, in turn, made me think of Lip and what they are quietly working on. The T18 is only the beginning, stay tuned as I suspect this will be a fascinating story to follow!

Lip

An important note to this story - in the time since my visit, my partner Rick Marei and I have been in discussions with Lip to represent them in North America and sell them through our soon-to-open online store.  So while everything I am writing here about Lip is absolutely from the heart, it is important to disclose to you, the reader, that I am in discussions to make that relationship more of a business one, so I am biased, and I do have a potential business interest.  They have not paid for this content, it is my own.  Both Rick and I are looking forward to bringing Lip Watches to North America.  Stay tuned!

I have held off on posting this because I was still taking some time to digest my visit to Besançon this past November.  

I feel it is safe to say that if you are looking for technical content, or brownie hounding then Tempus Fugit is probably NOT the outlet for you.  

But, contrary to what some brand managers out there might think, I do have feelings, and sometimes my heart will draw me in what I would honestly say are unexpected directions.

And this past Thanksgiving week, I returned to Besançon pretty much four years to the day that I first visited.

And while there were some touristy things that I did, the most important part of this one-day stop was to visit Lip. 

Lip has become something of a cult figure here in the US.  Not for nothing, the Mach 2000 is something of a anomaly in the world of watch fans.  If we are honest about it, in its current format is essentially, a quartz chronograph.  But this is a watch that demonstrates that a watch is far more than the sum of its parts.  Think I'm kidding?  While in France I received a Facebook message from a fellow watch journalist stateside asking me to pick one up while I was there and bring it back for him.  There are certain watches out there that hit visceral nerves, and for me Lip has a few models that speak to me on levels I can't really quantify.  They are emotional as much as pragmatic.  Lip, at its very heart, is as much a feeling as it is a brand.

I refer you to an article by Adam Sofineti -

http://www.watchpaper.com/2020/02/02/lip-nautic-ski-hands-on-review/

A part of Lip's history is a "passing around" of the brand.  When I visited four years ago, Lip had been living sort of a diluted life, really treated by the (then) owners as a label to brand watches under, and not the watch brand that they truly were.  

Enter the Berards - Philippe and Pierre-Alain.  In the time since my last visit, they have taken ownership of Lip, and reinvigorated it.  I am not here to criticize the previous owners.  I am, however, here to applaud the Berards, and the entire team at Lip.  

How do you manage a legend?  Curious to relate, Lip stirs a LOT of emotions in not only watch fans, but in the French consciousness.  But prior to the Berard's, that emotional connection was more of a sense of nostalgia.  

Since the Berard's?  I hate hyperbole, but walking around the streets of Besançon, Paris, and the offices and workshop at Lip, I really felt the energy, the passion, I really felt why some brands connect on the level that they do with fans and the public at large.

It would be easy to do a Blancpain and "start from year zero", but the team at Lip live in the real world, one where you don't manufacture history.  To that end, they have a rather unusual (in today's watch world) department that handles vintage Lip questions, assessments, and if I understood correctly, possible restoration (but my French is lacking, so I will need to get clarification on that point).

And while it would be easy for the Berards to simply have bought the label and turn to a white label company for everything, it was very clear to me that Lip clearly represents something special to them, and I got that same feeling touring around the new facilities that they have installed for mechanical watches.

It is not enormous, but it is not insignificant either.  And I think what is encouraging about it to me, is that it represents the first step forward.

It also bears mentioning that Lip has stayed true to its roots.  

While it would be easy for them recreate themselves as something that they are not, and never were, they have held the line on pricing.  In a world where brands both big and small jack up their prices only to jettison their unwanted stock to the grey market where it is discounted down to the bare bones, Lip offers something novel - a great watch at a fair price.

Now I realize that everyone wants to go to Switzerland to visit the historic Maisons, and that's fair enough.  But if you are really a fan of watches, history and culture?  Get yourself to Besançon and soak up all of the history and charm that this wonderful city has.

and pick up a Lip watch while you're at it, either here, or the City of Lights.  You don't have to be a Hipster to be a Lipster ; )

Summer Reading - Opening the Gates: The Lip Affair, 1968 - 1981

While I love a pretty coffee table book with big shiny pictures as much as the next guy, I also enjoy a good story.  And for watch fans, this is probably not such an obvious choice, but it is one that I would encourage you to check out.  It is not targeted for watch fans, it is written by a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and it is not something that you will likely find on the bookshelves at Barnes and Noble.  

If you love watches, you love a good comeback story.  From Biver's resurrection of Blancpain, to Hayek's rescue of the several brands that would later become the various members of today's Swatch Group.  The manufacture, marketing and sales of modern watches is dyed in the wool with the romance of heroic turnarounds, rescues and uniquely comebacks.


Now in many feel-good, love-story, comeback watch stories we have the original artisan, in others we have the maverick saviors like Biver and Hayek, but the story of Lip in the early 1970s is something completely different again.  It is the first time that I am aware of in the watch industry where a collective of individuals came together in a common cause.  What they realized was a simple protest, or walk out would do nothing to save their jobs.  So they tried something a little different.  They occupied the factory, and (sorry to my Red-fearing friends on the right) seized "the means of production".  What slowly evolved was a self-governing (not in the political sense) group of employees who took control of not just the factory and production, but in many ways re-wrote the rule book about how a watch company could and should be run.

With the current political climate in the US, the Lip Affair is a welcome relief, demonstrating that it often is (believe it or not) a good thing when EVERYONE wins.  

Obviously, these were different times.  Many of you reading this might not have been born yet, and suffice it to say that Lip is a very, very different brand than it once was.  That is the inevitability of time, it moves forward.  But it's hard not to be romantic about watches, and the improbable story of the Lip Affair bears this notion out.

I don't want to give too much more away, but if you like a good comeback story, watches, or simple human interest?  Run, don't walk to your local bookstore.