Not all images were able to load for printing. Please close the print window and try again. The Future Has Landed On Board The H. Moser & Cie. Endeavour Centre Seconds Genesis
Moser’s hybrid Genesis watch reinvents the future of luxury watch sales, heralding the advent of a unique immersive customer experience.
Indie watchmaker H. Moser & Cie. is as renowned for its elegant minimalism and fumé dials as it is for the provocative – often downright funny – jabs it takes at the watchmaking industry. Who can forget the Swiss Alp watch, a mechanical antidote to the Apple Watch, or the Swiss Mad watch with a Swiss cheese case to express the brand’s non-conformity with the Swiss Made appellation on watches? This time, Moser is out to have some serious fun by defining the parameters of the “ultimate immersive customer experience.” Offering a dedicated metaverse to its customers, including blockchain watch authentication, enhanced security, and digital assets, Moser’s app is the bee’s knees of Web 3.0 technology. Oh, and if you were wondering, there is a watch in the mix. Known as the Endeavour Centre Seconds Genesis 01100111 01100101 01101110 01100101 01110011 01101001 01110011 (try saying it in less than 5 seconds…), the concept watch is a hybrid entity, unlike anything we’ve seen roaming our planet, until today…
While the spirit of this campaign is clearly tongue-in-cheek, it’s worth remembering that H. Moser was one of the first independent watch brands to launch an e-commerce and CPO platform back in 2020. Lest we forget, there was a time when many Swiss watch brands were reticent or downright opposed to embracing e-commerce. Assailed by fears of stripping their watches of a unique customer experience and dispensing with intermediaries, many Swiss watch brands were forced to adopt e-commerce during the Covid pandemic in a desperate bid for survival. Today, H. Moser & Cie. pushes e-commerce one step further by offering a more decentralised but highly customer-focused experience based on cutting-edge technologies.
degrees OF PROVOCATION
A couple of years ago, Moser produced two very unusual watches: one looked like an Apple watch, and the other had a case made of 100% Swiss cheese. The Swiss Alp watch was a response to the surge of smartwatches on the market, and the Swiss Mad watch was a snub to the lenient legislation regarding the Swiss Made label for watchmaking. Both watches were accompanied by refreshingly entertaining advertising campaigns. “The result of over 200 years of research and development,” said CEO Edouard Meylan in the video, “the Swiss Alp Watch will not only allow you to reconnect with people, it might simply change the world… The watch has state-of-the-art ergonomics, a simple interface, and features the most essential application for your most valuable commodity: the time. With no phone, no messaging, no sketches or heartbeats to send, the Swiss Alp Watch will change your life. It will let you reconnect with people by getting out there… So get a life, upgrade to a mechanical watch“. The surprising thing is that the Swiss Alp watch made it beyond the ‘poking fun at smartwatches’ stage and developed a life of its own. Following the deliberately ugly Frankenstein Swiss Icons watch of 2018, made with bits and pieces of iconic Swiss watches, Moser struck again in 2019 with the Nature watch, an eco-friendly model with natural stone, lichen and grass to raise environmental awareness.
A brave new technological era
“We are at the dawn of a new technological era,” proclaims CEO Edouard Meylan, and his brand is determined to play “an active role in defining the rules of this still little-known world.” To transit through this brave new world, Moser has developed a complete ecosystem with a dedicated app that substitutes many aspects of our mundane reality with enhanced virtual reality. For starters, your watch undergoes an authentication process using blockchain technology provided by Aura Blockchain Consortium. Next, Aura SaaS ensures the traceability and transparency of the product’s lifecycle from certification, warranty, and insurance to customer services. To enhance the virtual environment, digital assets in the form of Non Fungible Tokens (including digital artwork) will accompany your watch. This includes short time capsule videos staging the creation of the product as watchmakers bring its beating heart to life. Last but not least, Moser has laid on an immersive metaverse for customers. By crossing the threshold of a modern, minimalist, virtual Swiss chalet, Moser shares the history of the brand and its manufacture, and you even get to meet the team.
No laughing matter
Moser’s move towards decentralising the experience of buying a watch is no laughing matter, and prestigious partners like Deloitte Consulting Switzerland have been engaged to mobilise key technological and industry leaders to help Moser reinvent the future of luxury watch sales. In addition to the abovementioned Aura Blockchain Consortium, Zurich Switzerland is responsible for insuring the watch’s physical and digital assets, and Moser is one of the first customers to benefit from Saleforce’s Web 3.0 management suite. Known as the Ownership Web – “I own therefore I am” – the Web 3.0 enables users to access digital property without intermediaries.
The First of Three
The Endeavour Centre Seconds Genesis, aka 01100111 01100101 01101110 01100101 01110011 01101001, is a limited edition of 50 pieces and is housed in a grey 40mm microblasted steel case with a height of 11.3mm. As the first model in a triptych, the Genesis flaunts its high-tech cradle with the deliberately jagged (and jarring) pixellated titanium crown and bezel, which are the result of 3D printing. Beware: it’s probably the sharpest case to date!
Like the mysterious dial of the Endeavour Perpetual Moon, the dial is treated with Vantablack, the darkest artificial substance on Earth capable of absorbing up to 99.975% of radiation in the visible spectrum. Matching the matte microblasted grey case, the Endeavour Centre Seconds Genesis is presented on a hand-stitched grey kudu leather strap.
The sapphire crystal over the dial is engraved with a unique QR code, offering owners priority in the purchase of future limited editions, membership of the Moser community and exclusive invitations to brand launches, etc. Beneath the QR code, you can just about make out the leaf-shaped hour and minute hands for the time, accompanied by a central seconds hand. The sapphire caseback reveals the HMC 200 automatic calibre with an openworked 18k gold rotor. Beating at 21,600vph, the movement delivers a robust 3-day power reserve.
Availability & Price
Limited to 50 pieces, owners of the Endeavour Centre Seconds Genesis will be granted first dibs on the next two pieces in the trilogy. Retailing for CHF 27,000, Moser is also open to payments in cryptocurrency. For more information, please visit h-moser.com.
7 responses
At first I thought this watch was just mocking the current NFT fad like their other fun pieces like the Swiss Alp and Swiss Icons, but no this is a genuine NFT/metaverse-related watch…at least the technical execution here is very interesting.
Absolutely embarrassing on every level.
You have tonhand it to them, they are one of the more creative swissians..
The take-a-piss Swiss are actually seriouss,
and turned it into a business.
Don’t mess.
Crypto junk. It spells out sucker in braille .
Considering it is basically illegible they could also have entirely omitted the movement, the hands and the dial and make a bracelet instead…
Blockchain technology is almost already the past, not the future, given it has spectacularly failed to demonstrate any real-life use case whatsoever – this here is a welcome exception. Authenticity verification on-chain that actually works is respectable and in a time where even an AD cannot tell right from wrong, long overdue.