Nick English: The flying fan whose Bremont watches are ticking all the right boxes

If you were starting a business, if you fancied yourself as a bit of an entrepreneur, what would you choose? Lord knows, but I’m pretty sure one of the last sectors on my mind would be luxury watches.

All those fiddly parts that must be absolutely tip-top or else the mechanism crashes.

Where do you get them? I’ve no idea. How do you know if they’re any good? Search me — I got a C in physics at school and can barely change the date on the watch I’ve got, let alone take it apart.

And that’s without the competition. All those smooth French, German and, of course, Swiss brands that claim to have been around forever, with film and sports stars queuing up to endorse them.

How do you break into that market? Come on, really?

Which is why I wanted to meet Nick English. I’d made my mind up before I met him that there must be something nutty about him, in a daredevil, cavalier way. English, 44, and his brother, Giles, 41, are the founders of Bremont watches, the British chronometers that sell for £3000 to £30,000.

The watches were launched in 2007 and are now sold all over the world through high-end jewellers and Bremont’s own boutiques in London, Hong Kong and New York’s Madison Avenue.

They’ve picked up a shoal of awards, including HSBC Global Connections, overall winner, 2013; UK Retail Jewellery Awards, double winner, 2013; Luxury Briefing Awards, Breakthrough Brand, 2012.

Even so, my first question is why?

“We inherited a passion for watches from our father many years ago. He was an aeronautical engineer in Cambridge, and we spent a huge amount of time as kids in his workshop with him making things,” Nick explains.

“I think when one has spent so much time with someone who has a love of all things mechanical, it’s bound to pay off.

“He made all sorts of things. Sometimes our mother would come back from an antique shop with an old grandfather clock and say ‘look, Nick and Giles, can you try and make this work with your father?’. We couldn’t, of course, but it kept us quiet for many, many hours.”

Their father, Euan, was a colourful character.

“He collected watches but also he was a big pilot in the RAF, and did a lot of air show flying in the 1980s and 1990s. My brother and I did some too. In 1995, I was practising with him in an old aircraft for an air display. I hadn’t flown with him for a chunk of time. It was a beautiful March day and he suggested we went flying. We had a terrible crash — hitting the ground — in which he died and I broke 30-plus bones in my body.”

The accident “for me and Giles was a tipping point in career terms. The experience made us realise how short life is and we just thought we needed to get on and do something”.

They were both working in the City. “We did lots of flying at university [Nick read geography at Manchester, graduating with a first in 1993] and went into the City to do traditional jobs.

“The accident made us realise we didn’t want to do that any longer, so we restored historic aircraft for a while before going into mechanical watches.”

Then, two years ago, Giles was in an accident.

“He was flying his 1930s Gypsy Moth and the engine failed. It went into a spin and he crashed, breaking his back in two or three places but he’s all right now, thankfully.”

There’s a mad gleam in Nick’s eyes when he adds: “Hopefully we’ve had our fair share of accidents now.”

But Britain isn’t identified with luxury watches? He shakes his head. “There’s an incredible history out there about watches and time, and British watchmaking. The world sets its time by Greenwich, not Geneva.”

Britain, he says, has a proud tradition of making great watches and clocks.

“The first ship’s chronograph, made by John Harrison in the 1700s, was a British design. Before that, there were pendulum clocks. Around 65% of the mechanical watch design in the world came from these shores. Rolex started in Clerkenwell in 1905 — people don’t realise this.”

But then he laughs: “Giles and I told our wives it would take a year-and-a-half to get our first watch made and on sale.” He pauses. “They’re pretty long-suffering, our wives. It got to five years, various remortgages, and still no watch… but they were still very supportive.”

The brothers took themselves off to Switzerland to learn the craft: “Giles and I are passionate about watchmaking but we’re not watchmakers, which is a whole different skill set.

“You have to be fully immersed in it for many, many years to be any good. So for us, it was about getting the right people involved and we had to learn a lot about managing the supply chain and manufacturing.”

The parts for their watches are imported and assembled in Henley-on-Thames and Silverstone. The average retail price is £4000-£5000.

They hadn’t got a name: “One of the key things when Giles and I started was not to go and take another watch brand’s name and try to trade off their history. But having a name like English isn’t easy to trademark and the irony would probably be lost on a British watch.”

After Nick’s accident, it took him a year or so to get back on his feet — there are pins all over his body. “Half of me is metal,” he says.

But within two years of the crash, he was back in the air.

“My brother and I were flying down from France. We were in an old biplane and we ran out of fuel so we had to land in a field. It was a 1930s plane with an open cockpit. We were going down in northern France.

“In England, if this happens, you apologise to the farmer and buy him a bottle of whisky, take his wife for a flight and it’s all very easy. When it happens in France, it’s extremely bureaucratic and they have to come and assess whether it’s OK to take off.”

On this occasion, the farmer helped them: “We ended up staying with him, and his name was Anton Bremont. Until then, we didn’t have a name for our company.” They started Bremont in 2002 and the first watch was sold in 2007.

“Some retailers got it instantly — we were in Harrods and Selfridges very early on, and The Watch Gallery,” Nick says.

“The guys who understand watches realise instantly that ours are absolutely beautifully made. There is no point going into this industry with poorly-made products.”

They always play up the British angle: “There are several hundred Swiss watch brands out there, and having a British watch brand is a pretty nice differentiator.”

Watches have survived despite the threat from technology. Indeed, luxury watches are positively thriving: “The last 20 years, the industry has certainly picked up. Having a good mechanical watch tells you a lot about a person. It’s like the car they drive.”

The pilot design was deliberately chosen and developed: “Aviation and watches go together. When I started flying all those years ago, our dad gave me far more responsibility than I’d give my kids now.