Patrik P. Hoffmann insists that people do not buy Ulysse Nardin to “read the time”.

The chief executive officer of the exclusive watch brand grins before clarifying why the primary purpose of buying his watch would be different. “Today, people buy a Ulysse Nardin and many of the other brands because of the craftsmanship, art, the culture and the expression of lifestyle. That’s why,” he says emphatically, “we will never do a quartz watch. We don’t just sell the look; we sell the inside, the heart of the watch.”

This meeting with Hoffmann, 47, who confesses to being a salesperson at heart, took place over a month ago, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Mumbai, before the announcement of Yuvraj Singh as the watch’s brand ambassador in India. The Indian cricketer, then recovering from a non-malignant lung tumour, seems to be a surprising choice for the brand—a brash, rough-on-the-edges, continuously-on-the-fringe player representing a sophisticated watch company that produces a mere 25,000 watches a year. Hoffmann calls it a partnership between legends, a status justified by his company, which has existed for 166 years, and he hopes, by Singh, who helped India to its second cricket World Cup in April.

Time travel: Hoffmann travels every week because, he says, if he sits in office for too long, the ‘salesman’ in him gets anxious. ‘I have to be in the marketplace,’ he says. Jayachandran/Mint

Bleary-eyed, but with a cheerful smile, Hoffmann is seated in a room big enough to accommodate a hundred people, having just arrived in Mumbai from Switzerland. He speaks with a faint German accent, emphasizing certain syllables. His left wrist bears the expected Ulysse Nardin watch, this one called the Freak. Released 11 years ago, with a technology using silicon, the Freak was one of the company’s more successful products. The CEO wears a prototype, bearing the number 1, which is not for sale. “Freak was a code name which later became the name of the model. People thought we were crazy to name it that, but then it was so out of the box that it worked,” he says.

Hoffmann was in the middle of the kind of promotional Asian tour that brings a whole lot of global company heads to India. His three-day visit, coinciding with the launch of a limited edition here, was to include Kolkata, Bangalore and New Delhi before he would head to the US. It was his first visit to India and came after he took over as the company’s CEO in April.

Ulysse Nardin, founded in 1846 in Le Locle, Switzerland, was best known for producing marine chronometers, but over the years started making mechanical watches as well. It was bought over in 1983 by businessman Rolf W. Schnyder, who relaunched the brand in a more contemporary avatar.

Hoffmann had started tinkering with watches as a child, though no one in his immediate family was in the business. He studied to be an accountant in Switzerland and later went to the US to study sales and marketing. On his return to Switzerland in 1991, he joined a watch company, Oris SA, in sales, and five years later, moved to Malaysia with watch distribution company Swiss Prestige Ltd. His neighbour in Kuala Lumpur was Schnyder.

“You just have to be at the right spot at the right time,” he says, without a hint of irony, on how he happened to join Ulysse Nardin.

Hoffmann moved to the US in 1999 with Ulysse as its vice-president and managing director; Schnyder’s demise last year brought him to the head office in Le Locle as CEO.

“When I was studying in the US,” he says, “everybody said you have to be in the watch industry because you are Swiss. I liked watches from the beginning and today, I am still in the industry because a watch fascinates me with its combination of technology and fashion.”

He might buy into the stereotype of being Swiss and, therefore, a part of the watch industry, but Hoffmann says the watch business in Switzerland is really small, employing just 35,000 people. Surprisingly, he describes it as an unsophisticated business—the way pieces are put together, the pace of work… “Everything is hand-assembled. People ask me how long it takes to produce a watch and I have no answer. A piece like this,” he says, pointing to his watch, “takes about seven years from the spark of the idea to the time the first watch is out.

“At the end, the watchmaker assembles it and certain watches can take up to six weeks to put those 480 or 620 parts together. There is a misconception—you look at a magazine or catalogue, you see a watchmaker bent over, but he is really just a part of the process. There’s an enormous amount of labour involved.”

He uses his US experience to explain the Swiss-watch connection further: “In Switzerland, and that’s why we are good in watchmaking, we conceive, plan and execute the process so that it’s just right. Sometimes that planning takes a long time. In America, you have a philosophy—try it and then fix it. What I have learnt is, a watchmaker who produces the piece cannot be pushed. They have their pace and passion and you have to let go. At the end of the day, you will have a product that’s as wonderful as ours.”

This passion for tradition and precision is also the reason why Ulysse Nardin will never make quartz or electronic watches, he adds. “It will only be hand-assembled, mechanical watches for the company, and that will not change,” he says. “Like the hand wind which you call old-fashioned,” he continues, smiling, “the advantage is that 200 years from now, you can still service that watch and still be able to produce a part if it doesn’t work any more. It will cost time and money because of the labour, but it will work again.”

“There are certain fashion elements which we adapt and integrate. Ten years ago, we never thought we would make a watch with rubber and ceramic. We are researching and developing continuously and I see people in our company working on movements that will come in 2016-17. Trends are changing even as traditional as we are,” he says.

Hoffmann himself owns about 30-50 watches, many of them not Ulysse Nardin. “When I am thinking or sleeping, I have the Ulysse Nardin hat on, that’s part of the job. I am not tempted to wear something else,” he says. He quickly assures that his enviable collection is not rusting in a locker—his three sons, Samuel, 20, Neil, 18, and Kevin, 16, “take care of those as also my wife (Liliane). Today, women wear men’s watches as well.”

So it’s not surprising that he says watches, when compared to cars, cufflinks or a good bottle of wine, are the best luxury products for men. “You cannot carry a car around, can you?”

arun.j@livemint.com