Wristchat: Aren Bazerkanian On His High Horology Brand For Millennials

Inspired by the 90s neo-vintage design spirit, Havid Nagan’s debut watches are all about the community spirit. Bazerkanian is in no rush to make it big — he wants to win hearts, one well-made watch at a time

It’s hard to not get impressed by Aren Bazerkanian’s courage. In a market brimming with micro-brands, this passionate watch enthusiast decided to venture out on his own to launch a brand that’s rooted in classical watchmaking but is absolutely contemporary in its style. After two years of thorough research and planning, Bazerkanian has recently introduced the HN00 watches in bright-colored, guilloché-pattern dials and curved cushion-shaped cases. Powered by Schwarz-Etienne’s ASE200, featuring a tungsten micro-rotor, these sporty time-only watches are not just refreshing in design but also technically powerful. 

Thanks to his interest in art and design, Bazerkanian was drawn to watches quite naturally. He spent some time in real estate before working with F.P.Journe in Los Angeles and that’s when his life changed. “I always wanted to have these people around me, I just didn't know where to find them and when I finally found them, it was like the best thing ever," he says.

Priced at USD 8,000, Havid Nagan’s debut watches are currently available on subscription. There’s lots that’s planned for the brand in the coming years but Bazerkanian doesn’t intend to make it “overtly big”. “It’s going to be a legacy brand and it will be a substantial player in the mid to high horology price range. I don't want to take shortcuts on how the watch is made, the movements that we use, the complications that will come. In a nutshell that’s how I will differentiate us from the rest,” he says. 

Excerpts from the interview: 

It’s not usual to find an Armenian based in Los Angeles selling Swiss watches to millennials world over. Tell us how all this came together?

It took me a lot of convincing to say, I'm going to do this. If I were to enter the market 5-10 years ago, no one would have given me the light of day. I genuinely wanted to commit my life to the watch industry without really being a watchmaker and help the industry expand in my own way. My mission is to be the bridge between the F.P. Journes – people that want the dynamic of horology, the community that comes with it, the atypical designs – and make it more accessible to a broader base of collectors. You don't really find an $8,000 watch like a Havid Nagan. The next one will be even better – it'll be thinner, more complicated and with on par quality movement, if not better.

As far as my Armenian roots are concerned, it’s very loosely applied to the brand. The name, Havid Nagan, is a commercialized version of the Armenian word for ‘eternity’. The flower-like logo is also a symbol that you’ll find in ancient carvings throughout the history of Armenia. As I'm not a watchmaker, my name isn't on the dial but I had to connect the brand to myself in some way, so this was it.

You were working in real estate. How and when did you make the switch to watches?

I was in real estate only because I graduated college and like many millennials, I was still figuring out what I wanted to do. As I started learning about watches, I got really passionate about the industry. I wanted to commit my life to it. My wife got me tickets to the WatchTime event in 2019, where I met the leading brands and the people behind them. That's how I got more and more involved and I realized, this community is something else! I always wanted to have these people around me, I just didn't know where to find them and when I finally found them, it was like the best thing ever. The best industry there is – you're dealing with these captivating, brilliant high caliber people.

How do you see Havid Nagan stand out in a sea of micro-brands that have come up in the last couple of years? What’s your brand’s USP?  

I’d like to use the example of F.P. Journe here because my context is limited to F.P. Journe and that's where I come from and also because no one knew about what made F.P. Journe special before this meteoric rise of his watches a few years ago. 

I really want to garner a strong, passionate and genuine collectorship of my watches. So in a way that’s one of the differentiating factors  for us – it’s all who you are going to meet if you become a part of my family. A lot of those big collectors that I met and built relationships with during my stint with Journe are my collectors now, they support me and they love what I'm doing. Secondly, as far as what you're getting from the value proposition, you know, it's not a derivative design. It's not a Rolex Submariner derivative thing that everybody's doing – changing the dial color, bezel color and calling it something else. I want Havid Nagan to be differentiated from everything else by way of designing a community, accessibility to each collector and keeping the company as exclusive as I can. I don't want it to be overtly big and sell 5,000-10,000 watches a year. I want it to be a small operation. Instead of spending 50-60,000 on marketing, I like to meet with collectors domestically and hopefully in the future, internationally too. It's been only three months since I launched a company, so I'm letting people know this is going to be a serious thing. Havid Nagan is going to be a legacy brand and it will be a substantial player in the mid to high horology price range. I don't want to take shortcuts on how the watch is made, the movements that we use, the complications that will come. In a nutshell that’s how I will differentiate.

How did your background in architecture influence the distinct design of Havid Nagan watches?

So, the design is all me. I’m not skilled at doing technical drawings but I gave Schwarz-Etienne and the different people that are involved in the process, details like the various angles and where the screws would come etc and they constructed the watch as per those guidelines. So, I designed it but they technically brought it to life. 

My main inspiration for the case came from the neo-vintage era, the early 90s era when a lot of these brands like Zenith, Franck Muller and Roger Dubuis played around with these interesting case designs. I found a lot of inspiration to kind of go all out and do something different from those companies because nowadays nobody's really taking risks, everybody's doing the same case designs, lugs etc. I wanted to do something different. I have always loved curved casebacks, as they fit better in my opinion. So that was always going to be a part of any design I came up with.

I was really inspired by Paul McClean, the architect, who took something familiar – the modern white facades associated with high-end real estate in Los Angeles – and gave it a nuance. I wanted the watch to be like a structure on the wrist, appreciated not just for its beautiful dial but also the case design. I think that's a very neglected part of the industry. Around two months ago, I discovered a vintage Patek Philippe with a starkly similar bezel as the HN00. I was like, wow, maybe I'm on the right track! If I'm thinking along the lines of what the greats did, without even knowing that they did, then maybe I have something here. People have responded really well to the case design. The only critique I have heard about the case design is that it's too thick at 11.6 mm. However, when people actually try on the watch, they change their opinion because the watch really doesn't feel that big, thanks to the curved caseback and the cushion case. It's a 100 meter water-resistant, grade five titanium everyday watch. You can beat it up, go diving with it with the rubber straps on and this is just the entry into Havid Nagan. There's gonna be more complications, tourbillon, retrograde chronographs, moon-phases and more. If I really have my way, and this thing takes off the way I need it to, then we will be developing our own calibers in association with Schwarz-Etienne and the different manufacturers that I work with. So my real dream is to bring to life really complicated stuff. I don't know if and when that will happen but that’s my goal.

Tell us more about the Schwarz Etienne movement that powers the HN00?

So I didn't even know Schwarz-Etienne existed until after I had gone through many, many different Google searches of third party watch movement manufacturers in Switzerland. We were talking with Sellita and ETA initially and I was planning to have this made as a lower end watch priced at $5,000. But when I started showing the drawings of the watch to different dealers and asked them how much they would sell it for, they said 10 to $12,000. That made me think that I could really turn this into something substantial and not just another $5,000 watch. I ended up finding our dial-making partner, Cadranor SA online and it’s been a pleasure working with them. In the same way, I found Schwarz-Etienne online and shared my vision with them. It took us a long time to develop my vision because I don't have venture capital money. I don't come from a rich family and I don't come from any of these typical stories that you hear in the watch community nowadays. My wife and I would talk about putting in money periodically into this project. Originally I wanted to have a movement with plates made of blackened 18k white gold but that was impossible to achieve at the given price range, so we now have the ASE200, featuring a tungsten micro-rotor that has 86 hours of power reserve. The balance wheel and hairspring are produced in-house by Schwarz-Etienne and I’d say it’s a great movement!

You’ve used a stamped guilloché-pattern on the HN00 dial. Did you always want your first watch to mirror this age-old technique?

I knew I wanted to do a guilloché dial. I didn't have the pattern decided for quite some time. So I bought a number of different guilloché books and I just went through them to see how they were being made, the patterns that were being done etc. I wanted to have the traditional hand guilloché done for my watch but the cost difference was so big that it would have put me out of that niche I wanted the first watch to be in. The more sophisticated collectors, who appreciate hand guilloché on watches priced at $300,00, are very rare and it would be pointless for me to do a hand guilloché dial at that price anyway. By the way, you can’t tell the difference between the hand guilloché and stamped guilloché dials. Also, just because it's a stamped dial it doesn't mean it's cheaper or easier to make. 

Our dial-making partner is Cadranor SA and I have seen how painstaking the process is – there are seven different stages and each involves a stringent quality check. The dials are cut, the stamped textures are applied, and then they are varnished, lacquered, and hand-painted for the various shades like our Arka Blue, Jade green, and Plum purple.

If F.P. Journe is okay to use stamped guilloché dials, why should it bother someone like me? So, you know, it really comes down to educating the audience. I want people to understand the context of what they're buying. Just because it's a stamped guilloché dial doesn't mean you write it off. My dials are being made by 25-year-olds, which is amazing. There are two guys doing the galvanization for the dial, one guy doing the hand painting on the dial and one lady applying the indices by hand. Each of the seven processes involves so much human interaction with the dial that this whole argument of stamped guilloché dials being cheaper and easier to do is completely invalid.

At Schwarz-Etienne, there are just three or four watchmakers. One of them was a 22-year-old kid, who just graduated from watchmaking school, and he was making my watches, which was fascinating and inspiring to see. There's one woman regulating the balances in the hairsprings, and one guy working with quality control. It’s phenomenal! For me watches and watchmaking is all about these moments and the passion you share with the community. This is the foremost thing I want to focus on, it’s my differentiating factor. It's not about building this watch to be bigger and better and smaller and thinner, or whatever. All of that is out there, all of the big brands can beat me at doing that. What they can’t beat me at is on the ground floor, being together with my people who support me, and I support them. So that is going to be my strength.

You've done subscription base sales so far. Are you going to move beyond that and have dedicated retail stores at some point?

As is the case with most independent brands, I dream of having a physical storefront someday.  I will do everything in my power to make sure it does come true. I would like to open a store in West LA somewhere, I actually know exactly where it would be. If I have my way, it would be structured like a house or a lounge and not really like a boutique.

As far as the subscription model is concerned, for the time being that’s how it will be. We're not big enough to produce ahead of time. Financially, it's the best and the only way I can do it. I don't come from money, I don't have Venture Capital Partners, it's just me and my wife doing this, there's no one else. So let's say, for example, if I have 100 orders, when I submit the orders, I'll order 115 or 120, just so I have a little bit extra if anybody comes later and they're interested. For the boutique, I’m really trying my best to make it happen down the line.