Afew months ago I was looking at watches on Instagram - do any of you do this? - and I saw this beautiful pink watch from a brand called Fears. I love pink. This was a particularly good red, like bright baby aspirin. It called itself Flamingo Pink, but it was a flamingo pink slightly faded by the sun.
I had to ask myself, do I just like this view because it's pink? And I said, no, that's a nice-looking bracelet, and cushion-shaped case, it's interesting, but not too interesting, as well as Fears is a cool name. Then I googled "Fears Watches" and found personally looking at the head of the operation, this young fellow wearing a bowtie who looks like he'd be fun to have a gin and also tonic with.
It turns out that Fears is really a really old company, founded in Bristol, England in 1846, and that this bowtie guy revived it because founder Edwin Fear was his ancestor. Finally, Worries make watches that are under $5, 000, nice solid-looking elegant timepieces - and i also like all of them, not just the pink one.
I wanted to meet this bow-tie man -- who also looks good in a regular tie, see above, what a great tie : and have a chat about how Fears Watches, 2 . o came to be. And now here we are.
he man with the bow tie had been Nicholas Bowman-Scargill, managing director of the Concerns Watch Company Limited, and he used to work in PR, and it shows. It's not that I don't believe his backstory, but one has to admit it is rather suspiciously good.
After graduating from college and trying along with failing to work in banking, then working in PR, which he liked but did not love, Bowman-Scargill got what he thought was their dream/forever job as an apprentice watchmaker at Rolex, in his hometown associated with London. Little did he know this was just where he was going to get his or her "I'm not going to do this particular job for the rest of my life" story.
This narrative, as American because apple pie and no less so for our subject being English, involves Bowman-Scargill (then in his early 20s, now 35) likely to a meeting within Rolex's pension department in addition to realizing that since fine a position and company as it was, this individual didn't want to work there for the next 39 years. "There's very little career progression inside watchmaking, " he tells me. "It's quite flat. You obviously build up more experience, but it's not like there are different levels and a hierarchy. " He walked out of that meeting with his mind churning. "I think I want to do something else, " he or she recalls thinking. "Maybe my own thing. inch But they didn't yet know what it was.
Soon after which soul-chilling ending up in the pension plan people, Bowman-Scargill was home for Sunday lunch and his mother let fly, for the first time, that will their family were direct descendants regarding Edwin Fear, who throughout 1846 set up Fears Timepieces. I said I found it perhaps strained credulity that he did not know this already. Bowman-Scargill laughed and acknowledged she had told him a few years prior that the relatives had been watchmakers. "But she'd failed to add that little extra thing, which was to say, oh, they also, as well as becoming trained watchmakers, were managing directors of the largest enjoy manufacturer in the west of England, which employed a hundred watch manufactures in Bristol and exported watches in order to 95 countries around the world. And it was this specific huge organization. "
This individual knew it had been a crazy idea to try to revive this kind of family business, but he / she got to function doing his / her research plus making preparations nonetheless.
This was around 2013. Two and a half years and the one-night course in Adobe Illustrator later, Bowman-Scargill felt in a good enough position to move forward. "And saved up enough money simply because Fears has no funding, it can all self-funded by my husband and me personally, " your dog added. In 2016, at the now-defunct Salon QP see show, Doubts brought out two versions of a watch called the Redcliff, named after the street with Bristol wherever Fears Wrist watches had started 170 years ago. One was a blue dial, one was obviously a white switch, and it experienced a Swiss quartz movement, a simple round shape, and even pipette hands that are still the company signature. "Some of our hands are solid, inches he explains. "Some tend to be open. It's a hand shape that Anxieties used between the 1930s and the 1950s. very well
The second family of watches, the actual Brunswick, launched in 2017. This observe had any hand-wound motion and a cushion case. Things were moving along nicely. And then Covid hit, together with sales flatlined. Bowman-Scargill didn't want to lay off his particular two employees, so the guy took some sort of 100 percent pay cut and worked in a supermarket at night to keep up with her bills. "We didn't even get a discount, and we had to pay 20 pence for any tea or coffee we drank upon break. We did get first dibs on toilet roll as well as pasta, so that was nice. "
By summer 2020, things were not only looking better for Fears, they were looking very good indeed. "Prior to June sales were very very bad and then after June sales were very very good, micron Bowman-Scargill says. In 2021, Fears debuted the rectangular Archival, which was very much like a new Fears style from 1930, but somewhat larger and with a new aged stock movements from the 1960s. April 2022 brought your collaboration with the English look at company, Garrick. Fears is now a team of seven, headquartered around Bristol, where the original Fearfulness began. Bowman-Scargill thinks this great-great-great grandfather would be very surprised that people in the 21st century had been still putting on mechanical wrist watches. "I think he'd also be proud something he did still got a place in the world this many years later. in