You could compare it to a Red Army invasion of watch shops the world over.
A peaceful invasion, rest assured, launched not from the Kremlin, but from Geneva’s lake shore. And spearheading the push are three entrepreneurs from the French-speaking part of Switzerland bent on making their brand name “Volna” (wave in Russian) a reference among sportsy types with a seafaring bent.
“We tend to forget that in the 1960s, Russia was the second biggest watchmaking nation in the world, just behind Switzerland,” says François Candolfi, CEO of Volna. When the USSR fell in 1991, the country had produced over 80 million pieces.” François Candolfi and his colleagues, Eléonore Paschoud et Marc Calmonte, are keen to pay homage to this little-known Russian industry, but also to stand out in a very competitive market. To do so, they have drawn inspiration from the Cold War mystique as seen from the Russian point of view and from their submarine technology to design their wrist watches.
“As far as performance, innovation and cutting edge technology are concerned, the watch-making world has a lot in common with that of submarines,” notes Candolfi. So Volna’s founders have baptised their first four collections after famous Soviet subs: the Typhoon, the Delta, Oskar, and Akula.
Typhoon, the first collection, is currently coming out on the Swiss market. The watches outer shell is directly inspired from watches once worn by deep sea diver, which the team found in a Moscow curios shop. But if their inspiration came from the east, the clockwork is entirely Swiss. “All of Volna’s components are made in Switzerland exclusively,” the CEO underscores. So the company claims as its own the "Russian Heritage Swiss Watch” concept.
Queen of the deep, its own way, the Volna Typhoon is guaranteed waterproof to 300 metres. Its double crown and security indicator are its most distinct features. Lastly, a metal plaque bearing specs is fixed to every watch. A second model from the collection, the Typhoon Siberia, should see the day in October.
“It will be more extreme, more massive, and it will have a rotating face,” says Candolfi. As for the coming collections – Delta, Oskar and Akula – they will go on sale one by one in the coming years.
The trio team lead by Candolfi has already been working on Volna’s launch for two years now. Since June, the collection is on sale in Switzerland, Portugal and Spain. We should see it on shelves in the rest of Europe by the end of the summer, and soon in the United States, the Middle-East and Japan, as well as northern and eastern Asia. For now, Volna has no distributor in Russia, but “it is clearly a market we will be prospecting,” promises the CEO.
Commercially, Volna ranks in the top tier of watches, with prices starting at CHF 5,000. In keeping with the creators’ strategy, we won’t likely see these watches on every wrist. “We’re shooting for exclusivity,” Candolfi explains. “We have no more than five outlets that carry our product in the French part of Switzerland, and each one carries a slightly different collection.” This year, the Typhoon will be limited to 300 units, broken up into five variations on the theme.
In all, only 60 watches of each variation will be available in the world. “You’ll have to rush to pick up certain models,” says Candolfi enthusiastically.
