arno about his trip to tokyo with piet hein

Last June I traveled to Tokyo together with Piet Hein for the launch of our Tube Watches at the Conran shop. After our arrival, we went straight to the launch party. The collection was presented at the main entrance of their flagship store and the party was officially opened by a famous sumo wrestler.
I felt pretty small standing next to that guy…..After being interviewed by Elle and Kinfolk we went out for dinner with our friends of Cibone, who own one of the most beautiful design stores in Tokyo. Before they became a LEFF amsterdam dealer, they have been selling Piet Hein’s furniture for years.

Traveling with Piet is very interesting as he has a completely different way of looking at things and spending time with him gave me a lot of opportunities to pick his brain. Besides some other things, we talked about the direction of our watch collection as we had to start working on new models in the tube watch series. Many so-called watch experts advised us to make a smaller version of the watch that should cost around 129 euro, but we decided not to listen. Instead, we are going to make a bigger 1000 euro watch with a Swiss mechanical movement first. Not only because it is one of the most challenging models to make, but also because the MET museum in New York asked us to make a solid golden Tube watch for them and it does not make sense to make a watch like that with a quartz movement.
The price of that golden watch will be approximately 20.000 euro and a watch in that price level really needs to have an authentic mechanical Swiss movement. So if we develop that golden version for the MET museum anyway, then that is the perfect excuse to invest in the development of a 1000 euro mechanical steel watch that is still exclusive but reachable if you are willing to save some money for something really cool and special …we will keep you posted!