This week on The Business of Watches, we sit down with Nicholas Bowman-Scargill, founder and CEO of Fears Watches, for an in-depth discussion. Nicholas has packed a lot into his 39 years. For the last decade, he’s helmed the brand, originally founded in Bristol, England, in 1846 by his great-great-great-grandfather, Edwin Fears.
Incredibly, Bowman-Scargill wasn’t even aware of the Fears brand and family connection when he decided to train as a watchmaker at Rolex in the U.K. That move into watches followed an ill-timed foray into investment banking on the eve of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.
Nicholas Bowman-Scargill, the fourth managing director of Fears Watches.
By the time Bowman-Scargill restarted the brand in 2016, it had been dormant for nearly four decades. He says its revival has been an exercise in business challenges, often met by the art of project management, a skill set he and his fellow Brits are uniquely adept at. Fears has now grown to about 15 people and returned to its roots in Bristol. From flirting with bankruptcy to implementing a dress code for employees and overseeing the design and production of a perpetual calendar model, Bowman-Scargill relays the dramatic tale of how the company has survived and thrived in the crowded, competitive arena of mid-tier timepieces.
It’s a heck of a story that offers heaps of insight for any watch enthusiast, collector, or small business owner. From what he learned and has applied at Fears from his time at Rolex, to what’s in the envelope that’s only to be opened should he meet an unexpected demise, what kind of investors he’s accepted into the family business, and how to bring that non-watch enthusiast customer to the brand, Bowman-Scargill serves up plenty of candor, wisdom, and experience in this wide-ranging discussion.
The Fears Perpetual Calendar.
(Image courtesy Fears)
There’s plenty of watch business and strategy to discuss, and we hope you enjoy the conversation. Please leave any thoughts or questions in the comments section, and we’ll do our best to respond. Want to subscribe so you never miss an episode? This show is published to the original Hodinkee Podcasts feed, so you can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or TuneIn.
Show Notes:
0:48 New York Watch Week (Hodinkee)
1:19 Bristol England (VisitBristol.co.uk)
3:48 List of Fears managing directors (Fears website)
7:32 Corporate Governance (OECD)
9:36 Carp Fisher magazines (The Carp Society)
10:03 Master of the Universe – Investment Bankers (Prime Video)
10:19 The Men Who Destroyed Deutsche Bank (Der Spiegel)
10:47 The watches that bankers blow their first bonuses on (efinancialcareers.com)
12:45 Francis Bourgeois (YouTube)
14:02 Rolex Service Centres in London
17:11 Moritz Grossmann history and founding of the German School of Watchmaking (company website)
18:35 Fears Watch Company Limited (Companies House)
20:07 The First Fears Watch – The Redcliff Date from 2016
23:26 Fears Brunswick White 38
27:30 Établissage (FHH)
30:15 Mighty Mercedes Benz Models of the 1980s (Hagerty UK)
31:36 Inside Swiss Watch Manufacturing At the EPHJ (Swiss 101 Hodinkee)
35:25 The Power of Dress (Psychology Today)
42:35 Becoming a Civilian (Jason Heaton SWIMPRUF)
42:53 Meet the Fears Garrick (Worn & Wound)
48:02 British Watch & Clock Makers Alliance
48:25 What Really Happened to the Costa Cruises’ Costa Concordia (Cruise Critic)
49:50 What is a Project Manager? (Project Manager YouTube)
55:20 What is cash flow and how do you manage it? (British Business Bank)
58:20 Chargeback Fraud: How It Works, Common Types & How To Prevent It (Unit21.ai)
58:46 Being Fearless: The First Ten Years of Rebuilding a Watch Company by Chris Hall with Foreward by Mike France (Waterstones)
