Giles English
The Pioneer
The frontier and an appetite for the unknown, goes first.
Giles English emerges as a Pioneer whose leadership is rooted in the deliberate resurrection of a lost industrial craft in a market long ceded to Swiss dominance. In this interview, English frames Bremont not as a watch company but as a national project, investing in UK manufacturing infrastructure, apprenticeship training, and precision engineering at a time when no comparable British brand existed. His willingness to absorb a fifteen-year runway, reject outsourcing, and build proprietary capability from scratch reflects a founder who treats competitive disadvantage as creative territory. English repeatedly grounds strategic choices in narrative and provenance, from the Bremont name to limited-edition historical collections, demonstrating that his pioneering instinct operates equally in brand-building and manufacturing. The three-times rule he cites captures his honest reckoning with the cost of doing genuinely new things.
“A hundred years ago we were making half the world's watches and at the time that Nick and I had this crazy idea there wasn't a single British watch company you could buy off the shelf.”
“It always takes three times longer, it always costs three times more and it's three times more effort. If you're not willing to go for that three times rule on day one, give up now.”
“We would have made so much more money if we just outsourced the manufacturing. But that wouldn't have been any fun. That wouldn't have built up British watchmaking.”
Money Maze Podcast: “Building a Global Luxury Watch Brand - With Giles English, Founder and CEO of Bremont Watches”
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