Swiss Watch Wildling MB&F Just Opened Its First U.S. Boutique—Here’s a Look Inside
One of the first things a visitor to the new MB&F Lab in Beverly Hills, Calif., sees upon entering the sleek, futuristic retail salon is a table dominated by a six-foot-long, $43,000 mechanical stingray.
Created by the Indian design and architecture studio Apical Reform, the piece, which mimics the wave motion of its natural counterpart, is one of numerous works of kinetic art on display at the Lab, MB&F’s first retail space in the U.S, located adjacent to the Westime store on Rodeo Drive.
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The 800-square-foot salon, which takes its design cues from John Lautner’s famed Sheats–Goldstein Residence in the Hollywood Hills (cue The Big Lebowski), is a mechanical wonderland dedicated to machines of both the horological and non-horological variety.
But unlike MB&F’s 12-year-old M.A.D. Gallery stores, which are focused on kinetic art pieces and feature watches as something of an afterthought, the Lab is a watch boutique that also sells really cool art.
“In a Gallery, 80 percent is art and 20 percent is MB&F,” Maximilian Büsser, the founder, creative director, and chief executive of the pioneering brand, tells Robb Report. “In a Lab, it’s 60 percent MB&F, 40 percent art. So it’s much easier to deal with for a partner.”
The first MB&F Lab opened in Singapore in September 2022 in the Raffles Hotel, in partnership with local retailer Michael Tay of The Hour Glass. The second Lab opened in May in Paris, in partnership with longstanding MB&F retailer Laurent Picciotto, founder of Chronopassion. And the third Lab opened in Taipei earlier this fall.
Büsser chose Beverly Hills for his fourth Lab location, and first retail space in the U.S., thanks purely to his relationship with Westime president Greg Simonian, who contacted him during the pandemic and suggested that MB&F take the retail space next door to the multibrand store.
“We actually waited for people we’ve been working with for years to contact us,” Büsser says. “We have a Lab with the Simonians, a Lab with Laurent Picciotto, a Lab with Michael Tay, and a gallery with the Siddiqis,” the family that operates Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons, a multi-brand retailer headquartered in Dubai.
“Those are the four guys who put one-third down in advance based on a drawing that I showed them 18 years ago,” Büsser says, reflecting on MB&F’s first watch, conceived in 2005 (and introduced two years later). “That’s what makes me proud today. I mean, I’m very proud of the place, but the real thing I’m proud of is the people who’ve accompanied me for 18 years came to me and said, ‘We want to do this.’”
The MB&F Galleries, which originated in Geneva in 2011, marked the watchmaker’s first retail effort.
“The gallery was a way of showcasing, of course, our MB&F pieces, but more importantly, it was to showcase mechanical and kinetic art alongside them so people would understand what we were trying to do,” Büsser says. “Now, don’t forget that in 2011, we have just come out with the horological machines, HM1, 2, 3, and 4. And most people are looking at us like, ‘What is wrong with you? What are you doing? What is that stuff?’ And so it was a good way to say, ‘Look, if you look at that mechanical stingray or that Nixie clock, and if you get that, you’ll maybe get what we’re trying to do.’”
“So it was like a decoding machine,” he adds. “It was also an orphanage because of the fact that virtually all the artists we presented had no galleries to represent them because the galleries are not interested in kinetic, mechanical art.”
Büsser says the Lab concept reflects a new post-pandemic way of thinking, as he ponders his own mortality and considers his succession strategy.
“Until recently, MB&F was just about me traveling around the world, our retailers having a little showcase with a couple of watches and me basically explaining to customers what I was trying to do and if they liked what I did and the story, they would buy a piece or not,” he says.
“But then the brand cannot survive that,” he adds. “Now, with this, what’s incredible with the pandemic is that 10 times more customers started saying, ‘I want an MB&F.’ They’ve never met me. They didn’t even know who I was. And they still wanted the brand. So it’s happening. And it’s also happening thanks to these labs which allow people to come into our world without meeting me.”
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