Read Article - Franck Dubarry

TIMEPIECE
74
THE WANDERER RETURNS
75
 Franck Dubarry, black belt
With TechnoMarine, entrepreneur Franck Dubarry challenged
received wisdom on what a watch could be. Nick Rice hears
how the polo player, movie maker and karate master is taking another
chop at it with the launch of a new brand
THE
WANDERER
RETURNS
Photography: Lucie Hugary
Relaxing in his Miami apartment on a clear day, a light
breeze wafting gently into the room, Franck Dubarry
is the picture of health. But, as for most of us who
have crossed the 40 mark, looking good doesn’t come
easy. Dubarry trains hard and often, and duly exudes
an air of physical capability. Which, one discovers,
is also the result of a lifetime of teaching karate
and, more recently, of playing polo. He is, frankly,
an unlikely entrepreneur in the often conservative
world of watches, into which he is making
a second foray with a new, eponymous brand this
spring. At risk of a swift chop to the neck, it’s hard to
imagine it could be as successful as his first.
Dubarry made a fortune in the watch industry
with the TechnoMarine brand that he founded in 1997.
His watches didn’t so much make a splash in a relatively
traditional market – they caused more of a tsunami.
In nine years the company clocked up $1 billion
through the sale of 2.5 million watches across a global
distribution network that covered over 100 countries,
effectively creating a new market segment.
Dubarry pioneered a quirky – and, in the watch
world, often controversial – concoction of bright
colours, plastic and diamonds, and more than 1,000
watch designs were snapped up by people who had
never seen materials elitist and prosaic so artfully
fused together. He eventually sold the company to an
investor group in 2007 and has since been doing, well…
too much to catalogue in full here. Just some of his
activities include learning Spanish (his sixth language),
gaining an MBA, establishing several major real estate
ventures, including a polo resort in Argentina, breeding
horses, moving to Los Angeles to become a movie
producer and founding his own dojos… you know,
pretty standard stuff.
“I learned a lot about myself [over the time since
the TechnoMarine sale],” the Frenchman says. “I’ll tell
you why… when I sold it I was super excited. Money is
what you can do with your time – and with your money.
I learned a language and studied at the London School
of Economics; I graduated in a 15th-century cathedral,
which was very well done by the British, no complaints
at all. At the same time, when you’ve been successful
you don’t know what your limits are – you think you
can do anything. The good thing with sports is that you
fall, and you meet your own limits. And in business it’s
the same thing. I’ve noticed what my limitations are –
being good for some things and not fit for others.”
The grounding in sports has clearly served
Dubarry well, and despite major successes in his
business and leisure activities, there is no hint of hubris
or arrogance about the man. His dedication to martial
arts is obviously a core influence on his character. “I’m
very much inhabited with the discipline of the Budokan
[karate],” he explains, “To train my body and spirit and
to have an ethical attitude and respect towards the other –
that’s the way I live my life.”
“There’s a funny story I want to tell you,”
Dubarry adds, smiling as he leans back in his chair.
“My girlfriend’s dad, who’s just passed away, was a
teacher in kenjutsu [Japanese swordsmanship] – he
was an eighth degree black belt, which was just a
coincidence, I didn’t know at the time I met her that
her dad was also a master and professor of martial arts.”
In the tradition of the samurai, Dubarry
explains, “when a father gives his weapon to his
son, he cuts him. Just a little cut, because you are
never supposed to draw a sword without blood. So
I’m doing my third degree black belt exam, doing
76
TIMEPIECE
“When you’ve been successful
you don’t know what your
limits are – you think you can
do anything. The good thing
with sports is that you fall, and
you meet your own limits”
The watch business may not be entirely genteel, but
it’s certainly a world away from LA’s cut-throat
deals and ruthless agents. So might Hollywood’s loss
is be the watch world’s gain, once more? Assessing
his return, Dubarry remarks, “My skills need to sit
between the artistic world and the business world,
where I can express artistic feelings through designs
and give them shape and image, basically run brands.
In the film industry I touched different areas, but
the experience of producing is not really as exciting
as I thought because of how ‘red ocean’ the film
industry is in Los Angeles – it’s really bloodthirsty.”
A thousand samurai cuts, if you will.
Dubarry’s assessment of the movie-making
world is unequivocal, but how does he feel about the
industry he left eight years ago? “The watch market
is a bit like the red ocean market,” he concedes. We
have all the sharks swimming in the same water
and feeding off the small guys, taking and tearing
market shares away. When you leave this group and
do something different, you swim on your own –
blue ocean. Blue ocean is more risky because you
are alone, but at the same time it’s more rewarding
because you can travel and you don’t have to give
yourself to other people. So I enjoy more the blue
ocean concept and I try to be on the edge of where
the market is going.”
77
 Dubarry sporting TechnoMarine
a movement with a sword which I’ve done hundreds
of times, and Claudio Alessi [seven-time Karate World
Champion] is asking me to do it for the last time, and I’m
coming to the last movement, and just before I put back
the sword, it cuts me on the leg. I bled and needed six
stitches. It was superficial, but this was the first time I’d
used the sword which he gave me – so it was funny that
it happened like that.”
Perhaps more funny in hindsight. But if you trust
your instincts, you should get the right outcomes. That
seems to be the Dubarry mantra. Although he suggests
he had a tough time of it in the LA film industry, he still
came out on top by trusting his own impulses. Having
read a script that particularly grabbed him, Dubarry
decided to buy it outright for around $100,000, rather
than option it. “Out of instinct and out of passion I bought
the script,” he says. “I really didn’t know what to do with
it – I bought it as if you would buy a painting. But believe
it or not, Columbia Pictures are buying it from me for $1
million. I signed last August so now they are shooting
Five Against a Bullet with Bruce Willis.”
In other words, just more standard stuff. “I’ve
done okay in the film industry,” he says – kind of like
he’s done okay in the watch industry. “It’s like the poker
table, you win and lose – but I’d rather stay with what
I know and go back to the world where I know that I
won’t get killed.”
THE WANDERER RETURNS
 Franck Dubarry kicks ass
How close to the edge Dubarry’s new Frank Dubarry
products will be remains to be seen. A key factor is
the desired audience – who are the watches aimed
at? “We are targeting the same people as with
TechnoMarine,” Dubarry reveals, “which is a highend consumer – the main difference will be that
I’ll try to control my distribution as much as I can
because I want this to be a long-lasting experience.
It’s not a company I’m starting just to sell in a few
years. The idea this time is really not to have the
explosion I had with TechnoMarine, but something
stable that I can build and add new watches to every
year and grow into a global brand.”
As for the watches themselves, which will
be on sale from October 2015, Dubarry won’t say
too much – they will be revealed to a select few at
the watch industry’s biggest trade show in spring –
chiefly because he has several patents pending. But
he goes so far as to say that he is coming up with a
“fun complication – it’s called Crazy Balls and it has
a crazy pattern on the watch. It’s quite entertaining.”
Crazy, entertaining – not the terms one immediately
associates with watches. Soon we will know if this
new venture can follow through and rewrite the
industry’s rule book once again.
 TechnoMarine
In nine years the company
clocked up $1 billion through
the sale of 2.5 million watches
in 100 countries, effectively
creating a new market segment