Montblanc's First-Ever Diving Watch

After exploring the heights of the world, Montblanc CEO Nicholas Baretzki is plumbing its depths. August-Man catches up with the adventurous chief during the launch of the brand’s first-ever diving watch

- Jonathan Ho

IT HAS BEEN 116 YEARS since Montblanc was founded by two friends and explorers in Berlin. Beginning with the offer of high-quality writing instruments, Montblanc is today an empire of lifestyle products that include leather goods and high-end timepieces, Indeed, Montblanc has been going from strength to strength. In 2019, CEO Nicolas Baretzki guided the heritage maison through a collaboration with streetwear brand BAPE, surprising seasoned collectors and consumers with a contemporary collection that also bore old-school luxury appeal. Today, Baretzki surprises the world again with the brand’s first diving watch – the Iced Sea and a “ZeroOxygen” Chronograph to the brand’s popular Geospheres collection.

The 1858 Geospheres and Minerva chronographs have been quite successful, but they’re still niche or connoisseur level timepieces. What do you consider to be Montblanc’s bread and butter timepieces currently, and do you expect the new IcedSea to become the Montblanc model that everyone gets first?

We apply the same strategy for the writing instruments segment to our watch segment. We have the Meisterstück as the bread and butter writing instrument, and I believe we will have a bread and butter in something like the Iced-Sea. It may be too early to say, but it can be as strong as the full calendar in Star Legacy or the Night and Day in the Bohème collections.