By the show’s close, the watch had caught the attention of two industry heavyweights: Carson Chan, then the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie’s head of mission for Greater China, and William Rohr, best known in the watch world as William Massena, the founder of Massena LAB. Mr. André had his first two orders.
In the five years since, Mr. André has collaborated with several Swiss houses, including H. Moser & Cie, Louis Erard and, last month, Frederique Constant — an independent brand drawn by Mr. André’s “fresh and disruptive energy,” said the company’s chief executive, Niels Eggerding.
“Romaric is a bit of a maverick in being able to be very successful very quickly,” said Ariel Adams, the founder of A Blog to Watch. He noted that Mr. André’s ideas, such as positioning a rotating miniature red beanie at the center of an Omega Seamaster dial, are “playful, but there’s due deference and respect to the item itself.”
Mr. André initially studied business at the Grenoble School of Management, graduating in 2005. He interned at PricewaterhouseCoopers and then at BNP Paribas, before a semester at the University of Florida prompted the realization, he said, that he wanted to “build something.”
The result was Celsius, which he introduced in 2006 with Thomas Pruvot, a childhood friend. But despite their hard work and the support of horological veterans such as Richard Mille and Edouard Meylan, the company’s unorthodox, semi-mechanical watch phones were doomed to fail. They were expensive from $70,000 to $250,000, and — equipped with relatively simple operating systems — could not compete with the emerging smartphones of the time.
