Sinn is to Bell & Ross what a good teacher is to a better student: a source of inspiration and in some way the starting point of the brilliant career of the pupil who ends up overshadowing the mentor. Bruno Belamich and Carlos Rosillo inventedBell & Rossfrom nowhere twenty years ago and today it is one of the best-known brands on the watch scene, with what has been called perfectly defined DNA in its square cases inspired by the flight instruments of an airplane. Helmut Sinn was an aviator during the Second World War and had oriented his watch company to produce tool watches for that environment, and this was precisely the reason why the two young entrepreneurs noticed him.
The relationship begins when in 1992 Bruno Belamich (the B in the tandem), who was the one who had originally thought about a watch company as a final year project, contacted the old aviator (more than seventy years old at the time, and still at the cutting edge) and he invited him to design for him while he agreed to produce the first watches for Bell & Ross. Sinn's commercial strategy had never involved selling through the traditional retail channel but rather selling directly to the public from the brand itself (here, a recent interview with Helmut Sinnwhere he explains his reasons), which opened a window for Rosillo to apply what has been proven to be a good marketing combination with the best ingredients: good product, good communication and good distribution... through the traditional channel.
While the DNA mentioned above matures, for a (short) time, Sinn models coexist in the Bell & Ross catalog with the new proposals, which leads to a situation of finding the same watch at very different prices (the margin of the retail channel rules) in one catalog or another. In contrast and seen with the perspective of time, those B&R watches are collector's items today.
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In 1994 Helmut Sinn sold the company and Bell & Ross continued to maintain a good relationship with the new managers, but it had already come to the conclusion that it needed its own personality and in a masterstroke in 1997 he gave Chanel a shareholding, which allowed it to have access to the Chatelain factory in Chaux de Fonds and begin to walk alone after having established a good foundation. By the way, in that same year its Hydromax Challenger, still produced by Sinn but without the “by”, entered the Guinness for its 11,000 meters of water resistance. In 1998 he already presented his own collection without external references. The rest is (also) history, but much better known.
Final note: This article is based on the interview that Carlos Rosillo (La R de Bell & Ross) gave us during the fairBaselworld, where time is more valuable than gold given its limited nature and the number of commitments to attend to. My thanks for that.
www.bellross.com
www.sinn.de
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