Small Talk MAXIMILIAN BÜSSER
In town for the recent opening of the world’s first MB&F Lab at Raffles Hotel Singapore, the MB&F founder and creative director reflects on the brand’s journey thus far and what lies ahead
Why did you choose Singapore as the location for the first MB&F Lab?
It was our intention for the first three MB&F Labs to honour the relationship with our original retail partners, and The Hour Glass and Michael Tay were one of the first partners that believed in me. The next two MB&F Labs we’re opening in Paris and Beverly Hills will also be founded with retail partners who have been with us since the beginning. The brand is called Maximilian Büsser and Friends because the relationships have always been paramount. I used to think MB&F was just about creating great products, but now, I realise that the journey and the people I [meet] along the way are more important. Additionally, Singapore has the largest community of
MB&F collectors in the world, so choosing to open here first was natural.
It has been 17 years since you founded MB&F. How do you feel about your journey so far?
Looking back, I was completely insane; I put in all my savings, went around the world with just a drawing of my HM1 to convince a few retail partners to say, ‘Yes, we’re going to follow you.’
I had nothing else planned. Seventeen years later, we’ve got 20 products. We created the Legacy Machines, the M.a.d.galleries, the Labs, the co‑creations, the M.a.d.editions—none of these were on my mind 17 years ago, so that’s really amazing.
How do you stay creative after all this time?
A lot of creators tend to have one great idea and then they perfect it over the years. But I’m not interested in doing the same thing all the time—i just get bored really quickly. For example, I see these guys jumping off cliffs in wingsuits and I think, ‘What’s wrong with [them]?’ But they’re the guys who maybe started out parachuting and then after their 40th jump, they don’t get the thrill any more, so now they’re jumping in wingsuits. And that’s exactly my process. My creativity is an addiction and like any addiction, I have to increase the dose of the risk to get that thrill.
What are you currently working on and what else can we expect from you?
In the past two years, the whole world suddenly seemed to have discovered us. Demand is so enormous and the waiting list is so crazy—in Geneva, it’s up to 18 years. So we’ve had to slow down in creating novelties; those that were planned for release between now and 2026 have been reforecast to stretch to 2030. As the creative director of MB&F, this has basically made me unemployed. So now I’m doing all sorts of other creative things, but in different worlds outside of watchmaking. One of the projects I’m working on is an espresso machine shaped like a bull. [Another is] a loudspeaker that’s also a sculptured work of art. It’s much more complicated to prove our legitimacy in these fields because outside of watchmaking, most people have never heard of MB&F. We’re still very much a geeky brand for people who really know about watchmaking. But that’s what I’m working on and now with the MB&F Labs, I’ll have a space to showcase these creations as well.
What is a legacy you hope to leave behind?
At MB&F, we want to empower and inspire people to get more creative, to get out of their comfort zone, to take more risks and to become entrepreneurs. Over the past decade, I’ve had so many messages from people on social media saying,
‘I’ll never be able to afford your watches, but I’ve been listening to your podcasts and watching your videos, and you’ve inspired me so I’m creating my own company or going to do something that nobody understands.’ I hope they don’t fail, but if inspiring people to think differently is the one legacy of MB&F, I think that’s very cool.