Thomas:

I use VPC as my own little horological playground. 
I really only make what I personally like, uncompromisingly, without ever considering 
“the market”. I feel this is the only way to do something truly original and truly worthwhile. Now I just have to find my 1.000 true fans, people who look at VPC and think: “Yes! I’m feeling that vibe!”. It is very much a watch geek’s brand. And I assume only geeks like me will appreciate the effort that we put into every tiny detail. So VPC is niche, but that is precisely how I love it!

Thomas: I had a clear concept in mind of what my debut watch should look like. I felt, however, that I needed a truly great designer to make it sing. The idea may be good, but the magic is in the execution. And so I was delighted to find Max Resnick willing to pick up the gauntlet.

Max is a specialist watch designer who has worked for some of the biggest names in the industry. To get him to draw our debut watch was a huge win, to put it mildly. I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say he is simply one of the very best designers in today’s watch world.

Max is a fantastic sparring partner and collaborator. I have rarely worked with more reliable and proactive professionals. He always has the required creative solutions, and he takes my Dutch directness in my feedback/input like a champ.

The VPC Type 37HW would not have been nearly as good without Max on the team. The fact that we managed to find a design language that is equal parts traditional and innovative is all down to him.

Thomas: As a vintage lover, I was well aware of the lost art of dial typography. Modern watches often just don’t look as charming. I actually stumbled upon Samuel in the comments section on Fratello. As it turns out, he was just the guy for the job!

Samuel is a broadly-skilled designer with a particular love of watch dial typography. Talk about specialization, right? Our paths coincidentally aligned perfectly, and so Samuel took on the challenge of designing completely custom typography for VPC.

You can read about his work for VPC in this article on Fratello. 
Trust me, it is fascinating. Samuel is literally obsessed with his craft, which makes him endlessly fun to work with. He really goes a step beyond, sometimes revisiting things that were long approved already. “Hold on, I think I may have made it better still” is a text I received many times during this project.

His level of perfectionism has lifted the watch and brand a level beyond what I could have done on my own.

Thomas: Nicola is absolutely instrumental in the realization of our creations. After Max and I have finalized our designs, Nicola and his team take it to the next level. He develops the creative design into a technically feasible plan.

He also serves as a liaison between me and our Swiss suppliers, helping identify and bring on board the right manufacturers for each part.

Nicola’s position isn’t enviable, as he is tasked with making all of my over-ambitious plans come alive. His position has been turned down by others, stating: “Thomas is going to be a pain in the backside to work for”. That does not deter Nicola, although I am sure he sometimes scratches his head when I push him further and further still.

I love working with Nicola as he is honest, direct, and determined to create groundbreaking watches together. His family business TAN SA, operating from the Swiss town of Chiasso, has quickly become a beloved and crucial part of the VPC family.

Thomas: I got to know Morgan well during our shared years at Fratello, as our desks stood facing each other. I can honestly say he is one of the funniest and most characterful people I have ever met. He does not put on a mask for anyone; he’s always himself and straight to the point. And loud…that too!

That would be enough to set him apart in most crowds, but you have to add his creativity and skill to the mix, too. Morgan is a self-taught photographer with an unrelenting eagerness to improve himself. I saw him grow from a good watch photographer into a professional and highly creative specialist product photographer in a handful of years. Today, I consider him among the best in the trade. He works for both Laurent Ferrier and VPC…what more can I say?

Especially for an online-only brand like VPC, photography is absolutely crucial. Morgan isn’t just responsible for presenting my work in the most attractive possible light, but also for portraying it as lifelike and real as possible, so as not to have customers surprised or disappointed when they first open their freshly acquired watchbox. It is a truly vital step in the process. I saw him editing our first photos together to within an inch of his life, just to get the dial hues spot on, so enthusiasts around the globe could rely on his images.

Among the many things I love about working with Morgan is that every time I talk to him, he has learned and mastered something new. “How about we do x and y with your next shoot?” he asks. I love working with people as obsessively passionate as I am. And so I hope to do many more shoots with Morgan!

Thomas: Watches are a second career for Jorg, as they are for me. While I closely work with him at Fratello, Jorg was a brand strategist in a previous life. This gives him a unique profile: well-informed and insightful on both watches and branding.

While I know exactly what I want VPC to be, I can get lost in complicated philosophies and overly artsy ideas. Jorg was instrumental in taking my pages and pages of input and translating them into a concise, clear, and easy-to-communicate brand strategy. “A love of detail” and “Integrity” as core values, paired with the “Made to matter” payoff…none of it would have come about without Jorg. His patient, dedicated, and thoughtful approach untangled my busy mind and turned a pile of loosely related ideas into a plan.

Crucially, Jorg did not inflate VPC with marketing fluff. Instead, he took the philosophy and concepts I already worked by and made them explicit and easy to grasp.

A lovable and one-of-a-kind human being, Jorg is a friend and a sounding board, helping keep VPC’s compass pointing true North.

Thomas: When I asked Jop to help me sharpen up the looks of VPC as a brand, he immediately pushed back. “You need to get your brand story straightened out first, then we can talk!”

He wasn’t that brutal in the end, instead helping greatly in a creative triangle between Jorg Weppelink, Jop, and me. He was right. I wasn’t ready to push VPC to the next level if I didn’t get all my ideas organized first. Once we did, Jop took it and ran with it. He developed our new branding, which is deeply rooted in VPC’s values and philosophy.

Jop designed a visual language that reflects the love of detail and the integrity of VPC. He also visualized the “Made to matter” concept in several great ways. I love that Jop takes his work beyond the merely aesthetic. Everything has to come together in a meaningful way, building up to an overall image that pushes your message. I am delighted with how VPC looks now. From the typography to the use of color, textures, and graphical forms. Jop succeeded in visualizing that VPC isn’t like any other watch brand. Plus, the watch company now looks exactly how it feels to me, personally, aligning identity and image.

Isn’t it great when you have people on board with infinitely greater knowledge and experience than yourself, who aren’t afraid to push back and tell you how you should proceed instead? Jop is that kind of professional, and that’s great.

Thomas: I have to admit that working for VPC is usually stressful, as my ambitions for the company reliably outweigh our means by some margin. We always want to build world-class things, with woefully limited resources.

Luckily, Mustafa has ice running through his veins. He took on the challenge of turning Jop Quirindongo’s ambitious design into this website, incorporating the many technical challenges of running a high-end watch brand as an online-only business.

“Yeah, sure, we can do that” is exactly the answer you want to hear from your developer, and it is what Mustafa told me time and time again, even when I requested significant changes way later than I should have. The fact that he fathered a newborn slap-bang in the middle of the project didn’t compromise his performance at all. As a result, VPC will continue working with Mustafa and Code Clear and I would highly recommend you do the same.