WT_2008_01: PROFILE: CUERVO Y SOBRINOS

Members of the
Cuervo family
at work in their
shop
Vintage advertisements and posters for Cuervo y Sobrinos watches and jewelry emphasized the elegance, sophistication, and affluence
of early-20th century Havana. Prestigious watch brands such as Rolex and Longines used to make watches specifically for sale in the
legendary Cuervo family store, known by aficionados as “La Casa.”
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The limited-edition
Robusto Chronograph
with carbon-fiber dial
On
BY MARK BERNARDO
Time
t was a festive scene that conjured up images of 1950s Havana: an exhibition of vintage American luxury cars welcomed
guests as impeccably dressed bartenders served
mojitos and daiquiris from an old-fashioned
bar. The heady aroma of cigar smoke hung in
the sultry midsummer air while a female cigar
roller plied her ancient trade for an enraptured
audience. The appreciative crowd had its lifelines read by a Cuban fortune teller, lay bets on
horse races, and admired the evening’s center-
I
Havana
piece attraction: a replica of the original Cuervo
y Sobrinos jewelry store with its mahogany display counter featuring a collection of luxurious
timepieces — including three unique pieces
created just for this occasion.
This slice of cosmopolitan, pre-Castro
Cuba was actually staged in Spain, on July
27th, 2007, at the famous Madrid Race
Course. It celebrated the 125th anniversary of
Cuervo y Sobrinos, the legendary watch-andjewelry company once regarded as the Cartier
Driven from its native Cuba
by Castro’s revolution, 125year-old Cuervo y Sobrinos is
reclaiming its place among
luxury watchmakers with its
vintage-style timepieces.
of Cuba, and now, after decades of dormancy
and only three years in the U.S. market, one of
the most interesting and distinctive of luxury
watch brands.
The brand encompasses four families, each
named after a cigar size made popular by Havana’s world-renowned brands: Esplendido and
Prominente watches have sensuously curved,
Art Deco-inspired rectangular cases. Highlights
include the Esplendido Monopulsante, a singlepush-button chronograph that houses the ex-
February 2008 WatchTime
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ing time, is at the heart of the Cuervo y Sobrinos
marketing philosophy.
An Age of Prosperity
Cuervo y Sobrinos president Marzio Villa: after discovering watch movements and design sketches
at the abandoned Cuervo store in Cuba, he decided to acquire the brand.
clusive CYS 2450 caliber (built on a La Joux-Perret base movement) and is available in a limited
edition of 199 pieces; and the Prominente Dualtime, with two independently running movements depicting two time zones on the dial. The
Robusto and Torpedo lines have classic round
cases. The former family includes the Robusto
Tricalendografo Luna, a moon-phase watch;
and the brand’s only divers’ model, the Robusto
Buceador. The latter includes a GMT model and
the Torpedo Pulsometro, with a pulsimeter scale
on the dial calibrated to 30 pulsations. Each
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model traces its design back to a sketch done in
the company’s 1950s heyday. In another nod to
its Cuban heritage, each comes packaged in a
special wooden case that doubles as a highquality Spanish-cedar-lined humidor; once the
watch is removed, its owner can store and age
his premium cigars inside. The cigar theme reflects not only a link to Cuba’s most prestigious
export but also the time-as-luxury philosophy of
the brand’s Italian president, Marzio Villa. The
image of the cigar smoker, enjoying his indulgence at a slow pace, unconcerned about pass-
Like those of other businesses founded in Cuba
that are operating elsewhere today, the story of
Cuervo y Sobrinos is one fraught with intoxicating highs and devastating lows; a journey from
success to near-extinction to new beginning.
In 1882, Don Armando Rio y Cuervo and his
brothers opened up a boutique on Havana’s
fashionable Fifth Avenue, where they dedicated themselves to running and growing the
watchmaking business founded by their uncle,
Ramon (hence the name Cuervo y Sobrinos,
Spanish for “Cuervo and Nephews”). By any
standard, they succeeded. By the end of the
19th century, the shop (known as “La Casa”)
became world-renowned, attracting such notable patrons as Albert Einstein, Clark Gable,
Winston Churchill, and Ernest Hemingway —
all of whose signatures are inscribed in the socalled “golden book,” the store’s legendary
register. Three additional branches opened in
Europe — in Baden, Germany; in Paris; and in
the Swiss watchmaking city of La-Chaux-deFonds. The family brand became so prestigious
that some fine watch brands sold at the shops
put the Cuervo y Sobrinos name on the dials
alongside their own logos. Today, it is easy to
identify a vintage Rolex watch that was made
specifically for Cuervo y Sobrinos. It was all part
of a golden age for the thriving Cuban capital
— and one that was destined not to last.
“You have to remember what Cuba was
like before Castro,” says Don FitzHenry, owner
and president of Milestone Distribution, Cuervo’s exclusive U.S. distributor, based in Delray
Beach, Florida. “It was the pearl of the
Caribbean… where everybody went to see
celebrities and be seen. The rich and famous
vacationed there and had homes there. It was
basically Las Vegas with an ocean.”
FitzHenry admits that he and others at the
company are still learning about much of its
rich history, a history whose turning point
came a little more than halfway through the
20th century, and one whose effects still reverberate throughout the world.
PROFILE: CUERVO Y SOBRINOS
Revolution and Rebirth
The Torpedo Pulsometro has a pulsimeter scale
calibrated to 30 pulsations.
The Prominente Limited Edition Carbon Fiber,
a limited issue of 125 pieces
The Robusto Perpetual GMT features a
perpetual calendar with moonphase
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On New Year’s Eve, 1958, Fidel Castro and his
guerrilla army seized power from Fulgencio
Batista’s corrupt government and over the next
several years initiated a series of socialist reforms that eventually nationalized most private
land holdings and businesses. The result was a
mass exodus of Cuban business owners. The
proprietors of world-famous cigar brands like
Montecristo, Romeo y Julieta, and Hoyo de
Monterrey settled and started from scratch in
south Florida, Central America and various
Caribbean islands. The Bacardi family fled to
Puerto Rico, where they rebuilt their rum empire into a household name. Cuervo y Sobrinos, by contrast, simply closed up shop.
“It was as if, today, Cartier or Tiffany simply
disappeared,” says FitzHenry, describing the
impact the loss of this watch-and-jewelry
Mecca had on Havana society. He goes on to
relate the story of a Cuban-immigrant watchmaker who claims to have been an eyewitness
to the last time the Cuervo family was ever
seen in Cuba. “He was on the sidewalk when
two cars pulled up to the Cuervo store and all
the family members got out, carrying suitcases. They went in and packed up every single
piece of product they could fit in the suitcases,
got back in the cars and drove off. And that’s
how fast the store closed down.” Unlike the
Bacardis and others, the Cuervos had little
chance to salvage their business in a new land:
it had gotten so large that it had taken on several foreign investors, all of whom were ultimately scared off by the island’s repressive
new government (Castro officially embraced
Soviet-style Communism in 1961) and pulled
their money out. About a month after the
family cleaned out the flagship store, the
worldwide company folded.
In fact, Cuervo y Sobrinos may have been
consigned permanently to history books and
memories were it not for Villa’s fateful trip to
Havana in 1997, where he visited the abandoned shop. Villa’s Madrid-based luxury goods
company, Diarsa, distributes several watch
brands in Europe, including Hublot, Parmigiani, Eberhard and Ulysse Nardin, and he had
been seeking a brand to acquire. Walking
through the building, the hairs stood up on the
back of his neck as he noticed the dust-covered
shelves and display cases, which had been
mostly untouched for over 50 years. Apparently, fear of Castro’s notorious prisons was
enough to discourage several decades’ worth
of potential looters and vandals. Villa noticed a
desk in a back office. “On top of the desk was
paperwork,” he recalls. “You got the impression that somebody was in the middle of a
workday and just got up from his desk and
never came back.”
In the safes, Villa discovered items of
greater significance: one held a case with 25
vintage watch movements; another, a
leather-bound book with sketches of all the
1950s-era watches that were being produced
for the shop in its Swiss factories. Villa took it
as a sign: he began the process of obtaining
the Cuervo y Sobrinos brand, eventually setting up shop in Lugano, one of Switzerland’s
major financial centers and home to a handful of Swiss watch firms. He brought the book
of sketches to his Swiss watchmakers and
asked them to recreate everything in it, but
larger and thicker to accommodate modern
tastes. “The idea was that anyone who remembered Cuervo y Sobrinos in the ‘50s
could look at one of these pieces in a showcase today and it would be as if the last 50
years never happened,” says FitzHenry of the
watches’ “time capsule” appeal.
Villa hired FitzHenry — whom he knew at
the time as one of Hublot’s independent
sales representatives — to head up the U.S.
operation. He also established the criteria
that distinguish today’s Cuervo y Sobrinos
wristwatches, the manufacturing of which is
farmed out to a number of outside suppliers
of hands, cases, and dials. Among these details are dials of enameled porcelain with applied numerals and logos; hand-sewn crocodile leather straps; bracelets with 1940s-style
grain-of-rice links; and cases milled from a
single block of excavated metal and heattempered — a process used in Cuervo y Sobrinos watches over a century ago. The first
watches released under the reborn brand
used the 25 movements recovered from the
dusty safe in Cuba.
PROFILE: CUERVO Y SOBRINOS
Vintage Meets Avant Garde
The road back was not always a smooth one
for Cuervo y Sobrinos. In the beginning, one
of the brand’s assumed strengths — its nostalgic appeal to the Cuban-American community — proved to be a short-term liability.
The brand was launched in several large U.S.
cities in September 2004, and sales were
strong everywhere but the city with the
largest Cuban presence, Miami. FitzHenry
found that while young Cuban-American
watch collectors embraced the brand, the
older generation was downright hostile
toward it, mistakenly believing that sales of
these luxurious products were benefiting the
despised Castro regime in Cuba. “We had to
have a huge marketing campaign to educate
people that the company was run out of
Switzerland, totally removed from Castro,”
FitzHenry recalls. (In fact, despite some
misconceptions, the company never made
watches in Cuba; the Cuervo family owned
several factories in Switzerland that they
used for the manufacturing.) Once the word
was out, sales in Miami soared. The brand
Cuervo y Sobrinos’s first tourbillon, with its
carriage and hands made of silicon
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has since expanded to nearly 30 stores in
15 cities nationwide and over 25 countries
overall.
The company’s commitment to go beyond
nostalgia and retro design appeal, to create
high-complication pieces that are both eminently collectible and technologically impressive, is evident in the models introduced at the
2007 Basel watch fair, several of which are limited editions commemorating the brand’s
125th anniversary.
The Esplendido is one of Cuervo’s most historically significant watches; its design is similar
to (and, the company suggests, may have preceded) the more famous Patek Philippe Pagoda. The new Esplendidos Retrograde boasts
this family’s trademark 1940s styling and includes a retrograde date display on an arc at 3
o’clock, a small day-of-the-week subdial at 9
o’clock, and the 42-hour power reserve displayed at 6 o’clock. The case is steel and the
dial features silver circular graining. Dial colors
include cream, rosewood, tobacco, and silver,
and the crocodile strap is available with either a
pin buckle or folding clasp. Suggested retail is
$4,400. A limited-edition Esplendido Chronograph, with the CYS monopusher Caliber
2450, debuted in June 2007, with pearling and
engraving on the movement’s mainplate and
bridges. Thirty-eight pieces are available: 28 in
rose-gold cases and rosewood-colored dials,
and 10 in white-gold cases with silvered dials.
Art Deco is the theme of the curved-case
Prominente, but the newest model gracefully
melds vintage design with modern material
technology. The limited-edition Prominente
Chronograph incorporates carbon fiber into
the dial and case. The heart of the dial and
sides of the case display the material’s familiar
checkerboard pattern, which catches light
and shadow for an illusion of depth. The oblong, slightly concave case shape is uniquely
comfortable on the wrist. In addition to the
three chronograph-counter subdials (hours,
30 minutes, and seconds), the dial includes
the series number of the watch (out of 125
pieces) and flowing, Art Deco-style numerals
at 12 and 6 o’clock. This watch is offered on a
black calfskin strap at a suggested retail price
of $5,800. For the permanent Prominente
The 125th Anniversary Esplendidos 2450
Chronograph, limited to only 38 pieces
line, Cuervo has introduced the Prominente
Single Time with Date, a non-complicated
watch with a date window at 6 o’clock in steel
($3,300) or rose gold ($8,400) and in various
dial colors.
Carbon fiber also stars in one of the limited
editions in the Robusto collection. The Robusto
Chronograph Edition Carbon Fiber (also 125
pieces) uses carbon fiber on its round, 39-mm
dial as well as on the sides of the case, and includes four subdials: hour and day of the week
at 6 o’clock, 30-minute and month at 9
o’clock, date and seconds at 12 o’clock, and
moon-phase display at 3 o’clock. It’s on a calfskin strap for $6,500. A non-limited version of
this watch, the Robusto Chronograph 2859
with moon phase, joined the permanent collection this fall, with the typical enameled
porcelain dial rather than a carbon-fiber one. It
retails for $5,900.
The Robusto Perpetual GMT (suggested retail: $24,000) is even more limited, at only 30
pieces. It features a rose-gold case and creamcolored dial with a subtle woven pattern and
accents of brown, gold, and bronze. Powered
by a self-winding Dubois Dépraz movement,
the watch is a perpetual calendar with date at
3 o’clock, days of the week at 9 o’clock,
months and leap-year indication at 12 o’clock,
and a dual-time-zone display at 6 o’clock. It is
adjusted to run without manual adjustment
for 100 years.
Like most every watch manufacturer that
aspires to top-tier luxury status these days,
Cuervo y Sobrinos has also released a tourbillon watch, the most exclusive of the Robusto
limited editions. The Robusto Tourbillon (retailing at $115,000) is limited to only eight pieces.
It features a rose-gold case and is powered by
the 13¼-ligne CYS Caliber 2854, the first tourbillon movement in a Cuervo y Sobrinos watch.
The company claims it is the first wristwatch
with both its tourbillon carriage and hands
made of high-tech silicon. Instead of the traditional round shape, this ultra-light carriage is
crafted into a shape reflecting the brand crest.
The watch has a 120-hour power reserve and a
retrograde date display. The movement’s gold
mainplate has an engraved illustration of Don
Cuervo in his original Havana workshop — a
fitting tribute to a bygone golden age.
As for the future, Villa sees infinite potential
for the revived Cuervo y Sobrinos brand. “We
are already thinking about jewelry, perfume,
objects of high value,” he says, “but that
will come when the moment is right.
Now the most important thing is
to consolidate the line of
timepieces.” On that front,
plans are underway to
launch a new ladies’ line of
watches this year, and the
company is taking steps toward producing its own inhouse movements in coming
years. At 125, the fast-growing company
is well on its way to recapturing its pre-Castro
prestige. “So many years of history,” Villa said
shortly after the anniversary gala in Madrid,
“make us believe in the future.”
■
Cuervo y Sobrinos watches come in luxurious
wooden boxes that double as cigar humidors.