Frustration is often the impetus for starting a business, and that’s exactly what produced heist-out, a glossy watch magazine introduced in May 2023 — and now it is teaming with Sotheby’s Geneva for what is described as a subversive kind of auction.
Lorenzo Maillard and Maxime Couturier had been working for several years at the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie, a nonprofit watch industry organization in Geneva, when they began to realize how dissatisfied they were.
“We had the same vision of what we should be talking about in the watchmaking world,” Mr. Maillard, 30, recalled, adding that he was tired of seeing the same generic watch ads everywhere. “But each time we worked with different brands, the projects were amazing on paper, but as soon as you went through the different steps, the project’s essence and beautiful aspects were removed.”
Mr. Couturier, 33, remembers the breaking point. “We were having a drink in Geneva Old Town and realized we had to do something that was completely free, without brands,” he said. “Brands said they wanted to push the boundaries but as soon as we proposed a concept, it started to get diluted.”
The duo initially toyed with the idea of creating fliers, to be distributed by skateboarders during the 2023 Watches and Wonders Geneva, the industry’s largest trade fair. But they settled on a magazine — with a name that is a play on the slang term “iced out,” for diamond-encrusted watches — and initially planned that it would be 16 pages.
When the inaugural spring/summer 2023 issue appeared, however, it was 126 pages. Initially offered free, now the magazine sells for 15 Swiss francs (around $16) at select stores worldwide and from heist-out’s online platform, apresdemain.watch/store.
The magazine consists of stories, photo essays and interviews, many of which have an edgy and playful style. For example, a fictional story that riffs on the men’s own experiences: Two watchmaking interns work through what is described as “many relentlessly boring and lame campaigns” — and are even kidnapped by a mysterious watch gang that wants to restore watchmaking to its glory days of creativity.
Produced in collaboration with their friends, who include watch dealers, photographers and designers, the magazine’s vibe was tongue-and-cheek. “It’s important that we don’t take ourselves too seriously,” Mr. Maillard said. “It’s really to stay creative — to be at the edge of what we can do.”
Mr. Couturier, who is the magazine’s creative director, noted that “in the new generation, creativity is the new currency,” citing the likes of Pharrell Williams, the creative director of men’s wear at Louis Vuitton, and his predecessor, Virgil Abloh, as examples of today’s trendsetters. “In a way, creativity is almost the thing that A.I. cannot take from us. So everybody wants to be creative — and everybody wants to be different.”
The publication, with its tag line “the outcast watch magazine,” is intended to be a backlash against watches as just luxury items, Mr. Maillard wrote in a manifesto for the inaugural issue. The flaws in that approach, he said, are “elitism, superficiality, suit & tie, narcissism, judgmental sale staff, over-polished tone of voice, exclusivity or even exclusion.”
Despite being digitally savvy and well versed with producing online content, Mr. Maillard and Mr. Couturier deliberately decided on a print publication. “It’s a different way of consuming media and content,” Mr. Maillard said. “You take time — it’s something that stays.”
Initially planning to publish two issues a year — in May and November, timed to coincide with the watch auctions in Geneva — the pair changed tack in November and organized an event instead.
Titled CollabZ, the event featured a fictitious 1990s-style boy band and poked fun at watch collaborations, which, Mr. Maillard said, “are now everywhere and sometimes not really genuine.”
All five band members wore ersatz collaboration watches that the heist-out team had created. Later, the pieces were auctioned online to help pay for the party. “As per the magazine, it’s meaningless if there wasn’t any physical event and real pieces,” Mr. Couturier said.
On Thursday, during the run of the 2024 Watches and Wonders Geneva show, the magazine and Sotheby’s are teaming up to stage Rough Diamonds, a special auction of 24 rare watches from the likes of Patek Philippe, Piaget and Vacheron Constantin. The idea is to “push boundaries,” said Josh Pullan, global head of Sotheby’s luxury division — noting that the event is to be held in a wine cellar, what the house is calling its first “underground” live auction.
“It’s obviously a long way away from our traditional presentation of Important Watches at the Mandarin Oriental — and deliberately so,” he said, referring to the house’s semiannual watch auctions, held at the five-star hotel in the city. “It’ll be a very different experience than the sort of folding-chairs-lined-up in rows, like we typically do.”
Even the traditional auction catalog has been reimagined as a series of cards, like sports trading cards, inviting people to collect all 24.
Nick Marino, Sotheby’s global head of content and a former Hodinkee editor, praised the “energy, wit, humor, attitude” that he said heist-out offers.
“They do it with total reverence for the history and craft of watchmaking — but total irreverence for the way watches are made and marketed today,” he said.
The fact that the two founders are based in Geneva contributes to the magazine’s impact, he added: “They’re at the center of the whole watchmaking universe. These are not some interlopers — the revolution is coming from within.”
All of this hoopla has had an effect on the publication, too. Bespoke ads for Audemars Piguet are being created for the May 10 issue, prompting the founders to order a run of 5,000 copies.
The new issue is to be divided into two parts. The first, presented in standard format, is to be labeled “loud” and represent creativity and avant-gardism. The second, starting on the back cover and printed upside down so a reader would have to flip the entire magazine to read, is to be labeled “quiet” and include tradition and the roots of watchmaking.
The segments are to meet in a centerfold featuring a poster depicting an Italian-style fresco that was commissioned for the publication. “It’s where these two worlds clash and collide,” Mr. Maillard said. “Loud and quiet — that represents the heist-out spirit.”
So has the magazine dissolved their frustration?
“It helps a lot,” Mr. Couturier admitted. “It’s a kind of psychological way of healing ourselves. But we’ll find other frustrations for sure. We need to.”