Andreas Strehler is a member of the AHCI, he has collaborated on many projects as well as having his own brand.

1. Describe briefly your childhood.

I did perhaps have a slightly unusual but very happy childhood. My grandfather was a baker whose specialty was a kind of gingerbread which is traditionally sold on stands at autumn fairs in Switzerland. I spent a lot of time in his bakery and logically, baker was what I wanted to become as a child. Never without a cigar in his mouth, my grandfather loved his Chevrolet Impala, a car rarely seen on the streets of Winterthur.

My father was a mechanic by trade who ran a one car taxi business with headquarters in the bakery and loved to buy and sell pocket watches on flea markets. I went with him and collected and traded comic books and later also watches. This is where my lifelong love for watches began.

Besides watches, I built and flew kites. Always an inquisitive mind, I also ran a series of chemical experiments on the garden wall. However, and not surprisingly, this endeavor came to an end rather swiftly.

2. As a child did you have any driving ambition?

As a young child, I wanted to be a baker, like my grandfather. Later, with my love for all things mechanical like watches and machines, I wanted to become an inventor, a kind of Gyro Gearloose. And somehow, I did too. I never did pursue the experiments though…

3. What is your first significant memory as a child?

My fist significant memory was the flour in the bakery and the smell of gingerbread being baked.

4. Have you ever had another profession?

In the midst of the quartz crisis and against the advice of practically everyone ("the only thing you will ever do is changing batteries"), I decided to become a watchmaker and I did find a master watchmaker to train me. After watchmakers' school in Solothurn, I was hired by Renaud & Papi as their first watchmaker who was not one of the managers. After that, I became an independent watchmaker. So, no, I've always been a watchmaker.

5. What made you decide to go in the direction you are currently in?

As a child, I wanted to become an inventor and to work independently. This has never really changed. I wanted to invent and create mechanical solutions, and watches are my mechanical world where I can do this.

6. What’s the worst job you’ve had to do?

I never really had a truly bad job. Perhaps I was lucky, perhaps I always find an interesting aspect in practically anything.

7. What’s been the hardest moment in your life so far, and how did you overcome it?

The hardest moment in my live was when, just before the presentation of my Opus 7 for Harry Winston, my mother had died, and I had to go to the Basel fair and do all the presentations and press work when I just wanted and needed to be alone.

8. Who has had the strongest influence on you?

With his love for mechanical machines and in particularly for watches and clocks, my father with his hands-on approach was and still is my greatest inspiration.

9. What are you most proud of?

I'm most proud of having convinced my wife to marry me.

10. What advice would you give to a 20 something someone thinking of taking a similar path as you?

If I'm asked what to do to become an independent creative watchmaker, my advice is always to repair or just look at as many old watches as possible. And by old watches I don't mean only the best watches by the old masters, but also cheap and heavily worn and used old watches from the flea marked. From these watches, one learns what works and what does not, which technical solutions ultimately do stand the test of time.

11. Name three things on your bucket list.

That's not a question I have ever asked myself. I'm happy with what I do. Every new movement construction is a new challenge. And every new machine I buy needs modifications and improvements. I already have so many interesting projects in my life – and almost every day I have another idea for my mechanical world – that I don't need such a list.

12.Where do you think the industry is going to be in 10 years' time.

The watch industry in its core will not be much different from today. Of course, new trends will come and go, but I believe that the good things will stay, or rather, what was good, will be rethought in a new way.

In 1971, at the beginning of the biggest crisis of the mechanical watch, a journalist wrote that even in the year 2000, a Patek Philippe will be wound by hand. Why? Because it is elegant to wind a watch by hand. And this will always be true.

To learn more about Andreas Strehler