ArtyA: Yvan Arpa’s Seven Deadly Sins
It is rare for a watchmaking brand to have such a deep connection to its founding personality as ArtyA has. Yvan Arpa may well be heretic, agitating, lively and a defector but he manages to create sincere and media-covered watchmaking.
By Joel Grandjean
Editor-in-Chief
The most touching aspect of this atypical personality in watchmaking is that he tends to doubt everything, be it himself, others, or even the sort of convictions that dwell on you and make you stiff. A defrocked math teacher, who looks a bit like a suburban priest, Arpa embraced watchmaking over 20 years ago and still shows sincerity and loyalty both in friendship and in business. He also does martial arts, those that procure you a zen attitude and that we use to defend ourselves, but also that reassure our non-violent soul.
His watchmaking follows a business model that saves shareholders a lot of time and hence makes them a lot of money. Its success may lie in the fact that Arpa implemented the notion of shortcuts even in his designs. However, one needs to know how to take and adventure on to said shortcuts. His footsteps turned the shortcuts into side roads, truancy and, very often, fantastic long-term or one-time adventures.
But the fact is that he is vulnerable and works from the heart. His saving grace is his endless creativity, which several assembling and production chains may not necessarily be able to come to terms with even if they were coupled with each other.
We present Yvan Arpa, the founder of ArtyA, through seven traits that include some quite brilliant ones.
1. A slogan that is better known than the brand
When he was starting out in watchmaking, Yvan Arpa created the slogan “No Limit” for Sector. They urgently needed to name the operation that Arpa helped in developing for the then Neuchâtel-based brand. Who would have bet a bundle of CFA francs on Gérard d’Aboville, a small modern adventurer who was desperately looking for sponsors to make his rowing world tour? And still, the obstinate and well-prepared rower saw it through and was followed by the international press. His tough journey transformed Sector’s small financial investment into unprecedented media capital. So much so that the slogan became more famous than the brand. Quite worthy of a case study.
2. Models that are more famous than their brands
Arpa was recruited by Alain Bajulaz who had just recapitalized his project to become a brand named after his two kids, Romain and Jérôme. Arpa then decided to take an ingenious shortcut and created the Titanic watch. In doing so, he introduced rust, public enemy number one of luxury watches, in the watchmaking court. He used rusted hull fragments directly taken from the famously sunk Titanic to make the watch cases in the Titanic collection. Those fragments and cases became as famous as several models of the time. However, it was hard to associate the Titanic watches with Romain Jerome. This masterstroke generated a marketing principle: to inspire your creations, even when you have only just started, on legendary famous people and link them so closely that they feel obliged to wear them. Thus, your brand becomes legendary just like them, whether you like it or not. Whilst Arpa’s relation with the brand was abruptly ended, Romain Jerome still adheres to this principle though it has since then chosen less flashy and more conventional and elitist personalities. He even uses short-lived events like the volcano in Iceland whose name is quasi-unpronounceable.
History would have repeated itself if Volna had not been driven toward bankruptcy by one of its shareholders. When Arpa was requested to revive the brand, he produced the Volnatomic collection. Its famous logo together with the amount of pre-orders forebode that the economic impasse was going to be successfully left behind and provided maximum media visibility.
3. Serial designer
Yvan Arpa’s problem is that he gets too many ideas at the same time and it is quite impossible to keep up. They come tumbling one after the other and some are not given the chance to be implemented. He has hence sometimes sold his ideas, especially seeing as lawyers are expensive. He has even mixed his media-creative potential to create incredible opportunities for others during short collaborations. The watchmaking world accused him of being everywhere, but they forget that Arpa is not just an unclassifiable brand’s CEO but a prolific designer as well. He has worked his magic with Volna, Jacob & Co and others who wish to remain anonymous. There was also the too-short adventure with Spero Lucem when Arpa – who is to watchmaking what Gainsbourg was to French music – played the role of a classic composer showing an enormous respect for traditional partitions and a symphonic sense of orchestral direction with the production of models such as “La Clémence”.
At BaselWorld 2015 – and that’s a scoop – we saw Dogfight, a brand owned by Koreans, which uses the Swiss Made label. Its design connivance evoked Arpa’s unique style even in its ecological products.
4. Crappy materials
Arpa helped the whole watchmaking sector when he used coprolite – fossilized dinosaur faeces – for one of his dials. Indeed, with that he made watchmaking be seen as something out of the ordinary in the international press. Before that, watchmaking was only evoked in economics or consumer pages. His “is it cheat, yes it is” slogan that featured in worldwide media, gave other brands the chance to feature in them too, for as long as their creations are as exclusive. As a result, he sold the few watches in his special range for around CHF 12,000 – since the customer is king and sometimes deserves their throne – while the other brands are still benefitting from this precedent.
5. His relationship with animal protection authorities and the European Central Bank
I wonder why the Genevan “SPA” (the animal protection authorities) has not yet searched his office in Vésenaz! Indeed, for the fantastic execution of some of his watch dials, Arpa has not only used spider legs cruelly taken from insects but also butterfly wings.
And we have to admit that they are silky, luminous, colorful and unique. The question lies in knowing how the raw material is collected. Does he cut the wings off these short-lived insects in full flight or does it wait until their last breath? Further, some of his leather straps are made of gold frog skin, a favorite material of his, which is as noble as crocodile skin and very pleasant to touch. But of course, there is nothing to worry about as this ugly-looking creature is not likely to cause many problems with the “SPA”, for as a general rule, they only defend the cause of beautiful and politically-relevant animals, exception made for some nomadic frogs. And lastly, there is the intriguing matter of shredded Euro notes that appear on the dials of his Bye Bye Euro collection every time the exchange rate fluctuates. How did he get these?
6. Lost bullets
While international news was swamped with conflicts that fed on horrors and weapons that some countries continue to produce and sell, Arpa combined all existing firing angles for his Russian Roulette or his Son of a Gun collections.
Could he have changed his objectives or bartered his famous non-violence for a belligerent leap? Some evil tongues accused him of promoting guns. I, on the other hand, see this recurrent spinning of bullets that are usually intended for the wrong causes as a heroic and pacifist act. In the country of the Red Cross and Red Crescent we should be happy that some originally ill-intentioned bullets are systematically imprisoned in time and space. And for that he needed cases. What’s more, one of his new BaselWorld 2015 pieces, the chocolate-colored Russian Roulette is the best of all antidepressants.
7. Aesthetic and museum redemption
Suddenly came redemption in the form of unique pieces and blended-in artful dials that were hand-painted by his wife, artist Dominique Arpa-Cirpka. Redemption changed the trash look of his burned dials into a simple, beautiful and ultimately classic watch. A piece that is round-shaped and streamlined, open to settings and to conventional complications and that has open worked movements and “Artyor” inserts (the brand’s unique alloy of pure gold).
The aesthetic strength of the watch was inspired by a guitar neck; the perfect place where all harmonies join. This collection by the name of Guitar Son of Sound is yet again a model that is yet again likely to be more famous than its brand. So much so it has recently been taken to the watchmaking museum in La Vallée de Joux for an exhibition dedicated to design.