His first Breitling Navitimer taught UK’s George Bamford to tinker – now he customises luxury watches for Louis Vuitton, Zenith, TAG Heuer and more
Trading Omega, Breitling Bullhead and Heuer’s Kentucky watches in New York led to Switzerland and a life-changing offer from LV’s Jean-Claude Biver
George Bamford says his family motto is “jamais content” (never content). “That is about striving forward and we as a family are all like that,” says the entrepreneur, who founded Bamford Watch Company 19 years ago, and is renowned for customising watches from brands such as Zenith, TAG Heuer and Girard-Perregaux.
Entrepreneurial spirit runs in the family: his father is chairman of JCB, his mother is the founder of Daylesford Organics and his sister is a bio-organic farmer in California. “After I left university, my father said, ‘You’re on your own’. You never [follow] in footsteps; you’ve got to find your own feet as there is no silver spoon,” says Bamford.
“I used to take juicers and engines to bits,” explains Bamford. “I am highly dyslexic and so I learn by doing.”
He still has the Breitling, and he still strips it down. In a pre-lockdown contest with his watchmakers, he took apart a pocket watch faster than any of them. His team got their revenge by posting on social media his advice on how to do it: with a hammer and a screwdriver, and a suggestion to wash it in the dishwasher.
In 2000, when Bamford was studying photography in New York, he spent the weekends in flea markets trading vintage watches such as Omega, Breitling Bullhead and Heuer’s Kentucky, which he tweaked by cleaning them up, changing the straps and “doing things to them that made them pop”.