Code41

CODE41 onto a new project

The Swiss watch start-up is making a buzz. After the pre-sales of the first 500 X41 models last March, the brand announces a third series.

CODE41 is on the rise. The Swiss brand launched in 2016 via a financing platform to an overwhelmingly positive reception, and now it’s back.

After launching the Anomaly 01 and 02 models, which included a Swiss or Japanese movement and recently a women’s watch project, CODE41 has moved up the range to offer a timepiece equipped with a high-end movement at a highly competitive price.

The objective? The brand says it wants to make haute horlogerie accessible to everyone at a fair price, while offering customers a totally transparent approach to costs, choices made and components chosen.

It launched a third series numbered X41 on 30 October, which is its most ambitious project yet. The amount that the new edition has reached already is about €2m, which is an extraordinary achievement.

Last March the Swiss company opened pre-orders for hundreds of enthusiasts of 500 X41 haute horlogerie watches. It comes equipped with a Swiss haute horlogerie calibre, three hands, a large date at 12 o’clock, a 42mm titanium case at a price of 5,500 euros upon its release.

In just a few hours, the watch posted nearly 2 million euros in revenue. But 500 copies for a community of around 220,000 members seemed too few to the company, resulting in an X41 waiting list that now reaches more than 3,000 people. This strong demand influenced the recent launch of a third numbered edition of the X41 with 300 copies.

The X41 is a model that CODE41 thinks will highlight Swiss watchmaking know-how at an unbeatable price. The automatic winding movement is entirely designed, manufactured and assembled in Switzerland and each component (297) is also machined in Switzerland. However, CODE41 does not claim the Swiss Made side at all, a label that is “confusing”, according to the brand.

The peripheral weight fitted to the X41 movement is a symbol of the technical feats achieved by only a handful of brands. Many big-name brands have already attempted to integrate such a feature, often only to abandon it because the ball bearing was too loud, inefficient and costly to implement. In the case of the X41 movement, after several years of development, these problems have been resolved by the brand’s partner by machining the components of the ball bearing in-house, in order to guarantee perfect dimensions and finishing.

Finally, the watch will be equipped with sapphire crystal that will reveal the skeletonised calibre.

The company has such confidence in its X41 series that it’s offering a three-year guarantee, rather than the usual two. And it’s even guaranteeing servicing of its watches for customers even if it goes bust!

With a 30-day returns policy and a free cancellations policy, CODE41 has certainly given watch lovers a lot of reasons to buy the X41.

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