Formex is an affordable Swiss watch brand that is intriguing, sleek, and exhibits excellent engineering. In many ways this brand reminds me of ants.
You may not have the same kind of positive association with ants that I do. I’m a person trained in the study of insects and evolution so I may be biased. But hear me out.
If you take Formex watches at face value and simply examine them as a brand that makes high-quality watches with excellent Swiss movements, I predict you will want to buy one. They present a strong value proposition. Like ants, you know that they are fascinating and have value when you see them, but it takes time to learn why. The more you look, the more there is to learn and appreciate.
Before interviewing CEO Raphael Granito and marketing director Markus Wälchli for the On the Dogwatch Podcast #47, I had several weeks on the wrist with three of their core offerings, the Essence 39 white dial, the Reef diver, and the Leggera 41 gray dial. Just putting them on the wrist revealed them as carefully crafted, well finished, and thoughtfully designed wristwear. However, as I dug deeper into their design, engineering, and aesthetics, the parallels with the structure and evolution of ants became inescapable. And if you take a few minutes to consider this relationship, I think that you’ll have a better sense of the depth and significance of these watches.
Why ants?
I remember when I first saw Barry Bolton’s Identification Guide to the Ant Genera of the World. It is a large but relatively thin gray book that is chocked full of images of ants through an electron microscope. At that scale, you can see the minute structure of their antennae, the patterns on their surface, and the incredible adaptations in the shapes of their jaws. These structures hint at the incredible diversity of functions and habits of these animals. For example, ants such as army and driver ants stream through the jungle in columns of thousands that can dismember anything–like a horse–that crosses their path. Weaver ants use the bodies of workers to pull the edges of leaves together to create houses for their colonies. Honey pot ants have individuals that do nothing but hang from the ceilings of their colonies and store sugar in their inflated bodies. Bullet ants have a sting that causes such pain it feels like getting shot. Leafcutter ants are agriculturalists, farming fungi on chewed up leaves. It goes on.
If you just look at a colony of pavement ants in your driveway or carpenter ants on a tree, there is plenty to be fascinated with. But if you look closer, the depth of their evolutionary history becomes clear. This was famously done by Bert Hölldobbler and Ed Wison in The Ants (winner of Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 1991), and many of their disciples since.
So much of what made this work speak to me is that these authors were able to bring forward the unique and amazing features of these organisms that made them not only beautiful and functional members of the animal world, but examples of endlessly fascinating features. Like the fact that male ants have no fathers. Pause and think about that for a second (and search “haplodiploidy,” if you’d like to learn more).
Where Watches Come In
A similar thing happens when you look closer at Formex watches. For example, the Essence 39 is a beautiful watch on the wrist with the stainless bracelet that fits in the tradition of sports watches, and has elements of the Rolex Explorer and the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak. But when you look closer at the four small and aesthetically placed bolts that are recessed in the case, a bit of intriguing engineering starts to reveal itself.
These bolts are not just decoration, but fix into place a set of four spring-loaded shock absorbers which are so robust that you can push the caseback with your thumb and the movement section of the case floats on the rest of the stainless steel frame. When I pressed this and moved it against my thumb and fingers, I wondered about the structure of the springs and how such a marvel is structured into the case in miniature. It reminds me of how I wonder about how ants evolved such intricate muscles that connect to their mandibles to create such incredible bite force.
Another feature of ants that provides endless fascination is their relationships to the laws of physics, with the fact that one worker can carry several other ants in its jaws with relative ease, and this is just the same curiosity I had when I first held the Leggera 41 in my hands. It seems to defy the laws of physics.
The Leggera 41 is a carefully proportioned watch that sits close on the wrist and wears a bit smaller than its size, but that is not what is most striking. What makes you wonder if you are still in Earth’s sphere of gravity is that you have a full-sized Swiss automatic watch that feels as light as a Casio F-91w, and is much more comfortable to wear on your wrist given the refined and adjustable band. How does this happen? The answer is that Formex uses a proprietary forged carbon fiber to make the case. Not only being incredibly hard and light, it doesn’t scratch, and provides an enduring matte appearance that contrasts with the glossy ceramic bezel.
The parallels continue
It might come as a surprise that the general lack of wings on ants would be relative to Formex. But the way that the design of these watches and their considered size allows them to slip under a shirt cuff, like an ant disappearing down a colony entrance. Aside from reproductives (the queen, and the alate males), ants do not have wings like many of their relatives. Even the queen sheds her wings before she begins to found her colony (sadly the males simply die after mating) so that she, like her daughters, can easily move in enclosed spaces. I thought of this when I examined the caseback of the reef. Unlike the rounded casebacks of many other divers, this back is flat which allows it to hug the wrist and slip under a sleeve with ease. An excellent under-the-radar design element.
A last element that deserves attention is the reimagined logo of Formex. To most people I would think it appears similar to a figure eight or lemniscate (infinity symbol). The segmented, curved and biodynamic shape has echoes of the segments, or tagma, of the insect world. This feature of independent regions that are specialized for specific functions is much of what creates the success of the insects, and it also seems to show up in Formex as well. Small functional elements contribute to an overall whole.
Definition of a Watch
During the interview for the On the Dogwatch Podcast #47, Raphael also described the origin of the name “Formex” from two French words, forme and extrème. Even here there is a convergence with the myrmecological world with the formica being the Latin word for ant, and myrmex being ant in Greek.
Regardless of any one person’s predilection for ants, or insects, or even animals for that matter, it is undeniable that ants have provided many lifetimes of fascination, wonder, and contributions to our understanding of nature.
It is clear that Formex has followed in that spirit.
