"Je ne t'ai pas vu depuis la Suisse," Rado CEO Adrian Bosshard called as I made my way into the Swiss luxury watchmaker's new Collins St boutique, holding out an outstretched hand and beaming his signature smile. “Oui,” I returned, the only appropriate response I could muster as my long-forgotten high school French had eluded me once again.
He wasn't wrong, though; the last time we had seen each other had been in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, gathered at Rado's horological home to celebrate a huge milestone in a year that continues to boast so many: 40 years of the Integral, an icon of the brand, defined by its enduring reputation as the world's first high-tech ceramic watch in series.
With easily more than 30 of the world's media flown into Switzerland for the occasion, I was genuinely struck by Bosshard's ability to pull me out of the crowd, but only left me more red-faced, hoping he had accepted my somewhat mediocre reply.
I had just arrived in Melbourne ahead of the official ribbon-cutting ceremony that afternoon, joining Bosshard and Rado Ambassadors Cameron Green and Ash Barty for what continues to be a historic year for the brand, seemingly buoyant with the number of milestones and anniversaries this year.
Before any of that, though, I was pleased to get an audience with Bosshard to show me around the new space – and it's immediately obvious why.
The new flagship at 298 Collins St is Rado's first brick-and-mortar boutique in Australia, and the first anywhere in the world to debut this particular retail concept, boasting stone pillars, a golden-arched façade, and curved lines that guide you around the room.
It's built, quite deliberately, like a material itself: one continuous sweep from entry to back wall that invites you to fully immerse yourself, rather than the usual glass-case march past watches you're not allowed to touch.
More than 200 of Rado’s most important references sit across the boutique floor – Captain Cook, Anatom, the Integral, the full sweep of all-new boutique-exclusive DiaStar. You can pick them up, turn them over, feel exactly what Bosshard has spent the better part of an hour in Neuchâtel and now Melbourne trying to explain to me in words: that high-tech ceramic is unlike anything else on your wrist. Something he knows firsthand beyond just his daily responsibilities as Rado CEO.
“I grew up in Biel,” Bosshard said. “It's the watch city – the centre of the watch area – so I’ve always appreciated Swiss watches. My wife was aware of this, so when we got married, she gifted me a Rado Integral – it's really not the marketing story; it's the reality. And I was so pleased with this watch, engraved with her name and the date, March 1991.
“Of course I’ve had this watch for years and years on the wrist. Even now, I take this watch out, and it remains like new because it was in high-tech ceramic. Of course, when I look now at my Integral watch and a photo of me from 1991, I see the watch still looks the same, but I’ve lost some hair and colour.”
It’s certainly something that’s stayed with me long after my tour of the Swatch-owned ceramic facility in Neuchâtel. That this material, once developed because Rado wanted to replace the metals and brass that largely made up the entire watch market, could then remain one of the brand’s defining characteristics more than four decades later.
Further still, this sleek black material, designed to resist damage, could then carry this inherent beauty into each one of Rado’s references that followed, setting the standard for 40 years as the “Masters of Materials” in watchmaking. That is, of course, until the rest of the market catches up.
"It's not at all negative that other brands are doing high-tech ceramic now too," he continued after I raised the fact that what was once Rado's point of difference has now become an industry standard.
"Because we are still the leader in this field. We have 40 years of experience. More than 60% of our collection is now in high-tech ceramic, which is not the case with our competition.”
“They are doing a few models in high-tech ceramic, but we are doing two-thirds of the collection in high-tech ceramic. And this gives us the necessary volumes, the necessary credibility, the necessary competence, the necessary economy of scale to be capable of keeping our price point where it is and not raise the prices to an endless level.”
Near the entrance, under its own light, sits the reason a few hundred people are about to descend on Collins Street: a 555-piece DiaStar Original Skeleton, boutique-exclusive to Melbourne, in a green-and-gold colourway nobody has seen on this watch before.
“The DiaStar, it's, I would say, the most iconic timepiece by Rado because this is where the whole journey of material and hardness started,” Bosshard said.
Certainly, when I first toured the boutique in what the Lord Mayor unofficially dubbed Melbourne’s new Swiss end, I was immediately struck by its bold and innovative colourway: PVD gold over Ceramos, radially brushed, with a bright green annular dial and red Super-Luminova on the hands and flying indices – the kind of watch you can’t help but spot from across the room.
“It underlines two things,” Bosshard affirmed. “First of all, DiaStar, it's always appreciated. DiaStar is DiaStar. It's a design you like, or you hate. It can be very polarising but always appreciated. But you need to have this electricity to provide the brand, to shape the brand. And the second thing is you need to be courageous in watchmaking, because not everybody had the idea to see a colourful DiaStar because it was not known.”
That growth was the whole reason we were all standing in Melbourne rather than Sydney or anywhere else, in what Bosshard announced was the most important watch retail anywhere in the country. A few awkward shuffles from the Sydney-based journos aside, Bosshard had a point: Collins St continues to expand with important brick-and-mortar sites from the world’s biggest watchmakers. Rado was the latest in a string of developments to hang its ceramic hat on the street.
"During the last five years, Rado has had a very spectacular evolution in the Australian market," Bosshard said.
"We have Ash Barty and Cameron Green, the right testimonials, the right product in the right material, at the right price point, a good local team of Rado Australia, and very interested customers. We wanted to create a place where we can inspire the watch lovers here."
Globally, Rado’s retail footprint has actually been shrinking, not growing – its points of sale worldwide down from around 4,000 to roughly 2,500 over the past five years. It’s a deliberate retreat from mass distribution towards fewer, better boutiques, and mono-brand partners. Melbourne sits neatly at the sharp end of that strategy: a single, considered flagship instead of a dozen department-store counters, staffed by people who actually live the brand rather than sell it in passing.
By mid-afternoon the store had filled properly with Australia’s leading watch journalists, joined by Barty and Green effortlessly working the room the way that professional athletes seem to manage at these things. A few important addresses later, the ribbon was cut, and Rado’s new Melbourne boutique was opened.
Standing in the middle of it, watching Bosshard work the room the same way he'd worked the crowd in Neuchâtel months earlier, it was hard not to think back to the watch that started all of this for him – the Integral his wife gave him for their wedding in 1991, still sitting on his wrist without a mark on it. He'd tell you himself, if you asked, in whatever language you could manage: Rado has always had this timeless appeal. Now, a new Australian home.