Bausele in the NY Times
A Bit of Australia in Every Watch
At Bausele, timepieces contain beach sand, red dirt from the outback, tile from the Sydney Opera House and more.
Picture: AnnaMaria Antoinette D'Addario for The New York Times
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Australia has some of the world’s most celebrated attractions, from Bondi Beach to the Great Barrier Reef.
So in 2011, when Christophe Hoppé founded Bausele — marketed as the country’s first premium watch company — he decided to showcase such places. After all, what could be more distinctive than a timepiece with red earth from the outback in its crown, or a case made with Australian rock?
Even the brand name had a connection, devised from the first letters of three words in the mission statement: “beyond Australian elements.”
The idea was “to be different,” Mr. Hoppe, 44, said during an interview this summer in London. He was in Europe for meetings and to see a supplier who helped make Vintage 2.0, Bausele’s first IOS- and Android-connected watch, introduced on the company website Sept. 6.
The watch, priced at 750 Australian dollars ($507), and now available at 525 dollars for preorder, has a 1970s-style design with a 40-millimeter case and simple dial. It works with an app on the wearer’s phone to track your mood, how you sleep and your number of steps.
There also is a tiny kangaroo on the dial as “a bit of fun,” Mr. Hoppé said — as Australians “don’t take ourselves too seriously.”
With the debut of the new timepiece, Bausele now has seven collections, starting with the minimalist Noosa, a quartz men’s and women’s model named for Queensland’s fancy beach resort and priced from 495 dollars.