The end of the beginning

Once in a while, a watch comes along that changes the company that made it: the Royal Oak at Audemars Piguet, Rolex’s Submariner, the Navitimer, Speedmaster, Tank… For Christopher Ward – unexpectedly, excitingly – that watch has been Bel Canto, a sideshow that became the main event. “Bel Canto is Christopher Ward stretching itself, offering outstanding value in a whole new way.” says Mike France, CW co-founder and CEO, “It’s a specialist piece that caught the imagination of the horological world – and is now our best-selling watch ever.”

This winter an important new chapter begins: the numerous travails of scaling up production are over, with waiting times becoming shorter. By the end of 2025’s first quarter, watches are targeted to be shipped as they’re ordered. It also marks the moment Bel Canto evolves from a single watch into a genuine range, with the launch of the separate-but-equal Bel Canto Classic. You can see the headline changes immediately: a more classically styled time-telling dial; a simpler, no-lume handset; and a spectacular guilloché finish to the 'face'. There’s a new range of straps and colours too, revisiting the Azzurro and Verde of the original limited edition Bel Cantos – though both catch the light slightly differently – and adding two new shades, Oro and Argento.

Bel Canto began as a dream of CW technical director Frank Stelzer, but the first time anyone outside the company got a proper look at it was at Worn & Wound’s Windup Watch Fair New York, in October 2022. Mike and watch designer Will Brackfield were there, early samples in their pockets – not for public consumption, but to quickly flash at select individuals to gauge reactions. “So, what do you think?” Mike would ask, and each time the answer came back strong and clear: “I love it. In fact, when can I get one?” What was even more exciting was how many of their peers attending – people from Zodiac, Fears and Studio Underd0g – put their names on the waiting list. “When you see brands you admire signing up for a watch like this, you know you’ve got something special on your hands,” says Mike.

Not every Christopher Ward watch has a launch party, but Bel Canto did, and it was rather a fine one – at Leighton House, the refurbished art gallery in London’s Holland Park. A thrilling night, but a rather strange one, in that nobody there was able to buy a watch: all 300 of the initial run of Bel Cantos had gone the night before. “It went on sale at 4pm on November 1st, and 24 hours later we were at our own event wondering what to say to all the people who wanted one,” Mike says.

“The Bel Canto Classic has a classically styled time-telling dial; a no-lume handset; and a spectacular guilloché finish to the face"

“A day later, on November 3rd, we decided to bring forward the green for pre-order on Friday, 4th.” If there’s one thing everyone should know about Mike, it’s that he loves music, and the next day he was in central London to see Ralph McTell. Before that, though, he and wife Lorraine were enjoying G&Ts at a street cafe, paying more-than-usual attention to his phone. The green Bel Canto would go on sale that evening, and Mike’s mobile was rigged to buzz each time an order came in. Bzzt, went the phone. Bzzt, bzzt, bzzt. By the time Ralph came on, the entire second run of another 300 had sold out. It had taken just over two hours.

Bel Canto wasn’t just selling out lickety-split; the horological world was reacting to it in a most enthusiastic way. Fratello called it “unique and charming”. For Hodinkee, it “plotted a new course for the brand”. Bel Canto didn’t need this, of course – it had already sold out, twice over – but damn, it was good to hear.

“Early on, we had a fantastic review by Andrew Morgan then of WatchFinder, and now a significant YouTube influencer,” Mike says. “His piece went around the world – and now everyone felt they had to chime in. It got us wondering: what should happen next? ”That night, Mike couldn’t sleep. He started doing back-of-an-envelope maths in his mind, and the next day spoke with Jörg Bader Snr, director of the company’s Biel operation. “The watch is so strong, I think we can do 5,000,” he said. Jörg knew this might be the challenge of his professional life. “OK,” he said. “So you can do it?” “No,” said Jörg. “But we’ll find a way.” Everything, it was clear, would need rethinking. The first limited edition Bel Cantos added up to a not-insignificant number of watches, only possible thanks to the help of specialists like Armin Strom and Chronode. For the ongoing series, these boutique companies didn’t have the capacity to be able to fulfil the numbers Christopher Ward had in mind.

“Has anyone ever done what we’re doing here?” Mike asked one day. Certainly not Omega, not Rolex, not even Patek Philippe, who make more high-end complications than anyone. “Unless we’re missing something, this is uncharted territory,” says Jörg Bader Jnr, product director in Biel. “Nobody in the history of Swiss watchmaking has sought to do something this complex, in these numbers, in this sort of timeframe.” And with uncharted territory comes mistakes, dead-ends, and previously sound wisdom that has to be rethought totally. “Then there was my design,” says Will. “I’d always thought of Bel Canto as a limited edition, so I’d made very few compromises with it, adding all these curved bridges and fine chamfered edges – things you could conceivably achieve at a few hundred units, but a real issue at serious volume. Not only that, but when you’re exposing as much of the movement as we are with Bel Canto, any blemish becomes a major issue – and even humidity can cause them. Working out where in the chain you’re having each problem is tricky, because you only come across them at the very last step.”

It all meant Bel Canto was different to other Christopher Wards in one significant way: when you buy a Twelve or Trident, you can almost guarantee your watch will ship the day they take your money. With Bel Canto, however, there was a waiting list, and it grew and grew. “I don’t think it ever quite got up to 15 months,” says Mike. “But it could have.” New suppliers were needed, and fast. And Christopher Ward lucked out with the people they found. One was APJ Sàrl, a small but ambitious finisher based in Haute-Sorne; another the innovative CNC company Paoluzzo AG. “We’d been working with a CNC manufacturer who’d really struggled,” Mike says. “And the search for someone else brought us to Philipp Staub of Paoluzzo AG, a company we've recently taken a 20 percent stake in. Philipp is an engineering maestro who lives and breathes machines, and over the last six months has been a major reason why we’ve been able to deliver Bel Canto as efficiently as we can.”

New suppliers often bring with them unexpected bonuses, and so it is with AJS Production SA, which uses advanced ‘femto’ lasers to render the face’s guilloché finish. This gives a far better surface than a punched guilloché would, yet is more affordable than a hand-finished alternative. “You can even shrink a repeating pattern as you go towards the centre of a surface and make it larger at the edges,” Will says. “And we’ve taken full advantage with the Bel Canto Classic.” — With all these guys now on board, each week has seen assembly times speed up and the end results become nearer and nearer perfect. “We’re in a virtuous circle now with volume leading to greater efficiency leading to even greater quality,” Mike says. “We’ve created a semi-industrialised machine that’s delivering highly sophisticated, brilliantly well-made pieces at a price nobody believed possible, the fulfilment of the Christopher Ward dream in many ways. And this puts us in a great place for the future, as our capability now matches our ambitions.”

The assumption, of course, is that the new Classic will storm away in terms of sales – “not least because it represents the first time two of our strongest colours have been available in a series run”, Mike says – and you can be certain the story doesn’t end here. Mike can envision a permanent three-model Bel Canto range at some point, and further limited editions too. Impossible? So it would have seemed just a couple of years ago, but at this point – and considering how far everyone has come – it would be foolish to bet against it.