Matt Oosthuizen, Co-founder of Apiar tells TCT about using AM to build Britishmade, ‘impossible’ watches.
I'll let you in on some TCT lore: it's a much-teased fact that I celebrated my first milestone working on TCT Magazine, 11 years ago now, with a new laptop bought for the sole purpose of playing The Sims 4. When I recently met with Matt Oosthuizen, Co-founder of Apiar, however, who shared with me how he marked a similar milestone in his career at Autodesk – where he currently serves as Sustainable Manufacturing Specialist – I realised I should have perhaps been thinking a little bigger.
“Apiar started kind of as a passion project,” Oosthuizen recalls. “I got a promotion at Autodesk and I wanted to buy something that celebrated that moment. That was my first luxury watch. Then, as you do when you get into a new hobby, you want to get that next fix, you want to go and start a collection. But instead of just going out and buying another watch, I ended up deciding, why don't I try and design my own?”
That’s how Apiar, a British watch company which Oosthuizen co-founded with engineer Sam White to specialise in ‘impossible watches’, was born. Each design is intentionally distinctive, engineered to break away from the typical luxury watch mould – both literally and figuratively – and build something that’s instantly recognisable. Its aesthetic is rooted in industrial design and engineering; it’s not just a watch, Oosthuizen says, it’s “a piece of high-end engineering” on your wrist.
