Bravur’s Team Heritage watches celebrate icons of cycling with Swedish design and Swiss timing

You can tell a lot about a person by the watch they wear so it’s said – but until Swedish brand Bravur arrived on the scene there was arguably no tasteful way to communicate via your timepiece that you were both a cyclist and somebody who liked good-quality, stylish, luxury things.

Bravur launched its first cycling-themed Grand Tour chronograph collection in 2020, three watches that featured the colours, textures and graphics of the corresponding races and now it has unveiled its Team Heritage series of three more watches, each inspired by an iconic team of the past.

The model names MER, PEU and REN recall UCI team abbreviations and of course are homages to Mercier, Peugeot and Renault. The watches are designed and handbuilt in Sweden and run on a Swiss-made automatic-winding mechanical movement – the only part that isn't specifically made for them. The casings are steel, either polished stainless or black ceramic coated, with straps that include perforated leather or rubber – the exact specification can be customised.

Each one is designed with an incredible level of detail, not all of it noticeable at a glance – which is, according to Bravur’s Magnus Äppelryd, crucial. “Our ambition was really to integrate the [cycling team] details in the design in a more subtle way. If you’re not into cycling it could still be a nice watch, but if you are into cycling you spot these small details. Many riders like to incorporate cycling into their lifestyle – they want to communicate their passion off the bike.”

The Peugeot, Mercier and Renault teams and their riders including Tom Simpson, Eddy Merckx, Raymond Poulidor and Bernard Hinault were the perfect inspiration for the new collection. “The jerseys were much cleaner, made with stronger colours blocks with one or maybe two sponsors, black shorts with white graphics, a beautiful era I think,” says Äppelryd. “It wasn’t deliberate that these are all French teams — there are so many great teams but these are some of the best known with famous riders and huge success. Pretty early we got some good ideas about how we wanted to transform them into a watch design.”

The PEU watch is of course based on the chequered Peugeot pattern, with it featuring at the hour indices with a larger block of it at 12 o’clock and in the centre of the dial a recessed chequered texture. Meanwhile the MER edition features Mercier's classic purple and yellow colours and in the centre of the dial has a concentric texture recalled the grooves of an LP. The REN Renault watch is perhaps the most unmistakable, with the famous yellow, black and white featuring in a sandwich dial through cut-out windows. “This one was a bit tricky as the pattern is such a strong part of the team but it can be too much on a watch,” says Äppelryd. We worked on finding the right balance so it could also be wearable.” For the future we’re wondering how we could work with a Mapei-inspired watch, which could be the most challenging one yet. Possibly Brooklyn too. They’re such a great source of inspiration and created some unique designs.”

The watches are for men and women and come in one size – 37mm diameter – which is “quite small but it connects a bit more to the era we were inspired by, and although they are mainly a lifestyle product we wanted to work well on the bike as well as off.” This is perfectly feasible since the watches are durable with a domed sapphire crystal glass and a screw-down crown that makes them waterproof. As for servicing, Äppelryd says the Swiss movement is high quality and also well known. “We’re selling worldwide so it’s easy to service the watch anywhere. Most watchwakers know this movement and can get spare parts.”

On the subject of selling, the USA is currently Bravur’s biggest market, accounting for around 70% of the sales of the Grand Tour series, the brand’s biggest selling watches. “With the launch of Grand Tour, we changed direction of the brand a little bit, the aesthetics and the design language was more playful with more colours, more details. We got more coverage in the US at that time and now when we’re talking to people at watch events over there quite often it turns out that they like cycling too.

Bravur started in 2011, originally as a ‘regular’ watch brand. However, Äppelryd and co-founder Johan Sahlin started to discuss a way to combine their shared passion for cycling and watches – they first met racing mountain bikes against each other in the 1990s and then studied industrial design at the same university. “We thought watches lacked a brand that was connected to cycling. There are a lot of brands that are connected to motorsports, aircraft, but not cycling. There’s now Tudor with their team and cycling has gradually become more and more interesting for the bigger brands, Breitling sponsoring Q36.5, Richard Mille and UAE Emirates… but design wise there isn’t any brand capturing the sport with the actual design – in a good way at least. Tissot usually launches a Tour de France edition that might have a yellow second hand and maybe a bike on the second hand but our ambition was really to integrate the details in the design in a more subtle way.”

Bravur now has Norwegian Alexander Kristoff on board as an ambassador: "We are a small brand and can’t sponsor an entire team but he’s already wearing a Grande Boucle watch from the Grand Tour series since he’s going to be riding the Tour de France." Retired pro Matti Breschel also models for Bravur.

Is there competition from fitness-tracking Apple Watch-type wearables? “We see those as different things. Of course every rider has a bike computer or Garmin watch or something similar, but this is more about style and aesthetics. Our customers like to also wear a real watch because cyclists know how important it is to have the correct sock height, length of the sleeves…. there’s so much attention to detail and style within cycling today. So in that sense it fits well.”

Äppelryd and Sahlin are about to embark on a unique publicity tour for the launch of the Team Heritage collection. “We decided to create a Bravur team car so we bought a Volvo 145 from 1973 and it’s currently being renovated and having the graphics put on. We’re going to drive it to Paris-Roubaix, watch the race and park it – hopefully at the velodrome or somewhere near the finish… track centre in an ideal world! It’s an old car, it has done around 200,000 kilometres. It’s going to be a fun project.”

Prices for the Bravur Team Heritage collection start from  £1,095/$1,195/€1,395 and all orders include shipping worldwide. All watches are available to purchase online from www.bravurwatches.com.