A launch with consequences

At the beginning of the 1980s, Peter Baumberger, the owner of the Urban Jürgensen & Sönner brand and a trained master watchmaker, approached us and asked for help with the relaunch and re-establishment of the brand. On his farm near the manufactory, he owned about five containers filled with objects documenting Jürgensen’s history, such as the hand-guilloché machine (for the dials).

The brand’s credo was also established relatively quickly.

• We are a collector’s brand for watches
• We only produce 150 watches per model in the precious metals platinum, white gold, rose gold and yellow gold
• Each watch costs 150,000 Swiss francs
• We sell watches directly from the factory (without intermediaries to drive up the price)

Calibers from Frederic Piguet were used, which were still freely available from the Swatch Group at the time. The Swatch Group stopped supplying Piguet movements to third parties without warning, as it had reserved them for Blancpain after acquiring the Blancpain brand from Jean-Claude Biver for 60 million Swiss francs in 1992.

Between 1979 and 2010, the revival of the historic brand took place together with the English tourbillon watchmaker Derek Pratt. The construction of the P8 caliber also took place during this time.

As the young, still unknown watchmaker Kari Voutilainen, he worked for Peter Baumberger in the 1990s. Baumberger’s dream was to develop his own basic work that could be used multifunctionally. He hired Chronode (owner Jean-François Mojon), and his buddy Dr. Helmut Crott made the investment – an estimated 25 million Swiss francs that no one knew about.

Completion of the Chronometer Detent Escapement P8 caliber project with Kari Voutilainen and Jean-François Mojon began, and the caliber was installed in the Ref. 9.

After the sudden death of Baumberger (1939–2010) – he died of brain anorisma in his beloved manufactory – Dr. Helmut Crott officially took over the Urban Jürgensen & Sönner brand in 2011 and repositioned it.

After a good four years, a group of investors from Danish watch enthusiasts – former Nokia managers – took over the brand. It is the return of the brand to Danish hands and the realignment of design and marketing.

Kari Voutilainen, together with the American Rosenfield family (Andrew and Alex Rosenfield), took over the traditional Danish-Swiss watch brand Urban Jürgensen in 2021. After a two-year break, Urban Jürgensen started in 2025.

The brand lost its soul due to the change of ownership. Peter Baumberger was the soul of the Urban Jürgensen brand with Danish roots.