Interview with Freddie Palmgren
SÖNER BY SWEDEN was founded by me, Freddie Palmgren on the Swedish west coast and is named after my two sons.
Designer Interview
1 May 2018
During my many trips abroad, wrist watch stores have always been an obvious target. There I got inspired, discussed news, tried and sometimes invested in a new watch. Unfortunately, all too often I ended up compromising on something, I was never really satisfied. When I got invited to the private viewing rooms at the more exclusive brands, it was the price that was the obstacle. In shady shops in Asia, I was shown well-made bootlegs, but who wants to wear something that is not authentic?It was from these experiences that the idea of SÖNER was born. I wanted to design a watch that sets a new standard in the market segment, a wrist watch for men that i did not need to compromise on. Therefore, almost ten years ago I started to sketch on an elegant, minimalist, rectangular watch for men.The goal was a men's watch out of the ordinary, with exclusive design, robust technology and high precision. Materials and technical solutions were chosen to secure a long and trouble free use. A watch that could be passed on to coming generations - Therefore my first model was named Legacy. A reminder of all that is passed down to future generations – Like my sons Widar and William.
SÖNER BY SWEDEN (SÖNER) was founded by Freddie Palmgren on the Swedish west coast and is named after his two sons Widar and William. SÖNER is a watch brand for men who appreciate elegant and rectangular men's watches of high quality.Some called me crazy during my chase for the perfect men's´ watch. I saw it as a passionated relationship to stylish men´s watches.
For me, design is something special designed to make a statement and aesthetic admiration.
Rectangular and masculine wrist watches for men.
The design is everything for us.There are several things that we consider when designing our watches. For example, that the design is both masculine, rectangular yet stylish. It's also important that the watch physically feels on your arm. We don't want our watches to be thin, feminine and that you don't feel the weight on your arm. The strap is a key function as well. We stand out by embossing our emblem on the strap, we also fold the genuine leather strap to make the strap water resistant.
Much of my inspiration comes from my children who sparks the creative side in me. I get inspired from the everyday life. However, I'm careful not to look too much at other watch designs. I believe it would limit my creativity and affect an open mind in creating something unique. Instead I look at everything else but watches to find inspiration.
Easy, commitment and endurance.
It took ten years from the first idea of designing a men’s watch until I had a finished watch for sale. I think it's extremely important to let a design slowly develop. If you push and enforce the process of designing something the result will be thereafter. Thanks to our patience, we were able to let our watch design develop over time. The risk is otherwise that we would have designed something dull. Now we have managed to create something unique that perhaps not everyone likes but they have an opinion on. Many of today's established watch brands are so afraid to lose customers that they don’t dare to stand out too much in their designs. A good example of this is the trend to produce unisex models, watches that are neither for men nor women. We clearly want to manifest that we only target men, because that’s what we are and that is who we think we understand.
Our client and customers are all men (no matter age) that are looking for something different, something that challenges the over hundred years long world domination of round watches. Many of our customers are also women seeking for something masculine yet stylish for their men.In the begging the marketing experts told us to do a customer profiling to be able to target the correct customers. But nothing could be more wrong. After wasting a lot of time and energy on marketing plans it all turned out to be a total waste of money. As a matter a fact, just a couple of weeks after we had started to sell our watches online we saw that all the "experts" had been wrong the hole time. We don’t have a specific customer profile. As a matter a fact, our customers range from 18 to 81 years old. Well there is something that all of our customers have in common, they all like rectangular watches with a masculine and slick style.
We are working on designing new variations of the dial and some new leather straps in different colors and patterns.
The easiest way to get in contact with us is via our webpage: www.sonerbysweden.com.