Profile
Olivia Blakstad
We often say that the most important part of the watch industry is the community we build around it. We come for the watches and we stay for the people, as it is people who create the watches we so adore and collect en masse, and who we return to on a regular basis. As it is the stories they infuse into their creations which connect us to them and us to each other, regardless of where we live and what we do. If you have attended a watch fair in the past few years, you most likely have met the same passionate people standing behind a table sharing stories about watches, their designs, and their mechanics. If you are lucky, as I have been, you ran into a particular person more than once, one whose kind and light-hearted demeanor prompted you to approach the table and begin a conversation about Christopher Ward watches and other things. There are always many people standing behind and in front of their tables as the brand is popular worldwide, in part I believe thanks to that someone—Olivia Blakstad.
At first I came for the watches but came back each time for the conversations and the friendship. Like seeing an old friend once in a while but in different parts of the world, being always greeted with the same warmth and approachability which aren’t qualities all watch folks are endowed with, even though most people in our industry are generally nice. Even though I have reviewed many Christopher Ward pieces in the past, their watches have never interested me as much as the people who are behind the brand and who work for it. A while ago I had the pleasure of writing about one of the original three co-founders, Mike France, and in the past few years to chat with a few of the brand’s employees, notably designers and project managers. Which in itself is something I have rarely been able to do in the past five years since running Mainspring, but Christopher Ward is special in that sense. And one of the brand’s most special employees is Olivia whose background, career, and affinity for horology we’re about to discover in this article.
As always, thank you Olivia for making the time out of your busy schedule and always at fairs to have a chat.
Olivia Blakstad
Her Most Unique Talent
We are all born with a knack for something in particular. Whatever that might be. Cooking the most delicious croissants, piloting space shuttles, mathematics, or the art of striking a genuine and rich conversation with a perfect stranger. Olivia has many talents but her most unique one is that of being able to make conversation with anyone, anywhere, and anytime and that is what brought her to working for Christopher Ward as the Events & Partnerships Lead. Though nothing about her pre-CW career would have indicated that she would be working with one of the United Kingdom’s most prominent independent watch brands as she wasn’t and still isn’t a proper watch nerd like you and me. She described herself as being a “periphery watch nerd” meaning that she’s developed a deep interest for horology whilst being able to remain objective about it, by never going too deep into this or that subject but maintaining a general and balanced interest for the industry. As one of my old supervisors would have put it: Olivia’s knowledge about watches is one inch deep but 10 feet wide.
And that is a compliment and a partial explanation of why she’s so darn good at what she does. But before we go too much into this we must go back to many years in the past to better understand who Olivia is and where she comes from. As we already know, she isn’t a to-the-point-of-no-return-watch-nerd as she wasn’t into watches at all before working for Christopher Ward to the extent that she was particularly proud of herself for buying a rose gold Olivia Burton watch for her interview at CW, as neither she nor her friends wore watches that often or had any particular interest in them. She did, however, wear watches once in a while to match her outfits but there wasn’t more to it than that. So Olivia was uncommonly uninterested in watches as someone who’s made a career in the industry, and she is someone who doesn’t take the well-travelled path for anything else in life for that matter. Surprisingly perhaps for many folks born in the past four decades, she didn’t attend university because she wasn’t, as she explained, an academic learner and that dyslexia made the prospect of spending an extra five or six years in higher education rather intimidating.
I sympathize with her to a point which might surprise you.
So instead of studying she made a deal with her parents by which she would be given three years to figure out what to do with her life. She didn’t procrastinate for even a minute as she immediately found employment in a perfume shop even though she quickly realized that it wasn’t her calling. She then walked and drove around the towns surrounding her parent’s house handing out her resume when she, by complete accident, got a three-month internship for an estate agent called Jacksons in Henley on Thames, a family-run business located in an upscale town west of London which hosts the annual Henley Royal Regatta. There her job consisted of seeing and showing luxurious homes in the countryside which brought her to spend more time outside of the office, naturally striking up conversations with strangers, rather than being stuck behind a desk. It was in a sense the perfect job for Olivia and it suited her so well that she worked for Jacksons for two and a half years. But eventually, she realized that, even though she was more in her element there than in a perfume shop, there was something else waiting for her—something getting her closer to Christopher Ward.
As fortune would have it, Olivia’s mother was good friends with the former Marketing Director of the Early Learning Center which, as we learned from the profile story on Mike France, which was owned by the latter before he co-founded Christopher Ward. Over dinner, her mother’s friend showed support for Olivia’s off-the-beaten-path trajectory and asked her what she would like to do next. Olivia answered that she would like to switch to marketing and public relations as it sounded very glamorous and perfectly in line with her natural ability to communicate with anyone about anything. But alas, all jobs she looked at required a marketing degree to even be considered for a position. The friend advised Olivia to keep an eye on things and as fortune would have it still, Christopher Ward’s Marketing Director was going on maternity leave and thus she got the opportunity to do an interview with Mike France. She expected the conversation to last not more than 30 minutes, but two hours later they were still in the room chatting and at the conclusion of the interview, Mike France, who was moved by Olivia’s enthusiasm for the position, hired her on the spot.
Her Job at Christopher Ward
The interview took place more than ten years ago (August 2015 to be specific), and that is therefore a decade of Olivia being at Christopher Ward which is something we rarely hear about nowadays in a world where most people boast about their two-year tenure at this or that job every couple of years. Though her job and her responsibilities have evolved over time as Christopher Ward as grown and developed internationally—she was employee number 21 when she was hired and now there are more than one hundred of them—her current title is Events & Partnerships Lead and that is the type of work she has mostly been doing for the company thus far. Her time is divided 70% in events and 30% in partnerships, meaning that she spends most of her time traveling around the country and the globe to attend and represent the brand at various events and watch shows—too many sometimes. However, Christopher Ward has been focusing on the North American market for the past couple of years and has now opened three showrooms in the United States which means that she can better focus her attention on the emerging and developing Middle and Far Eastern markets.
Whilst she’s doing this she’s also doing many other things, still attending the busy watch shows in North America to support the local team where I had the pleasure of seeing her this past October at WindUp in New York City, again feeling akin to seeing an old friend and old colleague. She also organizes internal events for Christopher Ward and supports local charity-based events organized by the brand in various cities around the UK through which CW works with schools to introduce kids and teenagers to industrial design, marketing, entrepreneurial work and a bit of watches. The 30% of her work in partnerships consists of managing large commercial contracts by which Christopher Ward supports a variety of events at different levels, a type of work the brand didn’t want to embark on at first for fear that he would eventually raise the prices of its watches. But through hard and intelligent work the brand has been able to select the right partners to work with—I’m sure in good part thanks to Olivia’s communication and marketing skills—which have in return helped the brand to grow and do better and bigger things. Growth cannot work without partnerships and partnerships cannot work without Olivia.
I’m feeling comfortable saying all of this by the way because even though I do not know the inner-workings of Christopher Ward and of what Olivia does there on a daily basis, I’ve seen her in action many times at watch shows and I have the feeling that indeed, her knack for communicating with folks from all walks of lives and in many different cultural and geographical contexts, and doing so with great energy for the past ten years, has certainly baren many fruits for the brand. Again, being at a company for ten years for folks my age or younger (though I won’t disclose how many springs I’ve seen already) is a rarity and says something about Olivia and Christopher Ward. People I’ve talked to at CW have always described the brand as being a big family and that is indeed how it seems to be. Moreover, by doing the work she does, and judging by the work the brand does, it is successfully bringing more people into the industry/hobby and that is the positive impact of all of the energy she has poured into the job. Which brings us to how Olivia sees watches and collects them.
Being a Peripheral Watch Nerd
As you remember, Olivia wasn’t into watches before joining Christopher Ward and the team kindly laughed at her when they saw her arrive at the interview with the Olivia Burton watch strapped to her wrist, telling Olivia that she would eventually learn about watches. Even now that she’s been with the company for ten years—ten years of talking about watches in many and all situations—she sees herself as being half a watch nerd and half as a person whose job it is to sell watches. Her knowledge of the industry is indeed not 10 feet deep and one inch wide, but one inch deep and 10 feet wide, meaning that she knows about—and she can have a conversation about—all things horology whilst never going too deep into any particular topic, therefore remaining objective across the board which is a huge advantage for her and for the brand. This I believe makes it possible for Olivia to talk about anything and everything horology and non-horology related, being topically agile as I’ve experienced her to be both when meeting her at watch shows and during our interview, as we spoke about all aspects of her background and career in equal parts.
So Olivia knows, for example, how a watch works but wouldn’t be able to write a thesis report on how a balance wheel works, neither could I to be fair. Because she’s mostly driven by the stories that can be told about watches and those, as we know, which connect us to one another. Olivia could therefore be as effective working for any other company and in any other industry and be equally successful, but the thing that watches does to one person is to convert him or her to the community-based and enthusiast aspects of horology. Thus she has become a watch person like many of us and she particularly loves selling watches to people and, more importantly, bringing in more people into our niche community. Whenever she works events she can see the excitement that people have chatting about watches and bringing in their partners and friends and family members, just like she has had great pleasure gifting a Christoper Ward Bel Canto to her father, now one of the brand’s best advocates, and how her sister bought her husband-to-be a Twelve for their wedding. The love for watches is contagious indeed.
So what kind of watch person and collector is Olivia and what would one find in her watch box? Well, she doesn’t see herself as a collector and doesn’t have a collector’s mindset as she explained, and so one might be disappointed to see how small her watch collection actually is. She basically has a nice watch and an everyday watch. She further shared that she’s not an impulsive buyer even though she broke her own rule once by purchasing the recent Fears x Studio Underd0g Gimlet limited edition collaboration piece at a fair, and whilst she doesn’t typically do grail watches she did buy one, a two-tone Cartier Panther in gold with a champagne dial. If my visual memory serves me well, she was wearing the Panther during our interview, and by doing so, she was sharing one of her two most prized possessions: this watch and her car which says mountains about Olivia’s objectivity and genuine lack of interest for material things. Again, I believe this explains why she’s so good at her job and how easy it is for her to strike a conversation about any topic because she has many interests and doesn’t pigeon-hole herself into any one in particular.
Women in Horology
As it is customary in this series of articles, I ought to ask Olivia about her experience being a woman in the watch industry and for her to share her observations about this aspect of horology from her unique perspective working events in many countries and cultures, and for an internationally renowned brand. For the most part, she said it has been a very positive experience and the longer she has been at Christopher Ward and in the industry as a whole, the more confident she becomes and the less she seeks approval from someone in authority in our niche domain. Whilst she doesn’t know of many women who do the work that she does for a brand, she’s been seeing more and more women attend watch shows, not only as the +1 of a man to hold his watch whilst trying on a new one, but for themselves being interested in watches and wanting to learn more about these objects, knowing what they’re looking for and what they are shopping for. She’s had many positive encounters with women who wear mainstream luxury watches showing a genuine interest for Christopher Ward and independent brands.
Though she does meet the occasional guy who instantly decides to mansplain horology to her even though she works for a watch brand, something she noted they wouldn’t have done with another man, which must be most frustrating and laughable at the same time. Olivia shared that she has a pretty relaxed attitude in these kinds of situations and that she has never been negatively impacted by her gender which is positive to hear as it is not always what the women who I’ve written about have related. But things seem to be changing for the better slowly and surely, and Olivia senses that the more women of her stature (responsibility) would attend watch shows and industry events, the more women would feel compelled to show interest in watches and to join in. As she explained, even though more women join the watch industry, they might be looking for someone else than a man to talk to about watches, and since Olivia can switch back-and-forth between a variety of topics with natural agility, she realized that some women do prefer to talk to women about watches.
I feel that we, men, are more solo-topic-focused and have a graver tendency to nerd out about specific things.
Conclusion: Her Self-Appointed Role
Beyond what Olivia has already managed to accomplish in the watch industry and at Christopher Ward, and her massive experience in marketing and public relations at home and abroad, more than anything else she feels that her main role is to bring in more women into horology and more people as a whole. Her contagious enthusiasm for watches converts people and sensibilize many to our niche little world in a way that she only knows how to, managing to bridge the gap between Christopher Ward, the industry, and folks from any gender and all walks of life. Seeing Olivia at work is an amazing experience I’ve had the privilege of witnessing a few times, and knowing what follows will make this even more special: it wasn’t written in her job description that she would work watch shows, but she decided that she would, and only three months on the job and seeing her colleagues going to the very first WindUp in New York City, she swore that she wouldn’t miss the next one and she didn’t and hasn’t ever since. Olivia is ruthlessly dedicated to being her authentic self in all she does, and Christopher Ward should deem itself extremely lucky to have her. Clearly, in whatever she does next she would be equally successful.
Thanks for reading.