Interview: Introducing Pragma With Christopher Wegener

Transparency isn’t usually a word I associate with the luxury watch industry.

In fact, the opposite may be true. One of luxury’s defining characteristics is that it’s opaque, it would lose its allure if it wasn’t. Transparent luxury is a paradox.

In this industry, desirability is often created by hiding the truth, or part of it, from the public to create a mystery that drives sales. That sounds like a conspiracy theory, but I can assure you, there’s no ‘theory’ involved.

We love to pay for craftsmanship, but very rarely get to see where it comes from. This secrecy pushes us to imagine what's happening behind closed doors and makes us rely on the brand’s marketing to fill in the gaps. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great strategy. The doors to Rolex might as well be welded shut, for example, we don’t know what's happening in their facilities, yet we hand over our money like it’s an ice cream truck on a hot day. Perhaps if we saw that it was more robots than flesh and blood doing the watchmaking, we wouldn’t be as enamoured with it. *I'm not saying it’s robots doing the watchmaking, Rolex, please don’t kidnap me.*

It makes me wonder, however, does anyone actually care about transparency? Or do we all just want a cool watch to brag to our friends about?
Does this opacity add to or take from the experience of owning a luxury watch?

I want to say more transparency can only be a good thing, but to be honest, I’m not so sure. Is a magic trick only fun if we can’t see how it’s done?

I spoke to Christopher Wegener, the Co-Founder and watchmaker at Pragma recently to find out, and to be honest, this cynical old watch writer has a new-found enthusiasm for open doors and translucent manufacturing. Interview incoming.

“Our watches honour clients, elevating Swiss craftsmanship, and minimising environmental impact—setting a new benchmark in watchmaking.” Christopher Wegener, watchmaker and co-founder.

What Is Pragma?

Founded by Kai Hsuan Liu and Christopher Wegener, Pragma is the manifestation of what a watch brand would look like if it was radically transparent, sustainable, and truly modern. The brand is 100% open about their partners, showcasing a full parts list with supplier, materials and environmental credentials. It’s really impressive and reminds me of WRK and their performance-based breakdowns.
Pragma’s first watch, the P1 Perseverance, is a masterclass in architectural case design and pragmatic construction. It’s both beautiful and brutal, not just in its aesthetics, but in its philosophy too.

To give you an idea of the extent Pragma has gone towards transparency with the P1, let’s pull some details out of the Annex that lives on brand's product pages. Each component has detailed information about the manufacturer, supplier, material, recycled content and what percentage the component makes up of the entire watch. It’s fascinating.

Bridges

Manufacturer - Chronode SA
Supplier - Panatere®
Material - Titanium Grade 5
% Recycled - 100%
% of Total volume - 1.8%

Chronode SA are partners on the production of Caliber Pragma 1031-1. The movement has a 76.8% total recycled content, and a volume totalling 13.9% (of the entire watch). As a nerd, I love this stuff.

Crystal

Manufacturer (assembly) - Voutilainen & Cattin
Supplier - NovoCristal
Material - Sapphire
% Recycled - 0%
% of Total volume - 6.4%

Yes, that Voutilainen. It makes total sense to work with partners that have a long history in a particular field. It’s a good example of when in-house doesn’t necessarily mean better quality.

Strap Internal Fabric

Manufacturer (assembly) - Atelier du bracelet
Supplier - Ecovative
Material - Forager™
% Recycled - 100%
% of Total volume - 19.5%

A quick note on Forager™ by Evocative. It’s a completely natural leather alternative made from mycelium, the complex root system of mushrooms. The product is antimicrobial, thermally insulating, flame resistant, and aerobically compostable. Plus, it grows in 7–9 days. Wild!!

Date Disc

Manufacturer (assembly) - Comblémine SA
Supplier - Comblémine SA
Material - Brass CuZn28
% Recycled - 0%
% of Total volume - 0.1%

Do you know how much of the watch’s total volume your Rolex date disk takes up? No, you don’t, and you may not care. Let’s be clear, the majority of people won’t care about information at this level of detail. But that’s not the point. This extreme transparency creates a watch-owner connection that you can’t get anywhere else. It’s incredible. More on this to come.

The Perseverance And Collector Ownership

Along with transparency, something I find fascinating about Pragma is their ownership strategy. Along with the purchase of the rose gold Perseverance (limited to 12 pieces), collectors get a 1% equity stake In the company. I’ve always dreamed of owning part of a watch brand, and this is a wonderful way to make that happen. In my conversation with Chris, by asking how the idea came about and what involvement does these partial owners have in Pragma moving forward.

CW: It was definitely ambitious. When we started Pragma, we knew we needed customers and financing to move forward. At our price point, crowdfunding seemed like the obvious route, but it didn’t feel right for us. Crowdfunding also carries big risks—if you don’t raise enough, you’re out. So instead, I thought, let’s do something that hasn’t been done before. At the end of the day, we wanted to meet collectors and engage with the public. Offering a little bit of equity was a great way to start that conversation and position Pragma as a brand looking for real partners. It really helped us get started, and now we have a few collectors with us. They’re not active in the company, but we do listen closely to their feedback. Since they’re collectors, their perspective is important—it’s the same public we want to reach with our watches.

This is so interesting to me, and is something that I wish more companies did. Imagine the brand loyalty. They’re not just giving up equity, they’re creating life-long promoters for the brand. It’s genius. If I had one, there isn’t a person alive to which I wouldn’t preach the virtues of Pragma.

The Genesis of Pragma

I find it so interesting talking to founders about why they started a brand. You can often get to the core of what a brand is about more easily from their origin story than asking about it directly.

CW: Pragma was born from a simple question: what if watchmaking could be both exceptional and responsible? Every watch we create reflects that statement—our values and the future we believe in.

I founded the brand with Kai, my partner and the designer. He’s the art director, and I handle the watchmaking. We were introduced by a friend. Kai is from Taiwan and studied industrial design in Lausanne. For me, I always wanted to start a brand since finishing watchmaking school—I actually started at 15 at Rolex school and finished my apprenticeship at 19. Then I worked for François-Paul Journe, Laurent Ferrier, and others.

This isn’t my first attempt at creating a brand. My first project was Akrivia with Rexhep Rexhepi, which was a great experience. Later I tried another project with a watchmaker, but I realised two watchmakers in the same room doesn’t work. I needed a designer. When I met Kai, it was a perfect match.

We began talking at the start of COVID, so progress was slow. We used that time to really think through the values we wanted for the brand before moving to design and movement development.

Kai studied in Lausanne and later worked independently as well as for brands like Hermès. He also worked on projects for other luxury companies. But Pragma is his first complete watch design project, and for me, it’s also the first time taking something from imagination to finished product entirely.

It was very collaborative. We benchmarked what we liked and decided to create a simple, automatic watch, arguably harder than doing something complicated like a tourbillon. We wanted to distill our design language into the dial and case.

I wanted to dig a little deeper here to understand more about the ideas behind the case. I’m a big fan of Japanese architecture and the unique case construction of the Perseverance connected with that culture for me. I asked Chris if Japanese philosophy inspired the design.

CW: That was Kai’s first idea. But we actually get a lot of inspiration from Swiss architects, like Zumthor, and also from old cabins in Switzerland. You see the same aspect in Japanese craftsmanship too, and we both love that. The first idea was: how can we make a simple case, but with the possibility to finish each part separately? That way you can really focus on doing it perfectly.
For example, if you have an Oyster or a Jubilee bracelet, when you polish it you always have to spend a long time working across the whole thing. I always think as a watchmaker, how long will it take me to repair or fix it? If I can take all the parts separately and work on them individually, it’s a big help. And if something is broken, we can just change one part of the case, not the whole thing. That was the aspect we wanted.

Having the forethought to design the case in this way is the benefit of a designer working in close collaboration with a watchmaker. There’s no separation of expertise and no compromise, just two people solving problems that neither one of them alone would be able to see.

CW: Over time it became obvious. We went through so many variations of the case, but when we saw this one, we knew—oh yeah, that’s it.
Even if some people say it looks too sharp, I say yes, but we want a strong identity, something that’s recognisable right away. We don’t want to make a crowd-pleaser watch. But still, it’s a classic shape when you look at it.

Sustainability and Traceability

I get a little nervous when brands promote their watch as sustainable because, well, it usually isn’t. Chopard perhaps, with their Lucent steel and ethical gold, are the exception. Most brands just slap an ocean plastic strap on a watch and call it a day.
Side note, did you know that if a product is made from ‘ocean plastic’ it most likely doesn’t actually come from the ocean. It’s just collected on land within 50 km of a waterway. Seems misleading to me!

I was curious to see how Chris and Kai tackle sustainability at Pragma.

CW: It started with traceability and transparency. In watchmaking, most brands rely on subcontractors for cases, movements, or components, even the biggest names. Yet they still claim “everything is in-house.” That always bothered me.
For Pragma, we wanted to proudly highlight our partners instead of hiding them. We also sought innovative solutions, like the steel we use, which is created by melting with concentrated solar rays, like science fiction! Sustainability isn’t just a marketing angle for us; it’s common sense in 2025.

Let’s pause here and take a moment to talk about Solar Steel. One of Pragmas suppliers, Panatere SA, recycles offcuts from the watch industry and melts them down using the sun. And I’m not talking about using solar power to run a furnace, I’m talking about using the actual sun to melt the scrap down into usable bar stock for brands like Pragma to use to make their components. Here’s how it works, Panatere SA use a series of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a single point, a crucible, which melts the raw material collected from various industries, watch companies included (cnc shavings, offcuts etc). The process uses no electricity, no water and no ore. It’s incredible.

During my conversation with Chris, I came to realise how difficult it must be for a new brand to enter this centuries old industry and do things radically different. The level of transparency Pragma offers is unprecedented, and for an industry as old as this one, it’s a big shakeup.

Back to my question from above. “Does this opacity add to, or take from, the experience of owning a luxury watch?”. After spending some time with Chris, I think this is the direction more brands should be heading in. The magic is most definitely still there when you know where your case, your movement, and your strap comes from. In fact, because you get to know about the talented people who helped create your watch, you can be more connected to the brand than ever. Having a more profound relationship with brands like Pragma, albeit one that exists only through the object on your wrist, is pretty special.

I can’t wait to see what Chris and Kai do next.

Check out more from Pragma on their website.

Cya in the next one X.

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