ARMIN STROM – SYSTEM 78 Lady Beat Steel 38mm Automatic
Lady Beat by Armin Strom
The newest watch from Armin Strom demonstrates one of the brand’s core principles: always innovate. Boldly redesigning the brand’s typical movement, dial and case, Lady Beat marks a milestone of the new System 78 Collection, which highlights innovative watchmaking at a competitive price. The latest no-compromise watch from the Biel-based manufacture is a decidedly feminine one, but one exuding the technical look and feel of the genuine manufacture movement powering every Armin Strom timepiece.
Lady Beat’s design features differentiated aesthetics that make it wholly unique and feminine. And this is thanks to the fact that the men behind Armin Strom know their boundaries: instead of using the brand’s testosterone-influenced in-house design, the company (wisely) consulted freelance designers of the opposite sex to ensure authenticity and a decidedly feminine feel.
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO
Lady Beat features an off-center dial and slimmer new case with a much smaller diameter. The 38 mm case diameter of
Lady Beat is a first at
Armin Strom, hitting the sizing sweet spot of many women.
The highlight of the front of this watch is the visible triplet of bridges echoing the pocket watch inspiration behind
Caliber ALA20, just one of many mechanical elements visible on the dial.
The contemporary dimensions maintain the essence of
Armin Strom DNA while shaping a new aesthetic that showcases the brand’s love for reduction to the essential, enhancing legibility, and maximizing the user experience for discerning female collectors, enthusiasts, and casual wearers.
The
Armin Strom Lady Beat is the very first model created specifically for women by this Swiss manufacture. It features a stainless-steel case and is priced at
CHF 16,900.
Lady Beat inspiration
Lady Beat is the manufacture’s answer to finally serving women also interested in fine mechanics.
Technical head Claude Greisler and owner Serge Michel felt that the time was precisely right to include women in Armin Strom’s high-quality Swiss made offerings. “There is more to discover with this watch than women are used to,” Greisler opines. “Our passion for visible mechanics is also evident at first glance here.” Greisler refers to the brand’s history in skeletonization and open worked movements, a consistent leitmotif continued in Lady Beat.
While the inspiration for this watch originated with Greisler and Michel, they wisely collaborated with two women very well acquainted with designing watches for other women. It was important to the two male company founders that they collaborate with female professionals, one of which had previously been a product manager for a well-positioned company famous for feminine watches and jewelry, as they judiciously recognized they were not qualified by themselves to create such a sophisticated, ambitious, and challenging product for the opposite sex on their own. This watch is by women for women without men in the middle interpreting. And these women understand the fascination of Armin Strom. “We listen to women,” said Greisler. “We listen to all our customers.”
Armin Strom had been experiencing great demand for a watch like this for quite some time, but the team hadn’t been sure how to go about it until now nor had it wanted to overextend its capacities. With the new collaboration team in place, the first thing to do was make a shape analysis. What they found was that softer shapes were the order of the day, perhaps something moon inspired.
And it had to be a celebration of mechanical transparency.
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It has only been ten years since
Greisler and
Michel re-founded
Armin Strom, transforming the brand into a real manufacture focused on making its own timepieces. This is such a short amount of time in which to have achieved so many highlights – manufacture base movements, tourbillon movements, and the celebrated resonance movement of the
Mirrored Force Resonance and its offshoots. The founders are cautious, clever, and sensibly work at their own pace. And this natural progression now leads to a fabulous watch just for women. “
It would not have been right or good to rush this watch,”
Greisler is sure.
“Good design is honest and functional,” Greisler says of the manufacture’s latest creation. “It does not need makeup to be attractive.” But there is an Armin Strom-typical element that increases its attractivity: Lady Beat can be customized in color and other elements in the Armin Strom online Configurator. “We know that colors are so important to women,” Greisler continues, “so we offer plenty of choice.”
Lady Beat’s particular challenge
Lady Beat was conceived from the get-go to be a technical ladies’ watch, which meant that the concept had to be holistic and not just a shrunk-down men’s watch, which is the most commonly traveled route for creating timepieces for women in the watch industry. But Armin Strom never does things like everyone else; this manufacture prefers to work from the ground up every time.
The watch’s winding is automatic for maximum comfort. The visible micro rotor from Gravity Equal Force was redeveloped into a full-sized central rotor on the back to ensure more winding power and a long power reserve. “While a man might think it’s cool to watch the rotor make its eternal revolutions winding the watch on the front, we collectively didn’t feel that women would be as interested in watching the winding system at work.”
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Finally, though technical, the entire watch should still exude a feminine feel – and that without resorting to diamonds and mother-of-pearl to “
prettify” it. This watch should not be a compromise of any sort: it is unapologetically for women, but in the minimalist
Armin Strom style.
“
The most complicated part of making this watch was trying to get into the heads of our potential female customers,”
Greisler laughed.
Lady Beat development
Working with the female design consultants, the Armin Strom team decided to orient Lady Beat’s look on Gravity Equal Force to both build on and highlight the freshly launched System 78 collection. “What does a woman desire on her wrist?” This all-important question was answered in typical Armin Strom method: by examining the brand’s own values and combining them with new thoughts and practices.
While the base idea is rooted in Gravity Equal Force, and the movement remains the centerpiece of any Armin Strom watch, the mechanics have been reordered to ensure both the svelte, wearable character of the watch and to put the spotlight on mechanical dial animation. The previous case design has been trimmed down even further from the already relatively lithe proportions of Gravity Equal Force (as compared to the rest of Armin Strom’s line) to create the first 38-millimeter case at Armin Strom.
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO
Greisler and the two female designers very quickly settled on a watch filled with soft shapes: the normally very classic lugs of an
Armin Strom watch were cast aside in favor of an integrated strap, and the overall look is filled with circles and semi-circles rather than the angular shapes generally associated with this classically male brand. “
These soft, moon-like shapes fill the optics of this watch,”
Greisler said. Look closely and you will see a half-moon-shaped plate sharing the watch’s lower level with the mechanical elements, while a full moon-shaped subdial sits atop it.
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO
Another example is that the dial no longer has numerals, but rather more softness thanks to a reduced logo that simultaneously functions as the 12 o’clock marker. Visible screws holding the undulating, patterned dial to the plate below remain visible, though, reminding us unmistakably that this is a technical oeuvre by
Armin Strom.
The second hand, which can quickly turn a watch into more of an instrument, has also been foregone here in favor of a clean look. There is no shortage of technical elements on the dial: first and foremost, the visible balance with its mesmerizing rotations practically occupy the position of honor on the dial. The indications, on the other hand, are off-center, as is often the case at Armin Strom, and given less focus than the watch’s beating heart.
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Conceived from the get-go to be a technical ladies’ watch, the movement was redeveloped to bring the balance, the beating heart of any watch, to the front of the watch where it is visible at any time. Its hypnotizing movement also allows the wearer to see at a glance whether the watch is running. “
I like to produce animated watches,”
Greisler explains of this choice. “
The wearer should be able to see life in the watch immediately; that it is running, breathing.”
Additionally, the team removed the ingenious stop-works declutch system and motor barrel design crafted to transmit equal force to the balance from Gravity Equal Force’s movement to minimize Lady Beat’s movement height and keep its dimensions svelte. And, finally, the team decided to remove the running seconds, deciding that they distracted from the beauty of and focus on the balance in motion, the watch’s pulse.
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO
“This collection had to be coherent, consistent, and harmonious for it to function within Armin Strom,”
Greisler sums up. “
It could not be a rush job, but needed our full attention. By having women practically make it for other women, we took the onus off ourselves of having to second guess our instincts and possibly making hasty mistakes.”
System 78 – a new entry to Armin Strom’s collections
Gravity Equal Force, launched during Dubai Watch Week in November 2019, signaled a new direction for the brand: the System 78 collection replaced the Single Barrel collection. This philosophical line is now the entry point for Armin Strom, an haute horlogerie collection at a reasonable price point. The name displays what the brand hopes to create: a system of fine watchmaking available to all who desire it. Every new watch will feature an innovation and showcase the watchmaking philosophy of Serge Michel and Claude Greisler, co-founders of the modern Armin Strom, both born in the same year (1978).
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TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS
Collection: SYSTEM 78
Model: Lady Beat
Ref. ST20 - LAB
Movement
Armin Strom manufacture Caliber ALA20
Automatic winding with central rotor
Regulating system: Balance wheel with 4 regulating screws
Power reserve: 70 hours
Dimensions: 32.70 mm x 8.34 mm
Frequency: 3.5 Hz (25,200 vph)
Finishing: Hand-finishing to the highest quality level
Jewels: 20
Number of components: 185
Indications: Hours, minutes
Case
Stainless steel
Sapphire crystal and case back with anti-reflective treatment
Diameter: 38 mm
Height: 11.65 mm
Water resistance: 3 ATM
Dial
Offset in white or black
Hands: Manufactured by Armin Strom – stainless steel with hand finishing
Strap
Bi-material rubber and Alcantara in satin white or black
Price: CHF 16,900
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Armin Strom today: Serge Michel and Claude Greisler in partnership
Children born in the same year growing up in a town like Burgdorf (population 15,000) are likely to know each other, either through school, family, or mutual friends. Such is the case with Serge Michel and Claude Greisler, who grew up in the town where Armin Strom, famous for his watch skeletonization skills, had his watch shop and workshop. When the plastic Swatch watch was launched, having been developed and produced in the nearby city of Biel, Serge was hooked and started collecting Swatches, following in the footsteps of his father, who is also a watch collector. It was a passion that would continue throughout his life. But while Serge went on to study marketing, Claude decided to become a watchmaker, first attending the watchmaking school in Solothurn before specializing in the restoration of vintage and complicated movements at the CIFOM technical school in Le Locle, concluding his studies there with a specialization in movement development.
Both Serge and Claude had known about watchmaker Armin Strom from a very young age. Serge not only remembers peering through the window of his store to look at the watches, but also the fact that Armin Strom was a local celebrity known for traveling far and wide to deliver his watches to customers. Claude had also known about Armin Strom from an early age since his parents owned an optician’s shop right next to Armin Strom’s store in the historic center of Burgdorf. In Serge’s case, Armin Strom became a family friend, and at convivial dinners the talk would often turn to watches and watchmaking. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that the family friendship evolved into a business relationship in 2006 as Armin Strom was considering how to ensure the future of his name and reputation.
“I was convinced that this is a fantastic opportunity to maintain this tradition of skeletonizing watches and developing it for the future, and my family agreed,” says Serge. “That was back in 2006, but at the time we didn’t really have the knowledge about watchmaking. We had the passion, but we needed someone who was an expert on the watchmaking side of things, which is where Claude comes in. He joined me in 2007, and we started to set up the brand Armin Strom and change the direction from purely handmade skeletonized watches to a fully equipped manufacture, which we are today.”
For Claude Greisler, it was like a dream come true. “When Serge first called me and talked about taking the brand to the next level with a factory and taking the brand over from someone from the same town as us, it was the perfect mix. Armin Strom had always been interested in the mechanics of the movement, so to be able to take this philosophy forward was a fantastic opportunity.”
The core element of the vision of the Armin Strom duo has always been considering the movement as the very heart of the watch, which meant that the company would need to be a manufacture to produce its own movements. “This was not just a question of designing our own movements,” explains Claude, “but being able to take exactly the kind of brass that we wanted and the type of steel that we wanted to make the best possible plates, bridges, screws and pinions that we could and to do the electroplating and finishing, as well as the assembly, all in-house.”
Armin Strom: A fully integrated manufacture
While Armin Strom is a vertically integrated, complete horological manufacture, no new watch movement would ever have seen the light of day were it not for Claude Greisler, who puts ideas such as the one for the revolutionary Mirrored Force Resonance movement down on paper before they are transferred to computer-aided design programs to start modelling the movement. Like so many things at Armin Strom all of this is done in-house, with the dimensions calculated down to a precision of one micron to provide the inputs for the machines that will eventually produce the smallest of components.
At Armin Strom, the majority of components in the movement, with the exception of the escapement and balance spring, are produced in-house. Small round components like screws, pinions and gear wheels are produced by profile-turning machines, which gradually whittle away long steel or brass rods from the side to cut teeth or axles. Larger components such as base plates and bridges are produced from brass on CNC machines, which are capable of machining along multiple axes consecutively using different tools for different operations, moving the component using robotic arms.
Tiny and delicate components, such as smaller bridges, levers and springs, are produced using wire erosion. This involves threading a wire that is not much smaller than a human hair through a tiny hole in the metal. An electrical current running through the wire reacts with a solution in which the entire working plate is dipped, thus “eroding” minuscule amounts of the metal. This allows particularly delicate operations to be carried out while maintaining the structural integrity of the metal. Armin Strom does not produce any of its components by stamping because of the stresses that this places on the metal.
Once the raw components are manufactured, they are engraved, beveled, polished and decorated with circular graining or Geneva stripes by hand before moving to the in-house electroplating department. Here, all steel and brass components are first given a gold plating before a layer of nickel is added to prevent corrosion and harden the surface. After cleaning, the parts are then dipped in other electroplating baths to give them their final color such as rhodium, ruthenium, or rose gold. It is only thanks to its mastery of electroplating techniques inside its own workshops that Armin Strom can allow customers to choose preferred colors for the coating on different components.
Only then can the individual components of the movement be passed on to the watchmaker for assembly. After setting the jewels into the base plate and bridges, the watchmaker adds the gear train and mainspring. After the escapement and balance wheel are positioned, the movement finally comes to life…only to be completely disassembled, cleaned, and dried before being re-assembled and lubricated. After several days of testing the precision, the watch is finally ready.
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Press releases - 2020
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ARMIN STROM AG |
Bözingenstrasse 46
CH-2502 Biel-Bienne | Switzerland
Tel. +41 (0)32 343 33 44
Fax +41 (0) 32 343 33 40
info@arminstrom.com
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For more information relating to this press release or to Armin Strom:
Bettina Fleury, Armin Strom AG,
Tel. +41 32 343 33 44, b.fleury@arminstrom.com
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In creating the movement and the case, significant effort has gone into ensuring the diameter and thickness retain their elegant proportions. The sliding bolt, fitted on a Teflon runner to ensure it slides perfectly smoothly, is built into the main plate to save space. The case middle has been widened to the maximum in order to accommodate the movement while allowing enough space to create a soundbox. This amplifies the chiming of hours, quarter-hours and minutes by two gongs, onto which fall two hammers that are raised based on information provided by different feeler-spindles. 
