Alvin Lye is wearing a miniature tank on his wrist. More specifically, it's a prototype watch dubbed, somewhat appropriately, the SP-1 Landship and modelled after a World War I-era tank where the time is told through a "turret" showing the hour with a separate window displaying upright retrograde minutes. Most of it is made from titanium and it is difficult to ignore - but that's precisely the point.

When Lye, 44, and business partner Christopher Long, 35, started home-grown watch company Azimuth in 2004, they were young upstarts hoping to join an exclusive club - one in which no Singaporean had previously been admitted - and they knew it would take something special to get noticed. So they embarked on an ambitious programme to create unique, high-quality watches from scratch.

"To differentiate ourselves from the rest we said, "strictly no me-too products", and we decided to use design as the distinguishing factor," says Lye, who started in the industry in the late-1990s by selling vintage watches. He also runs Monster Time, a separate business owned with his wife Jessie Yeo, selling pre-owned timepieces.

Long was a young, well-informed watch collector and one of Lye's early customers who also spent a lot of time in the store. They discovered they had a lot of ideas in common about the watch business and decided to team up.

"In the early 2000s the prices of Swiss watch brands were rising annually for no apparent reason; we thought it was a bit ridiculous," says Lye. "We said we could do better designs for a better price - that's what brought us together."

They scoured the Internet for watch parts and vintage movements and hired Swiss-based craftsmen to assemble their products.

The Azimuth Bombardier I was launched in January 2005 and was notable for two reasons: the design was based on the watches worn by German Luftwaffe pilots in World War II, and the company's brand name was etched on the back of the watch case, not on the dial. "We wanted to make an authentic World War II pilot watch and although the Luftwaffe had watches designed by companies like Patek Philippe, IWC and Vacheron Constantin in the 1930s, they had no branding," says Lye.

He adds, "Everything was designed in-house and assembled in Bienne in Switzerland, and the watches had a vintage movement inside."

The fledgling company made 200 pieces of the Bombardier 1 and sold out in less than a year - at a retail price of $1,250. International customers were not concerned that the company was headquartered in faraway Singapore.

"All they care is that Azimuth is Swissmade," says Lye.

"All the designs come from our warped minds."

The Bombardier series is now in its sixth edition (at $2,650), but the company has gone on to focus on more futuristic-looking watches such as the SP-1 Spaceship, Back in Time - the world's first single-hand, anti- clockwise watch - and Mr Roboto, one of its most distinctive watches.

"We make the telling of time interesting," says Lye. "The Swiss are very traditional - they don't really think out of the box. Our saving grace is that we are not trained in watchmaking. We think of the shape first and then shrink it into a watch."

Azimuth watches retail on average for around $5,000 or less but the company is no stranger to the upper end of the market either.

The SP-1 TBT - for Twin-Barrel-Tourbillon - is based on a Lamborghini Murcielago and is priced at $125,000. Almost all the 25 pieces manufactured have been sold, says Lye. The company has 28 distribution points around the world, with more on the cards - recently, it reached an agreement to enter the lucrative China market.

"We're fully independent so our financial muscle is limited and we have a very niche position in the market," says Lye. Yearly production is currently around 3,000 watches spread over several models and their variations - up to about 30 SKUs in all.

Azimuth was launched with an initial sum of $80,000. It was an uphill climb in the beginning, with movement suppliers reluctant to work with a total unknown. The company has participated at Basel World - the leading watch fair - for the past six years, building a reputation as a small, avant-garde watch company with unique products.

"We always wanted to put Singapore on the world map of watchmaking and have an international standing, but the barriers to entry are still high," says Lye. "We are still one-of-a-kind in Singapore. If we'd known then what we know now, we probably wouldn't have started - there were so many stumbling blocks." He adds, "It's easy to make a speciality watch somewhere like in China, but very difficult in Switzerland."

The entrepreneurial spirit was instilled in Lye from an early age by his father, who dabbled in a variety of jobs such as futures trading, servicing the marine industry and even starting an early version of a callback phone service in the 1960s. He also had a mobile grocery business, driving to factories around Singapore and selling groceries from the back of a van.

Lye made his first sale at age 10 when he took a pair of basketball shoes to school and tried to sell them to his best friend. To sweeten the deal, he threw in a can of peas for free - procured from his larder at home.

In 1997, after working for Sony Electronics as a marketing executive for 21/2 years, Lye set up Monster Time in Far East Plaza. His business travels brought him to places like Indochina, Canada and Fiji, where he visited many local flea markets and noticed that the prices of vintage watches were quite reasonable.

"I started by selling watches at the Clarke Quay flea market and after one weekend sale, I noticed that the profit from selling collectibles was more than my monthly salary - so the decision to quit my job came quite easily," says Lye.

He also bought and sold watches over the Internet - Christopher Long was one of his customers.

It was a natural progression from selling old watches to designing and manufacturing 21st-century timepieces, says Lye. He simply recognised a need in the market and sought to meet it. "Nowadays, when a rich, young person already has a Rolex or a Patek, they want to put something on their wrist that shows their individuality," he says. "Watch collectors will come to a stage where they say, 'I've got my moonphase, my annual calendar, what's next? Well, Azimuth has the Spaceship, with its unique jumping-hour mechanism.'"

It may take some effort effort to tell the time with an Azimuth watch - most of its product line is deliberately unconventional - and therein lies its appeal. "Azimuth is an avant-garde company, it fits into our profile," says Lye. "Taking a bit longer to tell the time is a small inconvenience to pay for vanity - everybody likes a conversation piece."

He adds, "Since 2000, a lot of new watch companies have come up with me-too products. If one company closes, another one will take its place - the industry has lost some of its allure. For example, Rolex makes a million watches a year - do you still think it's bespoke? We focus on design, the technical aspect and how unique a watch is."

Lye and Long still have many more ideas on the drawing board. Another car-themed piece is in the works, while Lye is only half-jesting when he says he would like to make a watch called the Ugly Boy. "We'll give it the tagline: A watch face that only a mother could love," he says.

So far, Lye has only encountered one instance of a "fake" Azimuth watch. "In Hong Kong, I came across a Bombardier I - it was an exact replica, except it was missing the Azimuth branding on the back, and they didn't use a vintage movement. It was selling for S$500."

The company's current bestseller is the Back in Time model, featuring an anticlockwise movement.

Says Lye: "We took an existing mechanism, changed it and used it in a unique way. Why did we design a watch that moves anti- clockwise? Because we can." He adds, "We invented a new mechanism but did not patent it. I'm hoping people will buy the watch and copy it - that would be like a stamp of approval."

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