STORY: Before David Henderson-Stewart took over Russia’s Raketa watch factory, he had no passion for watches. In fact, he didn’t even wear one.”My idea was just to find a Soviet brand, just any brand. It could have been clothes, it could have been a hoover, it could have been just anything.”The British former lawyer was interested in Soviet industrial design, and now counts Russian President Vladimir Putin among the brand’s fans.Putin wears a watch made by Raketa’s bespoke offshoot, Imperial Peterhof Factory.”I thought Soviet industrial design was really, really cool. It was very unique, something that I had never seen in the West.”On his first visit to the factory outside St Petersburg, Henderson-Stewart says its few remaining watchmakers were huddled in winter coats over vintage equipment.”In the big times, in the 70s, the 80s, Raketa was a massive factory, there were 7000 watchmakers, they produced more than 5 million mechanical watches every year. When I first stepped into Raketa, it was a dying manufacture with not more than 25 very old watchmakers working in terrible conditions. It was winter, I remember it was very, very cold.”In the 16 years since his takeover, Raketa has pivoted to high‑end watches with an emphasis on “Made in Russia” credentials that has paid off.Public records show Raketa posted profit of $1.4 million in 2025, over 15% more than in 2024.While Western sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine have squeezed trade and shuttered foreign luxury, domestic demand rose for the largely unsanctioned company.”We don’t depend on the West for components.”And sales continued to grow in Europe and the Middle East.Now more than 200 employees use refurbished machinery, continuing the rare practice of making all mechanical parts in-house.”It would have been much more logical just to shut down the factory, to buy every single component from Switzerland, from China, and just to maybe assemble it. That would have been much more logical. But it was not interesting for me. The soul of the project of Raketa is the manufacture, our manufacture is 300 years old, so we had to keep it.”
