Over the intervening years Bowling has come to know Kobold well, as his magazine has reviewed Kobold products and run the company's ads. (In the trade magazine world, the line between ad and edit is thin and hazy and ultimately matters little since watch people mostly just like to look at the pretty pictures anyway.) Bowling says Kobold used to pop in with a bag of watches, sometimes having sold one out on the street--and often with a fanciful tale or two about his larger-than-life endeavors. Explorer, Nazi hunter, tactical driving instructor--Bowling has heard them all. He'd say, "I'm gonna run a marathon with Ranulph Fiennes…" and Bowling would find himself thinking, "No way. This guy tells some tall tales!"
"Then I turn on the television and there's Michael, and under his talking head, the words 'International Explorer.' I thought, 'Oh, my God. This is just like Big Fish."
And by that he means, maybe reality never really ends at all.
"Ever since then, everything he tells me I believe."
Truth be told, it's not that simple. The reason Kobold is now known to viewers of the Outdoor Life Network as an international explorer is that, yes, he did run a marathon with Ranulph Fiennes--the 2003 New York City Marathon. It was Fiennes's seventh marathon in seven days, a remarkable feat for anyone, even the World's Greatest Explorer, but even more so for a man who had undergone double bypass surgery just three and a half months prior. Kobold was by then Fiennes's good chum--he had even helped Fiennes track down a Nazi war criminal. His primary role was as a translator of old German documents, which isn't exactly James Bond stuff, but--you know--Big Fish, right?
Anyway, Kobold ran with Fiennes as an act of camaraderie and probably also, you have to think, as a smart little bit of self-promotion. After the race, the media were clamoring for Fiennes, but he quickly returned to England, leaving Kobold to answer questions. An Outdoor Life producer called Kobold and asked if he could, in fact, stand in for Fiennes for some segments being taped. One, for instance, was about polar exploration. Kobold has never explored a pole, nor seen much of any wilderness, but when asked if he'd ever been anywhere cold or forbidding, he said he had been to Alaska. Good enough! And so Kobold imparted some frosty wisdom and was forever imprinted in television history as an international explorer. He also taped a bit about mountain gorillas. He has never seen one outside of a zoo.
The trip to Alaska? It was a cruise.
This may all sound like extraneous color, the kind of life detail that fascinates mostly magazine writers, but in fact it's entirely central to Michael Kobold's success as a watchmaker. Who Kobold is and claims to be cannot be separated from his product. Without the former, there is no latter. In the opinion of his mentor, Gerd Lang, Kobold's watches aren't really that special. This is not a knock on his watches. It simply means that they aren't any more remarkable than Tag Heuers or Omegas or any other big chunky manly watches crafted of steel, adorned with tickers and dials, and sold for four figures. They all fly high, go deep, and last long. What's remarkable is that most of these companies are gigantic concerns based on the Continent and backed by vaults of cash. Kobold is owned by a 27-year-old who lives in a $700 apartment.
Kobold, of course, doesn't agree with any of this. He'll tell you all about his special Soarway case or the fact that he uses screws where others use pins, but really, what's exceptional about a Kobold watch is the way it is marketed and sold. Companies like Rolex and Omega spend millions on celebrities and ad campaigns and end up with photos of Jim Nantz in a mock turtleneck. Kobold shoots his ads himself and pays nothing to his brand ambassadors. Because he sells mostly over the Internet or by phone (a small network of authorized retailers accounts for 15 percent of sales), nearly every dollar from sales goes to his top line.
It's possible that even Kobold doesn't necessarily think his watches are better than the competition. As long as they're equal and people want to buy them, who cares? Isn't it a reality of marketing that it's all about massaging the truth? Did clutching a Bud Light (NYSE:BUD) ever actually make a man more fun to hang with?
"Some people do think he's a con man," says Jack Roseman, who chuckles at the idea. "But there's always enough truth there that you can't deny him."
Which brings me back to Big Fish. I was talking to Gary George Girdvainis a few days after speaking with Bowling. We got onto the topic of Kobold's elaborate tales, and he said this: "I saw him on TV once commenting on gorillas. I asked him, 'What the hell were you doing talking about gorillas?' He said, 'I'm not sure. They never asked if I was a gorilla expert."
By the way: You know what Kobold means in German?
Mischievous little gremlin.
One summer afternoon in Pittsburgh, Kobold stands up from his couch and walks me to the door that separates his company from his father's. On the other side of the wall from Kobold Watch is a large and immaculate room where a woman in goggles is doing something noisy with a pneumatic tool. Around the room are valves and gauges and oddball steel concoctions for trucks, ships, and space shuttles. "A lot of U.S. attack subs have Kobold instruments," Kobold says. "It sounds exciting but it's quite boring. Whereas we sound boring but we're quite exciting."
"I suppose if I stuck with the family I'd be the heir to all this," he says, pointing at a dim room full of doodads and thingamajigs. "I walked away from it. My father was upset. He didn't believe you could sell anything over the Internet or that anyone would buy a Kobold watch."
