Benoît Mintiens trained as an industrial designer rather than a watchmaker, and his Antwerp company, Ressence, sets out to rethink how a mechanical watch shows the time.
How it began
Mintiens graduated in 1998 and worked as a consultant in Antwerp. His projects ranged from high-speed trains and aircraft interiors to luggage and medical devices. He added an MBA in 2003.
The watch he wanted did not exist, so he set out to join design thinking with mechanical watchmaking. In 2010 he founded Ressence and showed three working prototypes at Baselworld. A Zero Series of 50 pieces followed in 2011. The brand says it confirmed Ressence as a distinctive newcomer.
The idea
Every Ressence tells the time with the ROCS, the patented Ressence Orbital Convex System. A traditional dial puts hands on top of a fixed dial. The ROCS merges those layers into one moving surface of flush, curved discs. Graphical lines replace the hands, at the angles people are used to reading.
The sub-dials turn while the main disc carries them round, the brand says, rather like moons around a planet. The face therefore changes all the time. The module is driven by the minute axle of a customised self-winding base calibre.
There is no crown at 3 o’clock. Turning the caseback sets the time and winds the watch, which makes it as easy to wear on the right wrist as the left. As Benoît Mintiens, founder and creative mind, puts it: “The best way to envision the future of fine-watchmaking is by creating it.”
The watches
The TYPE 1 comes round, as the TYPE 1°, or squared, as the TYPE 1². On the TYPE 1° Round, three flush, inclined discs show the hours, seconds and day of the week. Each one has 212 components.
The TYPE 3 adds oil. Its upper chamber holds the ROCS in 3.57ml of oil, while the base calibre sits in a separate chamber filled with air. Oil and glass bend light in much the same way, so the dial seems to sit right under the crystal. Tiny magnets carry the minutes from the movement to the discs through a titanium membrane. The TYPE 3 won the Horological Revelation prize at Geneva’s Grand Prix d’Horlogerie in 2013.
The TYPE 2 takes on the crown itself. Its eCrown, an electro-mechanical system powered by light, sets the mechanical watch to the right time and is controlled by tapping the crystal. The TYPE 7 brought a GMT function and a titanium bracelet, both firsts for Ressence.
The house today
Ressence is based in Antwerp, at Meirbrug 1. In 2026 it introduced the TYPE 11, built around the RW-01. The brand calls it the first movement designed and developed by Ressence, made with a specialist Swiss movement developer.
The RW-01 is not round. Two barrels and a balance wheel form a triangle of three circles, echoing a Ressence dial, and give at least 60 hours of power reserve. For its 15th year, Ressence also published a book, Ahead of Time, that profiles 20 creative leaders. Across every TYPE, the aim is the same: to read the time as easily as words on paper.
At a glance
- Founded: 2010
- Founder: Benoît Mintiens, industrial designer
- Based in: Antwerp, Belgium
- Known for: the ROCS rotating-disc display, oil-filled watches, no crown
Sources: Ressence’s own website (Press, founder’s biography, Innovation, ROCS, Oil Filled, Magnetic Transmission, No Crown, eCrown, RW-01, TYPE 1° Round, TYPE 1², TYPE 2, TYPE 3, TYPE 7, TYPE 11, Contact).