The Berg Story

How it all started

Berg was started in July of 2016 with a vision of delivering beautiful watches for him and her, while showing the world the history of Norwegian fashion and its materials, but using it in a new and modern way.

So why salmon leather you might ask? During World War 2 our founder Paal Friele Grung's grandmother used salmon leather for her shoes, while the soles were made out of wood. It was the wood that wore out and not the salmon leather, so it made sense to start with salmon leather and create straps out of this mysterious and unique material. Salmon leather is actually 10 times stronger than regular leather, so it will also patina in a nicer way.

The start of the journey

Back in July of 2016 Paal quit his part-time job to go all-in on creating the ultimate fashion watch and fixing the problems that he and his friends were experiencing with the fashion watches they had. For the first 4 months he worked on the design and finding the right factory with focus on fair trade and quality. That is why Paal traveled to Hong Kong and China to find one that had everything he was looking for and to build a personal relationship with the factory.

After picking the best components that would fit our design, it took almost 5 months before the first watch prototypes arrived, as some of the components had to be custom built at our Ronda movement factory in Switzerland. But on March 12th we launched Berg on Kickstarter and reached the goal of 150 000 NOK in just 38 minutes. In total Berg raised over 880 000 NOK ($110 000) on Kickstarter, which was a new Norwegian crowdfunding record for watches.

Our inspiration

We wanted to create an elegant and minimalist timepiece, but with something that showed our Norwegian roots. That is why we chose to use salmon leather, a material that had been used for centuries in Norway for leather products, such as shoes.

Salmon leather is stronger than regular leather as it has cross fibers instead of straight fibers. It gave the watches the perfect look which reflected on our inspiration that is the raw and beautiful nature of Norway. The roughness of the salmon skin is like the raw nature of the mountains rising up from the fjords, while the simple and elegant beauty of the watch is the fjords. 

Our vision

We want to tell the story of Norwegian fashion through time. Sharing our love for Norwegian minimalism and Norwegian nature, engraving Norwegian national symbols at the back of the case, using Norwegian materials and sharing it with the rest of the world.