Kosovo Refugee Cracks Exclusive World of Swiss Watches

There are many rags-to-riches success stories involving Albanian immigrants in Switzerland, where four players in the national football team are of Albanian or Kosovo origin - Granit Xhaka, Valon Behrami, Xherdan Shaqiri and Blerim Dzemaili.

But none of those stories is quite as remarkable as that of Rexhep Rexhepi, 31, who has achieved extraordinary success in his second homeland in the exclusive world of very, very high-end watches.

Obsessed with Swiss watches since he was a child, each time his father, who worked in Switzerland in the 1990s, came home, he "was amazed by the sound of his Tissot watch", an Albanian website based in Switzerland, Albinfo, recalls.

Raised by his grandmother in Kosovo, he left the country as war erupted with Serbia and joined his father in Switzerland at the age of 12.

There, his childhood dreams about watches would come true, in a land famous for chocolate, banks, cuckoo clocks - and watches. 

His father wanted him to be a lawyer - but the moment Rexhepi arrived in Geneva airport and passed some watch shops, it was obvious that watches were his passion.

As far as he was concerned, Switzerland "was like Disneyland," the website quotes Rexhepi as remembering.

However, joining the exclusive industry in Switzerland was not easy for a refugee.

At 15, Rexhepi joined the prestigious Patek Philippe watchmaking school as a trainee, which is how he started his journey.  

After working with several other watchmakers,  he then established his own company AkriviA in 2012.

"It's a rare occasion for an independent upstart to captivate an old-fashioned and conservative industry like Swiss watchmaking," the American watch magazine Watch Time noted in a profile published in...

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