“I wish in high school they told me I could be a watchmaker,” Mark says. “It was a dying industry in America.”

“I thought it was all in Switzerland,” Erik, another student, pipes up.

“I was someone who wanted to do it in high school and I would tell guidance counselors about it and they would say it wasn't a possibility,” Alex adds.

A couple decades ago, there would have been more options for watch-obsessed high schoolers like Mark, Erik, and Alex. But the number of watch schools in the U.S. is dwindling. Over the past decade, programs at Oklahoma State, which ran for 72 years, and Saint Paul College in Minnesota closed down. There were 44 watchmaking schools in North America in 1975, according to the Herald Tribune. There are nine now, including Patek Philippe’s.

Larry Pettinelli, Patek Philippe’s U.S. CEO, explains that the 1970s were a turning point for the watchmaking industry. At the start of that decade, the quartz (digital) watch was invented in Japan, and cheap easy-to-make watches flooded the market. “Everyone thought the mechanical watch industry was going to die out,” he says. “So students went into different industries.” Without new enrollment, schools closed down.

A watchmaker wearing sanitary finger gloves closely inspecting a watch.

This is a problem for Patek Philippe, which makes some of the most extravagantly complicated watches in the world. A top-tier Patek—the kind Future dedicates songs to—is known as a “Grand Complication.” (A “complication” is any feature on a watch beyond the time.) A Patek can tell you what the month is, what day you’re at in that month, the particular day of the week, and, just to show off, what phase of the moon cycle you’re currently in. Patek’s whole thing is famously complicated watches. The most expensive timepiece ever sold at auction is a Patek Philippe pocket watch with 24 complications, including a map of New York City’s stars, indicators for sunrise and sunset, and an alarm that replicates the chimes from Big Ben. It sold for $24 million.

Further complicating Patek’s business is that it wants to make more of its stupidly complicated watches. The $67.9 million global watch market is growing—particularly the hunger for incredibly expensive watches—and Patek wants to match as much of the new demand as it can. The brand recently upped its production to 60,000 watches a year, from a number closer to 50,000. (The pieces start at just above 10 grand and go all the way up to $110,000, or, scarier: "price upon request"). Patek will have to service every single one of these pieces at one point—it’s staked its entire brand on doing just that. Every watch comes with the guarantee Patek will make it new again. Ad campaigns promise, “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.” But in order to keep that vow, Patek needs to train the next generation of watchmakers. “Eventually, [customers will] say I'm not paying $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 for a timepiece when it takes two years to get it serviced,” Pettinelli says.