Independents

vianney
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The point of view of an independent watchmaker

First of all, thank to all of you for these posts. Such a discussion is always meaningful for both the watch collectors and the watchmakers ;-)

The question of transmission over the generations of the timepieces that we are passionated in is very important and shall be IMHO be taken into account from the design of a watch.

There are three ways for doing so :

1 : using parts and components produced on a large scale, so that it will be always possible to find spare parts in the future just by sourcing them from suppliers' stocks. In that respect, implementing ETA movement in watches is a reasonable manner to secure a quite easy after-sales follow-up.

However I guess this is not what our customers are awaiting from us :-(  !!

2 : another option is a derivation from 1:  It is producing watches with specially developped movements but in so big quantities that a certain number of pieces produced can be sacrified and used as a stock of spare parts for the surviving pieces. This can ensures the availability of spare parts for quite a long time.

Once again, this is probably not what our customers are awaiting from us. In addition, as independant we are not sized and orgnized for mass-production :-(( !!!!

3: the third way (my way ) is designing and producing  watches liable to be serviced or repaired by a reasonably talented watchmaker in one century (or more) from now.

All my watches are designed and manufactured with consideration to this. Any component used inside our movements can be produced if necessary by a single watchmaker using traditionnal watchmaking tools.

That is the reason why I do not use so called "modern" technology that could turn "obsolete" in 20 or 30 years from now. I use only established technologies that can be repeated by an isolated watchmaker in his workshop, pretty much as I did 20 years ago when restoring very old watches and clocks.

As an example, I am quite reluctant to the very recent silicium based tech (although I am convinced that this is interesting in terms of producing very accurate micro-components). As a matter of fact, this technology requires industrial equipments similar to those used in the chip industry. This will be out of reach for an isolated watchmaker and perhaps even the process itself will be forgotten in 100 years !

Considere that it is already impossible to repair a Hamilton Pulsar watch (the first LED watch) that is only 35 year old !

Our concern for the long-term future of our watches is one of the reasons that made us (Ph Dufour, K. Voutilainen, St. Forsey and myself) gather in Time Aeon so as to train a new generation of watchmakers able not only to create new watches of tomorrow but also to restore, repair and service timepieces of today.

All of this ensures very long-term follow-up even if one can foresee that the cost of this restoration could become tremedous ;-)

Lat but not least, after-sales is a serious problem,  humourously nicknamed by F.P. Journe as "the cancer of watchmaking" : even if we do not want to take care of it we HAVE to take care of it.

And the most efficient way I found to make this burden as light as possible is to design and produce VERY reliable watches, so that they come back to the workshop as less often as possible !

I hope the above will be of interest for all The Purists.

Best regards

Vianney Halter

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