Laurent Ferrier: It Could Be a Racing Watch

That's not to suggest that these brands make watches destined straight for museum collections — far from it! Even the richest museums would hardly have an allocated budget for wrist watches. What makes these watches museum pieces then? When you first set eyes on them and on closer inspection, you're left with the impression that they've been made to such a high standard that they're fit for display in a museum.

In other words, they boast an impressive appearance and an impeccable or near impeccable level of detail. Very few modern brands manufacture watches worthy of this title. There's Parmigiani Fleurier, Vacheron Constantin, Breguet, De Bethune, and Vianney Halter. There was also Daniel Roth up until recently (the company is no longer active), and of course we can't forget Patek Philippe. Well, Patek is a very significant name to have on this list, given that we're going to discuss Laurent Ferrier.

Laurent Ferrier started out his career as a watchmaker at Patek before going on to found a watch brand that bears his own name, and luckily he didn't walk away from it like so many others have in recent years. As a matter of fact, Ferrier didn't just start out there, almost his entire career is connected with Patek. If he hadn't left the famous Geneva-based company to start his own watch company three years before he was eligible to retire, he would certainly have become a veteran Patek pensioner.

What would make someone want to leave a company just three years before retirement, having worked there for 37 years and risen up its ranks to become head of product development? A chance — a once-in-a-lifetime chance. It all apparently started with a completely informal conversation. Contactable sources make no comment, but there won't be a chance to contact Laurent Ferrier directly for his version any time soon. We'll get back to that point shortly, but first we need to begin by outlining Laurent Ferrier's second life and lifelong passion.

We're talking about motor racing. Mr. Ferrier devoted all of his free time and some of his workdays to it, which was of course agreed in advance with management and only during the racing season. As a side note, a typical racing weekend starts on a Friday to get the sports car ready, then training sessions and the qualifiers are on Saturday, Sunday is race day, and Monday is for working on the vehicle after the race and analyzing the results.

After graduating from watchmaking school and working for a couple of years at Patek, Laurent Ferrier was so passionate about racing that he left for a job in the auto industry to get closer to the action. He competed in endurance racing, including 24 Hours of Le Mans since 1975 — the main event in the endurance calendar. It was at Le Mans that he met and befriended the French entrepreneur François Servanin.

One day in 1979 they agreed to team up, and lo and behold! Sponsored by Servanin, Laurent Ferrier took third place in the overall rankings of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. All the news written about the race couldn't help but mention that the famous American actor Paul Newman came second, who was also a passionate racer. That was a first for Laurent Ferrier, who won a decent amount of prize money instead of spending a fortune at Le Mans.

It turns out that some of this money was well spent: he bought a stainless-steel Nautilus from Patek and asked for "Le Mans 1979" to be engraved on the caseback, which he gifted to François Servanin. Servanin was overcome with emotion, which isn't hard to imagine, and he expressed his gratitude in the heat of the moment with something along the lines of: "One day, we’re going to create our own brand."

Laurent Ferrier had been back working at Patek for a number of years by then, where he was also involved in the launch of the very same Nautilus watches, so he knew what kind of gift he was giving. However, times were tough for the watch industry, now referred to as the "quartz revolution" or "quartz crisis".

It clearly wasn't the best time to decide to set up your own company, especially given that Ferrier himself had no interest in quartz or electronic watches whatsoever. He was interested in mechanics, and it certainly wasn't their heyday. The right time didn't come until 2008. François Servanin finally left his own business and decided to honor what he said he would do a long time ago.

He decided to invest his own funds in a venture and take care of the business side of the new Laurent Ferrier watch company, leaving what the actual watches would look like to Laurent Ferrier to decide for himself. The team also included Laurent Ferrier's son Christian who had worked on movement development at Roger Dubuis. Seeing as they weren't planning to mass-produce Laurent Ferrier watches, the company didn't establish its own facility to manufacture components, and relied on contractors for them instead.

After all, this was easy to arrange in Switzerland. The watch movements used as bases were produced at La Fabrique du Temps (the atelier has been owned by LVMH since 2011, hence why the company has since been renamed La Fabrique du Temps - Louis Vuitton). It was founded by the renowned experts in complicated mechanical watches Enrico Barbasini and Michel Navas, primarily specializing in tourbillons.

They started with Gérald Genta, worked for Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, and Franck Muller — led by the remarkable Pierre-Michel Golay until a dispute arose between Franck Muller and CEO of Franck Muller Watchland Vartan Sirmakes. Barbasini and Navas also established the movement factory BNB Concept together with Mathias Buttet in 2004. Their biggest customer was Hublot from the outset, headed by Jean-Claude Biver at the time.

BNB Concept caused quite a stir with its whirlwind rise at the beginning of the 2000s, followed by its shocking bankruptcy in 2010. Barbasini and Nava had already left by then, who didn't wait for the company to collapse before setting up their own atelier. La Fabrique du Temps had just started making movements at the time, so Laurent Ferrier's order was very gratefully received. They jointly developed an unusual caliber that had a tourbillon equipped with double balance springs. Laurent Ferrier made sure the factory created it his way.

He wanted both the movement and the watch as a whole to be neo-classical. The balance with the two balance spring was supplied by Precision Engineering AG (owned by H. Moser & Cie.). The movement's architecture and top-notch finishing was reminiscent of the chronometric calibres used in tourbillon pocket watches manufactured in the Vallée de Joux in the early 20th century, while everyone else reckoned it would be better to create a modern high-tech style of movement.

Nevertheless, Laurent Ferrier had been given carte blanche and he used his freedom of choice to make exactly the kind of watch he wanted to make. The inaugural model in the newly formed watch brand's collection — the Galet Classic Tourbillon Double Spiral — was given a 41 mm neo-classical dress watch case. The design and feel of the watch are in its name. "Galet" is the French word for "pebble" and a traditional way to describe a watch case with smooth rounded edges.

The resulting watch was classic in terms of its design, feel, as well as its mechanics, which is probably why it received such an extraordinarily warm reception from the public and the experts. The watch turned heads at the Geneva Time Exhibition (GTE), where it was first unveiled by the brand in 2010.  You had to squeeze your way through hordes of Chinese buyers and agents crowded around the stand to catch a glimpse of the watch, never mind hold it in your hand.

It was an undeniable success, consolidated by the Men's Watch Prize won at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève (the company has already won a total of three prizes at this prestigious watchmaking competition). Laurent Ferrier presented the elegant Classic Secret Tourbillon Double Spiral dress watch in 2011, which has a painted dial (the miniature painting was chosen by the client) concealed by two opaque sapphire dial crystals for curtains that swivel on a pivot like a fan. They can either be opened automatically at a set time or by pressing the push-button.

A year later, the Classic Micro-Rotor automatically wound by an off-centred micro-rotor appeared in the brand's collection, which made use of the natural escapement invented by Breguet with double direct-impulse escapement. This was followed by the practical Classic Traveller watch in 2013 with dual-time and date displays.

The brand celebrated its fifth anniversary by releasing the Micro-Rotor Square in a cushion-shaped case. It was the first serially produced stainless-steel watch in the brand's collection. Laurent Ferrier intended to add a watch with various different complications to the collection in 2017, and came up with the Montre École watch in a round 40 mm case with a new design, albeit thoroughly classic.

The initial Montre École Micro-Rotor models housed an automatic movement with a micro-rotor, and watches with a regulator layout were released alongside the models with a classic dial. The year after that, Laurent Ferrier introduced the hand-wound Montre École Annual Calendar watch, and the brand's most complicated model appeared in the collection in 2019 — the Montre École Minute Repeater.

Laurent Ferrier marked the 40th anniversary since his memorable win at Le Mans by releasing the Tourbillon Grand Sport. The brand's first sports watch comes on both an integrated steel bracelet (well hello there, Nautilus!) and on a relief rubber strap. The race goes on.