Equity Mag Jan_18 Book Folder

COLLECTOR'S PIECES
watch brand was registered in London where Edouard’s
brothers Alphonse and Frederic resided. Edouard
continued to stay in Guangzhou to coordinate the imports
while another brother, Gustave, was their watchmaker
manufacturer based out of Fleurier.
BOVET 2.0
Bovet has two distinctive periods of existence. The first
began in 1822 and continued into the middle of the 20th
century when the revolution in China took place in 1911
forcing Bovet to downsize its China operations, followed
by the two World Wars and a host of other factors meant
that production ceased in 1960. It wasn’t until 2001 when
Raffy who had already made a fortune from the
pharmaceutical business and was an avid collector himself,
decided to buy the brand and resurrect it.
Raffy spent the next few years building the brand as a true
manufacture that could rely on itself rather than third-party
suppliers for the components it requires to make timepieces.
This included buying the castle in Neuchatel where he set up
an assembly and engraving workshop, as well as the Dimier
1738 Manufacture de Haute Horlogerie Artisanale in
Tramelan that specialised in movement creation and the
Bovet 1822 Manufacture de Cadrans et de Sertissage in Planles-Ouates
which manufactures hand-crafted dials. The idea of
becoming self-reliant early on is also what allowed Raffy to
keep Bovet independent to this day. To further tap into the
brand’s pedigreed roots, he even renamed it as Bovet 1822.
THE MANUFACTURE
We visited the Dimier manufacture in Tramelan. It’s here
where a Bovet watch begins life as nothing more than a
few bits of metal in a workshop littered with industrial
tools and machines. We see a “stamping” machine that
presses down with a force of 30 tonnes to create the
base of the movement. Lab coat-suited technicians nearby
peer through Leica laser-guided magnifying machines to
inspect the plate for imperfections.
In a separate room, four people are engrossed in
polishing and engraving the movement – for a complex
engraving procedure, it can take nearly two days to finish
the bridges of the movement alone.
It’s in another room not far away where the most secretive
and perhaps the most important function of Bovet’s watch
manufacturing process takes place. It’s here where hairsprings
The front and caseback of
the Bovet Récital 20 Astérium
– or the beating heart of any movement – are manufactured.
Bovet is one of only a handful of watchmakers in Switzerland
who have the necessary tools and know-how to create this
very intricate component which is the core component of
the balance wheel and varies in length anywhere from
0.6mm to 0.07mm.
In another room, all the different components
manufactured across the facility are brought for the final
assembly. The day we visit, a lady was assembling the
Recital 20 Asterium timepiece, one of Bovet’s finest
tourbillon watches which has a total of 580 components
and costs $350,000. Adjacent is the R&D facility where
finished movements are subjected to strict quality control
checks to ensure that they’re up to spec.
The watchmaking atelier
at Château de Môtiers
The Dimier 1738
Manufacture in Tramelan
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EQUITY