Reviving French Watchmaking: The Story of Pequignet and the Resurgence of Local Production

2023-10-29 04:38:00

With Migros – the watchmakers’ magnifying glass – on her eye, Sandrine, forty years in the profession, assembles a caliber, the internal part of a watch, using pliers and a small torque screwdriver, “the one that generates movement”. From a distance, it looks like silver glitter. Up close, we can see microscrews shining in the light of this beautiful October day, entering through the huge bay windows of the Pequignet manufacturing workshop. It is here, between a section of Jura forest and a large field where cows graze indifferent to the passing of time, that the brand founded in 1973 by Émile Pequignet resurrects the watch made in France.

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A made in France which had almost disappeared since the 1970s, to the point that today 98% of watches sold in France are made abroad. It is an understatement to say that Peguignet, the only French fine watchmaking manufacturer, is a resistance fighter. It produces nearly 3,000 timepieces each year from A to Z in its Morteau workshops, and above all designs and manufactures its own mechanisms in-house. Like the Caliber Royal launched in 2011, which required six years of research and marked the renewal of the house. “The caliber for a watch is like the engine of a car, eexplains Julien, a trained engineer in the SME’s fine watchmaking design office – the only one existing in France. Currently, we are the only ones manufacturing our own engines. Most French watch brands use movements made in Switzerland or Asia…”

But the time has perhaps struck again for French watchmaking. This know-how is in fact one of the five industrial activities that the public authorities wish to see relocated to France, along with toys, textiles, shoes and bicycles. “The planets are aligned for us to achieve this, explains Guillaume Adam, general secretary of France Horlogerie (70 companies manufacturing French watches, components and large-volume watchmaking). Firstly because the demand has been there since Covid: 35% of French people are ready to pay 5 to 10% more for a watch made in France. Then because more and more French brands are buying a caliber manufactured by Pequignet and using it as a strong marketing argument. » This is the case, for example, for luxury watches Pierre Lannier or Apose.

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However, a 100% French watch is currently only a pipe dream because certain essential components – such as the hairspring, a spring used to beat time – have not been manufactured in France for almost thirty years. At Pequignet, we swear to source as locally as possible – in the Jura Arc which runs from Besançon to the Swiss border – for the approximately 350 parts that make up a watch. “All of the components of the three movements are sourced less than 80 kilometers from Morteau, specifies Dani Royer, the operations director, and 72% of these components are French. » The Mortuacian house also intends to reintegrate other know-how within it when possible, as its president, Hugues Souparis, explains: “We are on the verge of achieving this with the dials… We don’t know it, but in France we no longer make dials even though they’re the first thing you see on a watch, right? »