LONDON — For Stephen Forsey, the Grand Sonnerie that he and Robert Greubel are presenting this week at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie in Geneva reflects the 30 years that each man has spent in watchmaking.
After all, the piece took them 11 of those years to make.
“It sounds like one of the very best pocket watches from the past, but in a wristwatch,” Mr. Forsey, the co-founder of Greubel Forsey, said during an interview in London last month.
The timepiece has 935 parts packed into a titanium case 1.7 inches by 0.6 inches, with visible hammers and gongs on the dial, an hour and quarter striking mechanism, minute repeater, inclined tourbillon — and a price tag of 1.15 million Swiss francs, or about $1.12 million, before taxes.
“We push each other forward all the time,” Mr. Forsey of his partnership with Mr. Greubel, which began in 1992. Previously he worked on prototypes for IWC, while Mr. Forsey restored Asprey watches.
Continue reading the main storyAs a team, they first worked at Renaud & Papi, now part of Audemars Piguet, and then began their own business in 2004. Since then, they have won awards from the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, worked with Harry Winston on its Opus 6 timepiece and secured investment from the Swiss luxury giant Richemont.
Their different backgrounds gave them a substantial start, Mr. Forsey said.
“We analyzed what had existed historically in watchmaking — because Robert had a strong background of French watchmaking, and I had a background of English watchmaking and we were working in Switzerland — so we were able to pull together our different experiences and drew up what we really wanted it to do: to bring something new, yet safeguard skills,” he added.
An example is the timepiece Mr. Forsey usually wears, a Quantième Perpétuel à Équation, which integrated a perpetual calendar with season, solstice and equinox indicators. He said they had worked on the watch for eight years, “so there’s a lot of toil in there.”
For Mr. Forsey, defining clear roles for the two has been crucial to the company’s success.
“Robert oversees the creative side and, as he also has strong experience on the management side, he oversees the management strategy and finance, while I oversee the technical side with the team,” he said.
“We can do more with two,” he continued, as “we always have a sounding board, which is crucial when we are working confidentially on something. Whereas if we were just on our own we would only have our own intuition and vision, and at some point we could go wrong. Whereas as two, we are stronger.”
And faster. “It’s quicker to define the specification of what we want a new piece to do, so we can move forward more efficiently,” he said.
Having two watchmakers at the helm — rather than the more common team of a watchmaker and a commercial specialist — has led them to focus on design rather than finances, Mr. Forsey said. And it has affected the way they have developed the company, he added, referring to their decision to resist retailers’ calls in 2007 for an entry-level watch “because we didn’t feel comfortable with the idea.”
Greubel Forsey’s workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, a 17th-century farmhouse and a glass atelier, plays a practical and inspirational role in the business, too.
The glass facade helps keep the building’s temperature consistent, important for watchmaking, while the glass interior walls create an open space, designed, Mr. Forsey said, to encourage interaction among the teams. “We wanted a more human living space than a pure office, as we are always encouraging our people to give extra and engage in the whole company,” he said.
Mr. Forsey’s office is in the farmhouse, while Mr. Greubel works from his office in Le Locle, a 15-minute drive away, so they meet regularly but it can be a little as once a week. “It gives us freedom,” Mr. Forsey said. “We know we have parameters. For creation, you need a certain tranquillity and need your own environment to be able to create.”
Collaborations have been a large part of that environment. After Richemont took a 20 percent stake in the company in 2006, Greubel Forsey called on Richemont project managers to supervise the farmhouse restoration and atelier construction as, Mr. Forsey said, “we are not builders.” They also worked with the sculptor Willard Wigan to incorporate his work into their 2012 Art Piece 1, which, Mr. Forsey said, introduced contemporary and fine art collectors to the brand.
The business has grown steadily while limiting its output and adding only five to 10 employees per year, which permits the duo to shift focus quickly.
After the 2008 global downturn, for example, “overnight we were able to shift the focus from North America, which fell into stagnation for six months, and were able to put more focus back to Asia and other regions where we had been working but hadn’t been able to supply them, because America had been very strong,” Mr. Forsey said.
Expanding their market across Japan now is high on the agenda, following the opening last August in Tokyo of the first Greubel Forsey Gallery. Archive watches are on display, with only one piece for sale (Mr. Forsey declined to say which one).
“We know we have a small number of collectors but no representative close to them,” he said. “It’s difficult because it’s such a different, unique culture and they need reassurance that we’re a long-term, serious player.”
Also, the company wants to bring all of its watchmaking functions in-house. Ninety percent of its work is done there now, but, as Mr. Forsey said, a problem with a supplier’s component could mean a watch would not be delivered, “which puts an immediate stress on our whole structure because we are small, independent and only have our means.”
It’s part of what Mr. Forsey described as the business’s most important goals: “To stay authentic to what we do and to maintain our path.”
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