News The new workshops are enabling the young company to continue its notable development and to create further jobs.
24 September 2009 marked the official opening of Vincent Bérard SA’s new watchmaking workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds, which is housed in a Neuchâtel farmhouse over 300 years old. The renovation of the farmhouse into a contemporary style respected the original architecture of the rooms, using materials such as wood and stone. This way of proceeding harmonises with the philosophy of the young brand, which produces time pieces using traditional handicraft methods: produced manually, without one single standard component. In this way, the new workshop does service to the peasant watchmakers of the 18th Century, the pioneers of the art of watchmaking in the Neuchâtel mountains, while remaining firmly rooted in its time.
The new workshops – the result of a three-year renovation period – which are situated above the metropolis of the watchmaking trade, on the edges of fields and forests, further characterise a new stage of development for the brand, and will consolidate their notable growth. Today the company, founded in 2003 by the artistic watchmaker Vincent Bérard and part of the Timex Group since 2006, has 20 employees. "It is our intention to employ between five and seven new members of staff in the next few years," explains Herbert Gautschi, director general of Vincent Bérard SA. The company attaches great importance to training, quite in line with the principle of fraternity which is so dear and close to the heart of Vincent Bérard.
At the same time, the brand has expanded its international sales: these days, the brand is sold by the most renowned retailers in the following countries: Switzerland, USA, Japan, Hong Kong, India, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and South-east Asia.
Thanks to the new workshops - perfectly equipped for the preparation, assembly and manual decoration of the components – Vincent Bérard SA will be able to guarantee the production of around one hundred timepieces per year.
Various festivities were held in the renovated rooms on 23 and 24 September to celebrate the official opening of the new creative watchmaking workshop of Vincent Bérard SA, including a gala dinner held on 24 September attended by a host of personalities from the world of watchmaking, collectors, representatives of the international press and distributors of the brand from various countries. In addition to the brand’s new workshops, the guests were shown the exclusive novelties from the Luvorene 2 and Talismane collections, and were treated to a review of the masterpieces created by the artistic watchmaker Vincent Bérard, such as the exclusively hand-made archetypes Quatre Saisons Carrosse and the previous Luvorene 1 and Luvorene Quatre Saisons collections.
October 26, 2009
