French brands

Y'avait Beau Bleu aussi ou un truc du genre

i also know 2 micro-brands with Charlie Paris and Wolbrook

i like both quite a lot

Wolbrook indeed. I see many nice affordable watches on their website !

Why do they have an English name as a French company?

Not saying it to be accusatory, but I found it odd.

An example of something like this would be Larsen & Toubro, which sounds Scandinavian AF, but is actually an Indian company! (The reason behind the name being, 2 Danish engineers who found refuge in India during WW2 & stayed)

Thanks for sharing this.

Among independents, we can mention Théo Auffret, Jean-Baptiste Viot and my favourite Pascal Coyon. I'm a little rusty so will have left out more.

Then of course there's Daniel Roth, who was born in France and went to work for Swiss-owned French name Breguet in the 1970s. Ludovic Ballouard is another who upped sticks and moved east of the border. Cartier is Swiss-owned but still headquartered in Paris.

As of now I own a Yema Superman 500 and a Lip Montre Diode from Isabelle Hebey. She was to industrial design what Andy Warhol was to art and Gerald Genta to watches.

Very useful information 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

NY Times: Belgium Emerges as a Source of Watchmaking Creativity

Dont forget Wolbrook/Douglas.

Also, AWAKE and BALMONT

Le Forban Securite Mer is wonderful.

Those who thinks that the Swiss watch industry suffered during the quartz revolution should take a look at what happened in France where it was literally annihilated.

I'm doing my part in helping reviving the French watch industry since I own 3 Yema.

Including the Wristmaster which is my favorite

I wasn't aware of the number of French watchmakers that you've listed there. I am a fan of Yema despite my recent reduction in numbers. The Flygraf that I own is one of my favourite watches. A simple design, very good build quality that I bought for less than £500.

I love the Pequignet watch you've pictured, beautiful design that I'd very much like to have.

Very nice indeed !

Merci Monsieur !

I worked with L&T and its country of origin wasn’t clear to me until I figured the L and the T 😀

I can’t tell why Wolbrook chose this name. The fact I thought Anordain was French whereas it is Scottish; Bremont, French or Swiss whereas it is English ; U-Boat, German but it is Italian; Longio, Swiss or Italian, and certainly not Chinese… 🤷‍♂️

Yk thats a good point!

if I remember right, Bremont was a name given as tribute; the founders were into planes and had to land at a farmers house bc of bad weather (it was a 1930s biplane) and they were astounded by this random farmer who tinkered with clocks and named the company in respect of him

Two things:

why did the French watch industry tank so hard? (No cartier pun intended)

I have never owned a Yema but ive heard their quality assurance and customer service is horrendous. Fixing those would be integral to success

If I knew, I would be a billionaire business consultant 😎 The article I am referring to mentions a "50-year long drought". I suppose, a mix of the Quartz crisis, a lack of domestic caliber manufacturers, a wrong market positioning (medium-low with exceptions) vs. local production costs. I am just speculating.

As for Yema, I own one and never had any issues. Dealing with customer service is rarely a satisfying experience. Lucky me, the watches I bought work just fine and the ones that did not were Seiko mods bought on Etsy.

It got annihilated (like in the UK or in Italiy) because it was in a lower tier than the swiss market. It was a mass market for everyday's use and quartz just replaced it in the customer's eye.

I can also add the lack of concentration, unlike what led to the swatch group in 1983, wich was already the reunion of two groups of watch/parts/movement makers.

It was a smaller market, with just 5 millions watches produced a year, small companies (beside LIP) specialised in parts and scattered accross the country. France Ebauches was an attempt at concentrating movement makers, but too little, too late.

At last, considering Yema, the QC / CS issues are largely from the past nowadays. But reputation sticks longuer than facts, as you know it.

I have two french watches. A Cartier Dos Santos and recently I also purchased a Time Changer because of its quirky mechanics - https://thetimechanger.com/en/

I don't care about watch snobs, I have a CW, Casio and Farer in my collection and I love them all :)

Kinda ironic to see that France standardized or tried to standardize watch stuff so late when that’s the country that was so adamant with the metric system!