We are a high-end watch company based in the Vallée de Joux, Switzerland, led by Romain Gauthier who founded our brand in 2005.
Romain marries the know-how he has developed living, studying and working in this picturesque valley – the heart of fine Swiss watchmaking – with a no-compromise approach to haute horlogerie to create exceptional timepieces of pristine quality in limited numbers for collectors.
Our timepieces have been hailed for their eye-catching designs, innovative in-house movements and extremely high level of hand-finishing.
Watchmaking with a difference
A precision mechanic with over 20 years’ experience making components for the Swiss watch industry, Romain has a unique approach to watchmaking.
Drawing on his engineering expertise, he designs and creates timepieces featuring innovative movements with mechanisms, components and details like few others.
Creative freedom
We are an independent watch brand, but perhaps more important is our self-dependence.
Romain has made it a priority that we are able to create in house high-end timepiece movements from A to Z by investing in the best tools and machinery and by hiring and training the most talented watchmaking and production specialists at Manufacture Romain Gauthier.
This creative autonomy and control of our own watchmaking destiny mean we are better able to imagine and build thoroughly original timepieces that will make a watch collector’s heart beat that little bit more quickly.
Marrying performance with aesthetics
Romain’s appreciation for finding the right balance between function, reliability and aesthetics goes back to his youth when he became interested in the design and performance of music equipment.
He noticed some loud speakers, for example, performed well yet were not nice to look at, while some looked great but sounded less so. When he did find that perfect marriage between performance and aesthetics, it was to be admired.
Romain has carried this outlook into our watchmaking. For that reason, we complement the thoughtful design and meticulous machining of our movement components with an extraordinary level of hand-decoration.
Connecting with our roots
Romain grew up in the Vallée de Joux, the heart of haute horlogerie. Fine Swiss watchmaking is part of his make-up. This legacy infuses our timepieces via historical design touches and the deployment of time-honoured watchmaking techniques.
In saluting our heritage while at the same time imagining bold, new horizons in watchmaking, we aim to uphold our motto ‘The Evolution of Tradition’.
Creations with purpose
Everything we create is carefully considered. Nothing is arbitrary. We won’t make a new watchmaking complication just for the sake of it.
When Romain tackles a new complication – a caseback winding crown, a constant-force mechanism or a bidirectional micro-rotor – he does so because it makes sense for him personally.
They must be mechanisms around which he can express himself with his own watchmaking voice, something which can bear all the hallmarks of a Romain Gauthier creation in terms of engineering and finishing.
Quality the key
Romain possesses an acute sense of doing things the ‘right’ way – our standards are set ultra high and cutting corners is out of the question.
We do absolutely everything to create timepieces that are as beautiful, as reliable and as ingeniously engineered as possible.
Years are devoted to getting the design just right, months go into making the components, weeks are spent on finishing them by hand and days go into manually assembling and regulating the movements.
Our focus is on quality not quantity, therefore we only manufactred a limitied number of pieces per year.
