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Special Report: A Cut Above: Watches

Journe Brings It All Under One Roof

GENEVA — Housed in a former gas-lamp factory built in 1892, a short walk from central Geneva, Montres Journe is the only watch manufacturer remaining in the heart of the Swiss watchmaking capital.

François-Paul Journe, the founder of the brand, moved his production facilities into the converted atelier in 2000. If he takes a long-term view when he looks ahead, it is partly because he keeps one eye on history — booms and busts included.

“I made my first watch in 1982,” he said during an interview. “By now, we are accustomed to crises in this industry.”

As one of the few independent watchmakers to have survived several of those crises, Mr. Journe, 53, has the confidence of a veteran sailor who has weathered a few storms.

“To understand why we do what we do, you must first know where we have come from,” he said.

Growing up in Marseilles, Mr. Journe was, by his own admission, an unruly student at the horology school he entered at age 14. Still, four years later he was working at his uncle’s watch-restoration workshop in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area of Paris and spending weekends handcrafting pocket watches.

“In the 1980s, I had no money to buy parts,” he said. “I made myself everything by hand, even the watch case.”

By the end of 1990s, Mr. Journe had left France to set up in Geneva.

“Back then, we used suppliers for most of our components,” he said. “That did not please me, because I did not control the entire production process.”

Two months ago, Montres Journe took full ownership of Les Cadraniers de Genève, a small dial maker it had partly owned since 2000 in partnership with the jeweler Harry Winston.

“This is an extremely strategic acquisition for us,” Mr. Journe said. “It is part of our policy of control.”

Today Journe produces fewer than 1,000 timepieces a year, making everything except the wristband in-house.

“The dial is the face of the watch,” Mr. Journe said. “If there is a shortage, our production could come to a halt. We cannot take that risk.”

Les Cadraniers, also based in Geneva, has 18 employees and specializes in making high-end dials in composite materials and a variety of colors. It has strict controls on quality, according to Stéphane Cornioley, its managing director, “to reduce the risk of defects.”

Journe’s dials are assembled in a complex process, sometimes involving more than 15 components.

“In making a high-quality dial, there is a 60 percent risk of defect,” Mr. Journe said. “Quality is not controlled, it is manufactured. To have quality, you must carefully manage all stages of production.”

The dial company had its roots in one of the industry’s periodic hiccups, about a decade ago, when high demand and limited production capacity led to a serious dial shortage.

At the height of the shortage, “the brand Gérald Genta closed its doors, leaving a handful of its dial makers unemployed,” Mr. Journe said.

He and Harry Winston hired the Genta dial makers to form Les Cadraniers in 2000.

“We seized the opportunity to preserve both their team and their know-how,” Mr. Journe said.

Maximilian Büsser, now renowned as the founder of the watch brand Maximilian Büsser & Friends, was then the managing director of Harry Winston’s watch business.

“At the time, the whole industry was exploding,” Mr. Büsser said by telephone. “Sales were soaring and suppliers could not follow. Harry Winston’s watch production was small then, with around 1,000 pieces per year.”

A brand that produces in small quantities is at the mercy of suppliers, who in times of high demand can be saturated with orders from bigger producers, leaving their smaller customers in the cold.

“By integrating Les Cadraniers, we made sure we maintained quality and met our delivery deadlines,” Mr. Büsser said.

Today, there are signs that, despite the industry slump in 2009 caused by the global financial crisis, similar shortages may again be around the corner.

“Emerging from this crisis has been violent,” Mr. Büsser said. “There has been an incredibly high progression in sales after a major slowdown. We expect there will be a shortage of everything.”

For Mr. Journe, buying out Harry Winston’s share in the dial maker was a way to avoid production bottlenecks and pre-empt a supply shortage that he, too, believes will hit the industry this year.

“In the next six months and for the next two to three years, high-quality dials will be a rarity on the market,” Mr. Journe said.

“Since the crisis, many dial makers have gone out of business, downsized or been acquired by other brands,” he added. “The Swatch Group, Richemont, Patek Philippe and Bulgari have all integrated independent dial makers into their groups.”

Going forward, Les Cadraniers will continue to make dials for other clients, including high-end brands like Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantin, and a few independents.

But the buyout has meant a parting of the ways with Harry Winston, a brand that, over the past decade, has increasingly turned toward jeweled watches.

“We partnered with Harry Winston at a time when our needs were similar,” Mr. Journe said. “We have had diverging views on the direction in which to take Les Cadraniers.”

Harry Winston executives declined to be interviewed for this article. In an e-mail message, a representative for the jeweler said its current watch production was fewer than 6,000 pieces a year. Frédéric de Narp, president and chief executive of the company, said it planned to establish its own in-house dial production capabilities this year, a strategy in line with the trend in the industry.

Still, for now, “Harry Winston remains a priority client,” Mr. Journe said. “We will continue to supply the ‘crème de la crème’ of the industry.”

Despite the acquisition, Journe does not intend to increase its rate of production. In response to the slowdown resulting from the global crisis, the brand focused on research and development rather than expanding output.

“We accelerated development on new designs we had in the pipeline,” Mr. Journe said. “The upside of the 2009 slowdown was that we will have new models ready by late 2011. Short of another global financial meltdown, things seem on the upswing,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on   in The International Herald Tribune. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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