This Swiss-Made Watch is a Group Effort

“Too many cooks spoil the broth” goes the proverb. But the six partners of a young watch company, Artime Créations, seem to be proving it wrong with the planned Oct. 1 distribution of the group’s debut watch, the Art01.

Limited to 20 pieces, the Swiss-made 42-millimeter titanium and sapphire-crystal watch with a mechanical movement has an openwork case “to show how the movement is constructed,” said Emmanuel Jutier, 44, the company’s commercial director. (He began working at Artime after a 22-year sales career with companies including Greubel Forsey, F.P. Journe and the Swatch Group.)

The watch, priced at 210,000 Swiss francs, or $236,000, has a movement created by Didier Bretin, Artime’s master watchmaker and an alumnus of Greubel Forsey. Mr. Bretin’s name is on the dial.

The partners are all industry veterans, although their names may not be known beyond the circles of watch enthusiasts. Five of the six partners, all except for Mr. Jutier, worked at Audemars Piguet — or at Renaud & Papi before it was bought by Audemars Piguet — during their careers.

The partnership also includes:

— Manuel Thomas, 53, the founder of Artime, the watch-decoration company behind the partnership, who was head of Breitling’s complications department from 2000 to 2001, among other jobs. (According to Mr. Thomas, Artime finances the new watch and allows Artime Créations to use its space in three workshops in the merged municipality of Le Locle-Les Brenets, Switzerland, for watch decoration, assembly and more.)

— Stéphane Maturel, 47, who was at Renaud & Papi from 1999 to 2011, progressing from the workbench as a watchmaker to managing the company’s research and development services.

— Fabrice Deschanel, 62, who was managing director of the Renaud & Papi movement workshop from 1991 to 2015 and who, the watchmaker Richard Mille said in a 2022 interview with Hodinkee, was “not the least bit afraid to think in an unconventional manner.”

— and Claude Emmenegger, 58, whose prior work included designing Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak Concept.

But Nate Borgelt, the head of watches in the Americas at Bonhams auction house, said the partnership was more about what the men could create together than it was about their names or work histories.

“Usually you see one or two people working on a watch, or two or three people, where someone works on mechanics, someone works on cases and someone works on dials,” Mr. Borgelt said. But Artime’s collaboration, he said, is “more conceptual, pushing design, pushing materials, but in a smaller way, not like a conglomerate like LVMH or the Swatch Group. It feels more holistic and more artisanal.”

It took a long time for the company’s first watch to appear. Mr. Thomas formed the Artime business in 2014, and the other partners joined over time.

Each of them had a defined role on the new Art01 watch: Mr. Deschanel oversaw the concept; Mr. Emmenegger designed the watch; Mr. Bretin made the movement; Mr. Maturel supervised the manufacturing; Mr. Thomas said Airtime financed it; and Mr. Jutier is in charge of sales.

When the team gathers in Les Brenets, “We have three rooms with different organization — a prototype part, an office part and design,” Mr. Deschanel said.

“One or two days a week, we work in the office, but we have other activities.”

Mr. Emmenegger, for example, has his own design studio. Mr. Jutier advises retailers from the United States, Asia, Europe and the Middle East on Swiss watch brands and accompanies their clients during visits to Switzerland, he said.

Ownership of Artime Créations is also shared: Mr. Thomas, Mr. Deschanel and Mr. Maturel each own 25 percent with the remaining 25 percent divided equally among Mr. Emmenegger, Mr. Bretin and Mr. Jutier.

Artime Créations was so-called “because the objective is to make, and because we are creators of designs for ourselves and for external clients,” Mr. Deschanel said. In addition to making its own watches, Artime Créations has also been working for a handful of other watch brands since January on projects such as product strategy and movement making, he said.

Having a team of six industry veterans running the business “gives more credibility,” to a new product, Mr. Maturel said, and their experience enabled the watch to be made quickly. (Mr. Bretin said that he created the movement in less than two years, while experts say even a simple movement requires a minimum of four years.)

Yet the team concedes there are challenges in having so many people involved.

According to Mr. Jutier, working with five others is more complicated than he thought it would be. “Taking decisions with six is not easy,” he said, because “there are too many opinions and too many bad opinions.” His remedy? To not “take a decision which is not in your field of competencies,” he said.

Because the Art01 timepiece is limited to 20 pieces, Mr. Jutier has focused his sales strategy on the two major Swiss watch fairs this year, Watches and Wonders, and Geneva Watch Days, prioritizing selling directly to customers and finding four international retailers to act as partners. “Since we don’t have millions to spend, we focus on where I know people,” he said.

More timepieces are in the offing, too. Mr. Emmenegger said that he was already working on Art02 and Art03.