A new Chapter for Pequignet, with Full Focus on In-House Movements

Pequignet was founded in 1973 by Emile Pequignet in Morteau, a French city in the mountains next to the Swiss border. The brand developed quickly in the 1980s and 1990s, but it has gone through its fair share of ups and downs in its 50 years of history. In the early 2000s, Pequignet initiated the ambitious plan to become an integrated manufacture and the first in-house movement, the Calibre Royal, was presented in 2011. It was followed in 2021 by the Calibre Initial. The same year, Pequignet joined Enowe Excellence, a structure founded by Hugues Souparis in a project to promote French know-how of excellence. With this stable and sustainable shareholder base, the brand now continues its metamorphosis to focus on manufacture movements and higher-grade watches. There’s certainly a future for movement production in France… and Pequignet is convinced of this!

If France has a long watchmaking tradition, the quartz crisis crippled the French watch industry with a drastic reduction of the production. Still, among the past few years, we have seen a certain renaissance of French watchmaking, yet with completely different business models. Among these, Pequignet stands out with their ambition to manufacture movements in-house, a project initiated some 20 years ago. However, the brand was caught between two markets for years. Affordable design watches powered by quartz or off-the-shelf movements on one hand, higher-grade models with in-house movements on the other hand. It was time to make a clear choice, which has now been made possible by the arrival of Hugues Souparis and his desire to promote French savoir-faire and craftsmanship.

The idea for Pequignet is, therefore, to focus on watches powered by in-house calibers, rather than relying on off-the-shelf movements – a matter of substance, independence and creative freedom. This strategy also aims to offer an alternative to other brands (French but not only) who source movements from Switzerland or Japan – with arguments to take into consideration. We had the chance to get a preview of a couple of projects in the making… and these are pretty interesting. 

The development and roll-out of this more upscale strategy is being conducted by Patric Zingg (ex-Swatch Group, Graham, SIGG), while Adrian Buchmann (Fuzion SA)has been tasked with the design of the new collections.

The brand’s manufacture is still based in Morteau with a 25-member team ensuring the development, design and manufacturing of movements and watches – with a network of suppliers essentially located within a 50-mile radius from the manufacture, in France or Switzerland. Today, Pequignet’s movement portfolio is composed around two families of calibres, each available in multiple iterations, with additional complications and various displays.

The Calibre Royal is a high-grade, large calibre that has the specificity of incorporating several complications into an integrated architecture with big date, day, astronomical moon (requiring a correction of 1 day every 122 years) and power reserve indications. The Calibre Royal is available in automatic or manual winding (without complications) versions. There is a version with a tourbillon regulator that was unveiled in 2024. Its design stands out with a large barrel delivering – a robust 4-day power reserve and a 3Hz balance with gold compensation screws held in place by a full cock.

Presented in 2021, the Calibre Initial is a smaller, thinner, more versatile and more traditional automatic movement with hours, minutes, seconds and date indications. As such, it offers much more flexibility than the Calibre Royal and its integrated complications, and has much more potential to be offered to other brands. It beats at a modern 4Hz and delivers a comfortable 65-hour power reserve with a Pellaton-type reverser for the automatic mechanism.

The first Pequignet watches in line with this more upscale strategy will be unveiled at Watches and Wonders 2025 – stay tuned, as we’ll make sure to cover these on MONOCHROME. For more information, please visit pequignet.com.

EPM01 Calibre Royal automatic winding (2011)

• 13’’’ ¾ (Ø 31 mm)
• 5.88 mm thickness
• 3Hz frequency
• 96h power reserve
• 39 jewels
• Hours, minutes, small seconds, big date, day, moonphase, power reserve
• 8 patents: 4 for the big date; 1 for the barrel; 1 for the reverser; 1 for a differential; one of the moon phases

EPM02 Calibre Royal Manual Winding (2017)

• 13’’’ ¾ (Ø 31 mm)
• 5.43 mm thickness
• 3Hz frequency
• 100h power reserve
• 21 jewels
• Hours, minutes, small seconds at 6 o’clock

EPM03 Calibre Initial (2021)

• 12’’’ 1/2 (Ø 28.2 mm)
• 4.2 mm thickness
• 4Hz frequency
• 65 h power reserve
• 21 jewels
• Central hours, minutes, seconds and date
• 2 patents: 1 for the manual winding mechanism; 1 for the date mechanism

EPM04 Calibre Royal Flying Tourbillon manual winding (2024)

• 15’’’ 1/2 (Ø 34.5 mm)
• 5.43 mm thickness
• 3Hz frequency
• 88h power reserve
• 23 jewels
• hours, minutes, seconds on the tourbillon at 6 o’clock
• One-minute Flying tourbillon, titanium cage