Roger Dubuis: Inside The Manufacture

In the last years, we told you about watches in many ways but we never brought you “inside” a Swiss Maison.

This week we decided to travel to Geneva, in the homeland of watchmaking, to show you how beloved timepieces are born.

Being “Insanity” and lovers of the more particular things we thought about a fresh and young brand, innovative and with a bold personality… ROGER DUBUIS!

When approaching the manufacture we immediately understand that style and design and not only a feature of RD watches, but also of their Headquarter, entirely built with glass walls, truly impressive!

We begin our visit in the Roger Dubuis world! Despite the size of the building might mislead you, this manufacture only produces few thousand of watches per year, entirely conceived and developed in house, except straps, glasses, and cases, which are outsourced.

The Roger Dubuis manufacture is a place where nothing is left to chance and everything is realized following strict and important rules. Every step of the production is performed by a team of experts that build the movement and assemble the watch day by day with extraordinary care. Just think that the average components of an RD watch are around 300 and that all of them are worked and decorated entirely by hand, and finally tested to satisfy the highest quality standards.

In our tour we are witness to a movement’s birth: in the first phases of the process, the technicians work with the metal bars that will become the platins, wheels, and pinions. The next steps are the finishing and decorations of the different components (detourage, perlage, cerclage, anglage, polissage), done according to the traditional high watchmaking techniques.

Climbing to the second floor of the manufacture we reach the place where, in an incredible silence, the watchmakers perform the delicate phase of the assembly of a movement, followed by the casing. We discover that it takes the technicians approximately two weeks to assemble and several days for the control of all the functions of the watch, like the water resistance tests, power reserve, and accuracy tests. Every watch that doesn’t pass the tests will be disassembled and reassembled until it reaches the required level.

As you already know Roger Dubuis is a brand that loves to dare and be different. Those features are easily recognizable in the iconic Excalibur collection, which is out detailed in several models and collaborations, like the one with Pirelli, or in the creation of unique pieces that belong to the “Rarities” series.

For who doesn’t know, Roger Dubuis started a project called Rarities, a department dedicated to the most sophisticated collectors and lovers of the made to measure. The exclusive “made to order” service is available through the Roger Dubuis boutiques, where the client is assisted by a special team and is allowed to design his own watch choosing between endless choices of materials, colors, stones and many kinds of personalization, including having their own name and surname initials on the Tourbillon and integrated in the movement structure!

To craft such a masterpiece the production times can be between six and nine months, and regarding the price… needless to say… NO LIMITS!