Bruno Grande oversees the JeanRichard brand.
first watch to contain G-P’s constant-force escapement, unveiled in 2008. G-P had some difficulty figuring out how to provide enough power to the movement, but resolved the problem and is now ready with the watch, which has a hearty seven-day power reserve. The regulator is a blade made out of silicon that accumulates energy, then releases it, as it buckles alternately on one side and then the other, delivering impulses to the balance. The point of the invention is to deliver a steady flow of power throughout the seven days so that the watch will not become less precise as it runs out of energy. The escapement will be used in just a few pieces at first, in Vintage 1945 and 1966 cases, but eventually will be used in a wider range of models. “It will be part of the regular collection,” Sofisti says. SOFISTI’S OVERHAUL of JeanRichard was as drastic as that of Girard-Perregaux. Since it was launched in the 1990s, the brand has had different incarnations and even different names: “Daniel JeanRichard” and “Jean Richard” were both precur-
sors to the current “JeanRichard.” The collection was a mishmash of various designs. In short, it was plagued by the same fuzzy image that hobbled G-P, Sofisti says. “JeanRichard had a tourbillon, a square, round models, rectangles, everything,” Sofisti says. “This has diluted the message.” He decided to treat JeanRichard as an entirely new brand. “We’re starting from scratch, with a new positioning,” he says. To oversee JeanRichard’s operations, he hired Bruno Grande, an industry veteran with whom Sofisti had worked at the Swatch Group. The brand now consists of four distinct families, Aquascope, Terrascope, Aeroscope and 1681. All have outdoorsy, sporty themes and cushion-shaped cases. (The 1681 also has some round models. Its name refers to the year that Daniel JeanRichard, considered to be the father of watchmaking in the Swiss Jura Mountains, made his first watch.) “Each has its own character, its own hands, indexes, and whatever else we can use to define it,” Sofisti says. The brand had another problem: its prices were way too high. “They started at about 6,000 Swiss francs,” he says. “This
JEANRICHARD WAS PLAGUED BY THE SAME FUZZY IMAGE THAT HOBBLED GIRARD-PERREGAUX.
A steel automatic from JeanRichard’s Terrascope collection
102 WatchTime June 2013