Mechanical watches are innately archaic, an invention that’s been redundant since the invention of quartz, compounded further by auto-adjusting smartphones. And yet we still love them. Through that lens, it’s no surprise that collectors and watch brands both love rose-tinted, archival throwbacks – something that Guillaume has capitalised on like few others.
Laidet is a serial horological entrepreneur and one of the most important forces in modern watchmaking. He’s the man behind the successful relaunch of Nivada Grenchen, Vulcain, and Excelsior Park, and one half of the creative dynamism of ultra-modern SpaceOne. He seems to have the kind of golden touch most Swiss watch CEOs dream of. And like many of us, it all came down to parental influence.
“I started my passion thanks to my father,” says the 40-year-old Frenchman. “When eBay started selling plenty of watches he was buying vintage Omega, vintage Lip, this kind of thing, and it was the first time I touched a mechanical watch. It was crazy, working without a battery, you just wind it up and you can hear it when you put it to your ear.”
It evidently struck a chord because after leaving school in 2009, he joined Zenith in 2010. This put him in Switzerland where he was able to indulge his burgeoning love of vintage.
“I inherited, a bit by accident, an unbranded vintage chronograph. It looks like a vintage Breitling. 36mm, gold-plated and very cool. While I was working for Zenith, I had it restored – and that’s where my addiction really started. Now though I buy a lot of vintage Nivada Grenchen.”
You might assume that Laidet’s Nivada Grenchen wishlist is for research purposes only and you’d be half right; the inspiration he draws from classic models is palpable in the brand’s current line-up. But his love of these timepieces is just as obvious when he gleefully waves his latest purchase at the camera.
“I got this Depthmaster, like, yesterday. It’s mint condition! It’s just nicely patinated on the indexes and hours and minutes, so I’ll keep it exactly like this. I’ll send it to my team to photograph for our website museum, but that’s it. That museum is all pieces I’ve bought on Chrono24 or eBay.”
If that sounds like a lot of legwork for a multi-CEO, don’t worry, he has help.
“We actually have a WhatsApp for Nivada Grenchen collectors. Everybody shows off their watches or shares pieces they’ve seen on different websites all over the world. When I see something interesting, I’ll bid until I get it! I discover new watches almost every week. In fact, that’s how I relaunched the F77.”
The F77 is Nivada Grenchen’s answer to 1970s integrated bracelet sports watches. Like the designs of horological legend Gérald Genta, it has an octagonal bezel and a semi-brutalist look with visible screws and flat, brushed planes. It’s available in vintage 37mm sizing or more modern 41mm and with coloured, basketweave dials or stones like aventurine, lapis lazuli and meteorite. And with an automatic starting price of £1,030, it sums up Nivada Grenchen perfectly: authentic vintage vibes with an accessible price tag.
But it’s worth noting that the F77 wasn’t Nivada Grenchen’s first watch and, more importantly, Nivada Grenchen wasn’t Laidet’s first brand. That would actually be William L. 1985.
“The brand actually came from that inherited chronograph. The idea behind William L. was to make an affordable version in quartz. At the time it was something like €1,000, which was expensive when you’re a student in business school or starting your first job. By the time I sold the brand we were making something like 50,000 watches a year and were distributed in 30 countries.”
In short, William L. 1985 was a more heritage feeling version of something like Daniel Wellington – and was evidently a moneymaker. So why did Laidet sell?
“I think it was the end of the adventure. I also got an investor that I wasn’t on the same wavelength with. Sometimes you just have to make your own choice.”
Fortunately, the end of one adventure signalled the start of another. Laidet had noticed that Nivada Grenchen as a brand actually had a cult following among vintage lovers. Owners were active on forums and preowned pieces were costing between €1,000 and €2,000. It showed there was a desire there and an established audience ready for a relaunch. As Laidet puts it:
“There are vintage brands out there that have been revived without much patrimony, without much history to them – and there weren’t that many real collectors interested in them. That wasn’t the case with Nivada Grenchen.”
Having an established audience however can be a double-edged sword. These are knowledgeable specialists that don’t take kindly to new figureheads coming in and messing with what they love.
“With Nivada, I try to keep as close as possible to the vintage pieces,” says Laidet of his design process. “I keep the same sizes as much as possible, the same thickness, the same dial… even the smooth, no-click bezel. When I relaunched the Chronomaster, I was very much in touch with the guys on Instagram and the forums, asking a lot of questions about what they prefer. We were thinking of relaunching the watch as an automatic. Instantly they were like, ‘no, no, I want manual winding like the vintage one!’ So, we made it a bit thinner with a manual wind movement. We did launch an automatic too, but in the end 90% of the sales were the manual version.”
It’s this kind of careful, community-oriented approach – and a similarly accessible approach to William L. 1985 – that has made modern Nivada Grenchen the poster child for brand revivals. It’s something that Gallet, currently being relaunched by Breitling, should be paying close attention to, especially as Gallet too has a die-hard vintage following and some cool, undiscovered pieces in their back catalogue.
Not that it’s all about archival authenticity. While Nivada Grenchen is rooted in vintage, there have been opportunities for Laidet to flex his own design ideas. “I just received some F77 prototypes of the open dial aventurine version and the titanium open dial meteorite. It’s so cool! This morning was like Christmas.”
But that’s still not the biggest news from the brand. Every watch in Laidet’s six-year tenure has been a throwback to Nivada Grenchen’s past. But come April 2027, we’ll see something completely new: “It will be a totally new design by Eric Giroud. A new name, a new design, a whole new collection!”
Of course, while even a vintage-based brand needs to think about what comes next, it’s not like Laidet has been lacking a creative outlet for distinctively modern watchmaking. Indeed, the aesthetic distance between Nivada Grenchen and SpaceOne is worlds apart.
“It’s a completely different approach. My business partner [French watchmaker Théo Auffret] is a great movement constructor, able to develop a new complication very quickly and efficiently, allowing us to develop things like our launch jump hour in-house. It was something that started as a side-project and we weren’t sure it was going to work out; then we made almost €3 million on the first day of pre-order.”
In many ways, SpaceOne is a more accessible version of MB&F, using similarly sci-fi case shapes and inventive complications, but moved one decimal place in favour of your bank account. Now, they’ve collaborated with one of the most established microbrands of them all with the Baltic Seconde Majeure x SpaceOne – a collaboration that actually brings the brand’s founding mythology full circle.
“I actually met Théo [Auffret] thanks to the Baltic guys in Paris. They were doing a French watchmaking party in their office and I saw this crazy piece on his wrist. I was like, what the fuck is that? He said, ‘I made it myself; it’s a tourbillon. I’m sending it to a rich guy in Dubai so take a look, it’ll be gone next week.’ And now one of his watches reached €600,000 (approx. £515,000) at a Phillips auction.”
SpaceOne is less in opposition to Nivada Grenchen and more a counterweight. They both offer great designs at more accessible price points compared to similar watches elsewhere. They both have collectors at their heart and they both seem to be doing very well because of it.
And yet there are many more brands that aren’t as successful. In the same way that new brands crop up each month, almost as many go under in what is an increasingly competitive industry. And as Laidet points out, there are a lot of potential reasons why.
“I’m a watch collector. I’m a watch buyer. I’m a real end consumer and I pay with my own money. I feel like the guys relaunching brands miss that sometimes, they make things too thick or too expensive. Sometimes they’re just not patient enough and give up too soon; maybe it’s not their only job and they’re not 100% invested. If I’d not listened to Nivada Grenchen collectors when we relaunched, we might not be having this conversation right now.”
At the same time, the brands that do survive tend to thrive. If you made it to Hands On Horology earlier this year – or Chronopolis, the small, independent counterweight to Watches & Wonders – you’ll understand intuitively that independent watchmaking is thriving.
“Some of us are now doing more than 10,000 watches a year, sometimes 20,000 or 30,000 – perhaps 50,000 for Baltic. Baltic even have a boutique in Paris’ Place Vendôme and spots in New York and London. We’ll be opening a boutique with SpaceOne next year and we’re all getting more serious and in the game. We’ve been competing with the big watch groups, but I think at some point we will begin to replace them.”
Obviously Laidet has more than enough to be focusing on. And yet, this is a man that has relaunched three heritage brands in Nivada Grenchen, Vulcain, and Excelsior Park, and launched a disruptive new brand in SpaceOne. So, what’s next for him?
“I’m always saying I have enough on my plate. And to be honest, I have a lot of work in front of me already. SpaceOne especially is taking up more and more of my time, so for the moment I think I’m done. You know, unless the challenge is crazy interesting.”
And what would be something crazy enough for him to take on?
“I was dreaming of reviving Universal Genève, to be honest.” Unfortunately for Laidet, Breitling got there first, relaunching Universal Genève earlier this year – so what was his second option? “Gallet.”
