An Extended Family Business

“Our soul comes from being faithful to the watchmaking art and never giving in – especially when it takes a lot of time and requires a lot of patience,” says Biver co-founder and president Jean-Claude Biver. “It is the art of overcoming obstacles and finding solutions. At the highest level, it is necessary to move forward not only with the head, but also with the heart. Falling in love both with the process, as well as the final result.”

There are hundreds of companies scattered across Switzerland making watches and supplying components for watches, so it would be fair to wonder why Jean-Claude Biver and his son Pierre Biver felt compelled to create a new manufacture in 2023. In fact, it is because of this rich ecosystem that the duo wanted to establish the Biver brand and to create watches at the highest level possible, pushing the boundaries of what contemporary horology can be.

“Our family approach liberates both the brand and our team from numerous constraints, allowing us to chase the impossible,” reflects Pierre Biver. “Each and every person feels integral to our vision and aspirations, and every project we choose to undertake comes right from the heart, from a gut feeling.”

The idea is to build a family business and a legacy that can be passed from generation to generation. The brand’s co-founders are father and son, and creating a close-knit family environment is central to our ethos. The watchmaking workshop is housed in a traditional farmhouse in Givrins, Switzerland – not some massive steel-and-glass industrial building – and we believe that each watchmaker’s personal experience is an important chapter in the Biver story.

With Biver, Jean-Claude chose to work with his son Pierre, and to establish a different kind of watch company. They are working to create something that recalls the halcyon days of Swiss watchmaking, before the Quartz Crisis of the ‘70s and ‘80s. We do not seek to do everything under one roof or to fly solo, creating every component from scratch. As a brand, we understand that the future of watchmaking depends on a healthy, vibrant ecosystem of craftspeople, engineers, designers, and more. No one brand or one workshop can carry the weight alone.

It might be taboo to say, but making high-quality mechanical watches in the 21st century is a risky and difficult thing to do. Anyone looking to make quick, easy money or to take the path of least resistance will soon find they’ve made the wrong choice. It is only through a true, deep-seated passion that one can make a life in watchmaking. We look for the unique characters who have that fire inside and we give them a home at Biver, where we can foster their talents, learn from their experience, and work together to create the watchmaking future we want to see.

In many ways, each Biver watch is an exercise in collaboration. This includes collaboration between a father and son creating a legacy together, among master watchmakers furthering their craft and pushing its boundaries on a daily basis, between a brand and its suppliers, and between the watchmaking ecosystem and the customers for whom it makes watches in the first place.