Pursuing Passion

This tells you everything you need to know about François Perez, Technical Director at Biver. He is the man responsible for taking the ideas for our design team and bridging them to life by working with our network of partners and suppliers. He then ensures every watch that leaves our workshop meets our highly exhausting standards.

In addition to his deep love for all things horological, François brings over a decade of experience working at the highest echelons of the watch industry, during which he has created multiple record-setting movements, including the world’s thinnest watch and the thinnest automatic chronometer tourbillon. François has always worked to pioneer new manufacturing techniques to deliver the highest quality and most exciting watches he possibly can, which makes him a perfect fit for Biver. We sat down with François to talk about how he first fell in love with watchmaking, his stringent attention to detail, and what gives a Biver watch its unique personality.

DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU FIRST BECAME INTERESTED IN WATCHMAKING?

When I was a child, I had a passion for mechanics in general, but specifically for cars. I would read a lot of car magazines when I was 11 or 12, and one day I picked up a watch magazine and fell in love with watches as well. It was immediate. I love to see the mechanics and while I didn’t understand how it all worked, it was marvelous to me. I looked at skeletonized watches and wanted to know how all the little parts worked together.

AND HOW DID THAT GROW FROM A PASSION INTO A CAREER?

I am from Paris, but when I turned 18 I moved to Switzerland to attend the Haut-Ecole Arc, where I studied micromechanical engineering with a specialty in watch complications. This is one of the only schools where you can specifically study micromechanics at a true engineering level – most of the other schools are more technical or watchmaking focused – which gave me a special background. Just one month after finishing my course, I began working for a firm that develops movements and complications for watch brands and my career has grown from there.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE IMMEDIATELY GOING FROM A SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT TO WORKING ON COMPLICATED WATCH MOVEMENTS FOR PRESTIGIOUS BRANDS?

My first project was an automatic chronograph for a major brand and we were trying to set a world record with it. I learned immediately how important it is to be passionate and to collaborate with other people. The older watchmakers taught me so much and it made me want to push, push, push to be better and to do my best work. I am an anxious guy by nature, so when I do something I want to check, check again, and check one more time, just to make sure it is correct. I learned quickly that this is an advantage. When I wake up, I think about watches. When I go to bed, I think about watches. In my experience in watchmaking, success is less about having specific knowledge and more about passion and taking personal pride in what you are creating. I wasn’t the best student in my class, but when I have a challenge, I work, work, work to succeed. For me, this is the only way.

WHAT EXACTLY IS YOUR ROLE AS A TECHNICAL DIRECTOR AT BIVER?

My daily work is to manage the technical part of the brand. This means managing the technical office, the watchmakers and decorators, but also handling the logistics, keeping in contact with the suppliers, validating all of the technical drawings before components are made (and checking them after they are made), and doing quality checks throughout the process. When Pierre comes to me with a design idea, it is my job to find the right suppliers to create the components he needs and then to make sure they are produced the way we need them to be. Finally, before any watch leaves our workshop, I give it a final inspection to make sure it meets our quality standards.

WHAT IS THE MOST CHALLENGING PART OF THIS JOB?

Managing the overall level of quality, which is very, very high and requires many people to achieve. The Biver family is not interested in working the same way as many of the big brands – we work fast and we work with a lot of passion, in our own way. I often have to challenge our suppliers and to ask them to do difficult things with short delays. I love visiting these suppliers though. There are so many talented people in Switzerland, each with their own speciality, and I am passionate about getting to know them and seeing how they do their work. This can be making cases, gem setting, or laser engraving – it is always interesting to see these different jobs and to work with these partners.

SINCE YOU SPEND A LOT OF TIME LOOKING AT BIVER WATCHES, HOW COULD YOU DESCRIBE THE BRAND’S HOUSE STYLE? WHAT MAKES A BIVER WATCH UNIQUE?

It is a bit of an unusual answer, but a big part of our house style is our commitment to quality. When I am doing the final control on a finished watch, I have to approach it with this genuine passion for quality above all else. Each watchmaker and decorator has to be meticulous in his or her work and if I see something small, even a tiny scratch or a microscopic piece of dust, we need to remake it or make some changes. Our watches also balance classical inspiration and little touches of modernity, whether that’s the indexes on the dial, the contours of the case, or the structure of the bracelet. It is achieving this balance that defines the watches, not one element or the other.

YOU’VE MENTIONED BOTH WATCHMAKERS AND DECORATORS AS IMPORTANT PEOPLE IN THE PROCESS OF CREATING A BIVER WATCH. HOW DO YOU THINK THESE PERSPECTIVES - THE TECHNICAL AND THE ARTISTIC - COME TOGETHER IN A BIVER WATCH?

There is a deep sense of collaboration and respect between the watchmakers and the decorators at Biver. We receive components from our suppliers and the decorators then painstakingly finish each component by hand before they go to the watchmakers. They know how much has gone into each tiny piece and must be extra careful in their work to not damage anything done before. Then, after assembly, things must be checked and finished again. This is why we have our watchmakers and decorators working together in the same spaces. They can collaborate and help one another solve problems, always working toward a common goal.

THE AUTOMATIQUE IS AN IMPORTANT MILESTONE FOR THE BRAND. HOW DID YOU APPROACH CREATING THE NEW CALIBRE JCB-003, KNOWING THAT IT HAD TO BE EXCELLENT ON ITS OWN WHILE ALSO ALLOWING FOR FUTURE DEVELOPMENT?

The aim was to create a highly reliable base calibre with all the important hallmarks of high watchmaking. This meant working with gold bridges, utilizing a bi-directional micro-rotor for the automatic winding system, including a zero-reset mechanism for the seconds hand, and more. The first step was to figure out this more technical side of things, but from there we worked hard to choose decorations and finishes that elevated it to the level of art.

CAN YOU TELL ME A BIT ABOUT THE SPECIAL WINDING SYSTEM IN THE AUTOMATIQUE, TOO?

In most automatic watches that can be wound by hand, the winding sensation is unpleasant. It just doesn’t have the same tactile feel as a hand-wound watch. We paid particular attention to the ratchet mechanism (which you can clearly see through the watch’s sapphire caseback) so that it provides the user with the sensation of a manual watch. It sounds like a simple thing, but it was quite a challenge – and we are extremely proud of the results.

ARE THERE ANY SMALL DETAILS IN A BIVER WATCH THAT SOMEONE MIGHT NOT NOTICE AT FIRST THAT PARTICULARLY EXCITE YOU?

The black polishing. The quality is exceptional. It’s truly amazing. In fact, it is so fantastic that it requires me to pay extra attention during the quality control, since any microscopic piece of dust or the smallest hairline scratch shows up immediately. There is nowhere to hide, which we quite like. You can see the care and love in every part of the watch, including inside the case.

WHAT KIND OF IMPACT DO YOU HOPE TO MAKE ON THE BROADER WATCH WORLD THROUGH YOUR WORK AT BIVER?

Ultimately, I am an engineer and I have an engineer’s vision of watchmaking. There is so much creativity in independent watchmaking today and it is very exciting to see. But for me, I am extremely proud of how well our watches perform and how well they will continue to perform over time. We are an independent brand, a family brand, and we place a lot of emphasis on hand decoration, but we are also a technical brand and a brand that takes a tremendous amount of pride in each watch that leaves our workshop. We do so many technical and quality checks so that we can deliver the very best watches possible – and we will continue to do so well into the future.