Published on November 26, 2024 at 08:00. / Modified on November 26, 2024 at 09:20.
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The BA111OD brand began as a digital experimentation platform dedicated to watch distribution. Five years later it appears on the program of the Neuchâtel tourist office.
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Since 2019, the business model has evolved continuously. But the commercial promise remained unchanged: not to charge the end customer with unnecessary margins by being close to the suppliers.
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Nothing was calculated, everything happened naturally, one step after another. And nothing would have been possible if the creator, Thomas Baillod, was not “a kid” from La Chaux-de-Fonds.
“There’s one question no one has ever asked me: When will you know you’ve made it?” Thomas Baillod does not just ask this question himself. The creator and director of BA111OD watches has been writing the answer little by little since the launch of his company in 2019. Initially, making watches and developing a brand was not even the subject. But like a watch mechanism, the elements meshed and the business model adjusted gradually. Gradually moving from a “Tupperware” approach, centered on its community, to the creation of a complete brand, with speech, collection and retailers.
All this coupled with a regional anchor which is of interest to Neuchâtel tourism promotion. Thomas Baillod will soon be at the heart of a city tour following in the footsteps of watchmaking heritage. It must be said that the entrepreneur is a pure local product. Birth and childhood in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Son of the journalist Gil Baillod, who was boss of theImpartial and held his pen to the watch industry for decades. Himself from one of “the oldest families in the canton”. Several traces bear witness to this, including a stained glass window from the church of Môtiers dated 1341. The historian Rossella Baldi was commissioned to explore the official archives. She found a Baillod watchmaker on an apprenticeship contract from 1775.
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