Neuchâtel watchmaking is taking part in the American presidential election. Donald Trump has just launched a luxury watch in his name which houses a mechanism designed by a craftsman from La Chaux-de-Fonds. The Republican candidate hopes to raise funds to finance his campaign.
“I love gold, I love diamonds,” Donald Trump declares in the promotional video for the latest item he put on sale Thursday: a luxury watch bearing his name. With a bracelet and a case made of 200 grams of solid 18-carat gold and 122 diamonds distributed on the lugs and the bezel, this watch is “truly special”, assures the Republican candidate.
This model is the subject of a limited series of 147 copies, each piece being numbered. The septuagenarian logically awarded himself the number one watch. For the occasion, Donald Trump is breaking his principle of “America first” for the manufacturing industry, since these watches are made in Switzerland.
A mechanism from Chaux-de-Fonds
In detail, it is a company domiciled in the American state of Wyoming which sells them after having ordered them from a producer in Ticino. He himself bought the movement in the watchmaking town of La Chaux-de-Fonds.
Here, it is the company BCP Tourbillons which designs and develops the movements for Donald Trump’s watch. For its founder Olivier Moiry, the demand was completely usual. “For us, it was relatively trivial. The batch was a standard size. We are used to handling this kind of batch. The technical request was not extraordinary either and in terms of design, it was rather simple. So for us, it was a project like any other,” he explains on Friday on RTS’s 7:30 p.m.
The concept, however, brings an unprecedented spotlight on its company. “We rarely have a client who has generated so much attention,” he comments.
No political commitment
For BCP Tourbillons, deadlines are tight: just a few months to fulfill the order. The first copy has only just been delivered. The movements are sold for between 2,200 and 5,500 Swiss francs, while the watch will ultimately be worth $100,000.
For Olivier Moiry, it is above all a matter of investing in each project. For him, politics does not come into play here. “The request arrived anonymously. But quite quickly, it was put on the table that it could be a little controversial. But our work is watchmaking and not political commitment. The movement is standard and we applied the same criteria to it as for all our customers,” he concludes.
TV report: Théo Jeannet
Adaptation web: ther
#Swiss
