Eqotime meets Bovet's owner Pascal Raffy

Text/picture: Britta Rossander & Mia Litström

In the Swiss mountains a careful development of a cult-declared watch brand is going on. Eqotime travelled there to talk with Pascal Raffy, owner of the brand Bovet 1822.

They make a small number of watches a year, the price tag is high and on the design side they have a collaboration with Pinifarina. The watches from Bovet are collector's items already before they have left the castle where they are assembled.

Brilliant businessman, watch nerd and with a big heart, that is how you can describe the company's owner Pascal Raffy. He is a passionate watch collector with hundreds of vintage watches in his own collection and retired already at the age of 36 with an extremely successful career in the pharmaceutical sector behind him. 

At 25 Raffy bought a French family-owned pharmaceutical company which he merged with Synthélabo. He became a partner and after a few successful years in France Raffy managed to expand Synthélabo to North Africa, where he not only produced pharmaceuticals but also built up marketing and distribution. 

During the ten years Raffy was involved in Synthélabo he played an important role in the transformation of the company into becoming the third largest pharmaceutical group in France. His children complained that he worked too much and that made him decide to ”cash in”, but he stayed on for 18 months after having sold his shares. 

-When you work within health care which concerns people where there is also a moral dimension beyond the business it is difficult to stop right away, he says.

It was an adviser and friend who came up with the idea of an investment within the watch industry. 

– I was interested, Pascal recounts.

And he had the means to make a significant investment. Retirement thereby became a short parenthesis in Raffy's life. 

The Swiss watchmaker Edouard Bovet founded the brand in England in 1822. This was when business along the silk road was flourishing and there was great demand in Asia for fine handmade pocket watches. That is where Bovet went to sell his watches.

Bovet's earliest watches had hand-painted dials and were delivered in pairs. The reason for that was that if a watch had to be returned to Europe for repair (which could take months) the customer would have one left to use. The head office was in England but the watches were manufactured in Fleurier, Switzerland, where they continued to be produced until the end of the 1930s.

In 2000, when Raffy learned that Bovet was for sale, two men who owned the brand were working from a small office/atelier in Geneva. They bought components and assembled roughly 140 watches a year. 

-I listened to them. Tried to understand and told them that I was not out to buy a brand in order to start manufacturing large quantities. I wanted to revive Bovet for my own great pleasure, wanted to build it into becoming a watchmaking house with soul again. 

-I decided that Bovet's watches should be able to bear being very expensive and always be worth their price. We would go back to the roots of the 1800s with in-house manufacturing and make all the parts ourselves.

A little Bovet history 

1797 Edouard Bovet is born in Fleurier as the son of Jean-Frédéric Bovet, master watchmaker in Fleurier.

1818 he left London in order on 20 April to go on board on board the East Indiaman Orwell and arrived on 16 August in Canton in China. Once in place he quickly sold four watches for the then breathtaking sum of 10 000 CHF (= a million dollars today).

1822 he lives in Canton and together with the brothers Alphonse and Frederic, who lived in London, and Gustave, watchmaker in Fleurier, he starts a company with the aim of trading with China. It is now that their watches become known for their outstanding decorations in jewellery enamel that the rich Chinese men could not resist.

1835 the castle Château de Môitiers in the canton of Neuchatel (built in the 1400s) was sold to Henri-François Dubois-Bovet. 

1855 the company wins a gold medal at the Paris exhibition for an identical pair of watches ordered by the Chinese emperor.

1901 the business is sold at auction in Paris to Leuba Frères for 100 000 gold francs.

1918 it was sold on but was bought back by the Bovet family in the 1930s. 

1948 it slipped out of their hands and two years later the watch production ceased and the brand became dormant.

1957 the Bovet family donates the castle to the canton of Neuchâtel. 

2001 Pascal Raffy buys Bovet

2006 the authorities in Neuchâtel look for a new owner for the castle since the maintenance costs had risen over their heads. Pascal Raffy was the only buyer in a position to ensure a long-term preservation. He bought it and could thereby let Bovet return.

Raffy lives periodically in the part of the castle that is not a museum for Bovet's earlier production.