Greubel Forsey

Greubel Forsey was founded in 2004 in La Chaux-de-Fonds out of the professional partnership between Robert Greubel, from Alsace, and Stephen Forsey, English, both of whom had come up through Renaud & Papi, the high-complication atelier later absorbed into Audemars Piguet Renaud & Papi. The two had met there in the 1990s, sharing an obsessive approach to mechanical precision, and in 2001 had already founded Complitime SA together, a company that developed complicated movements on behalf of other luxury houses, before deciding to put their own names on a watch.

The debut came in 2004 with the Double Tourbillon 30°, a caliber that pushed the tourbillon principle to an extreme by tilting its inner cage 30 degrees relative to an outer cage, to compensate even more effectively for the effect of gravity on a wristwatch's accuracy — an invention honored the same year, and later with the Grand Prix de l'Aiguille d'Or in 2010, and one that immediately earned the two founders a reputation as absolute specialists in high-end technical watchmaking. In 2005 they also founded EWT (Experimental Watch Technology), an in-house research division devoted to inventions that go beyond any single model, such as the single-material balance wheel (Binomial) or the constant-force Différentiel d'Égalité device.

In 2006 the Richemont group acquired a minority stake in the manufacture, allowing it to grow while remaining independent in its creative and technical choices; in 2022 Greubel Forsey returned entirely into the hands of its founders and management, buying back the shares held by Richemont. Over the years the brand has continued to produce in deliberately minimal quantities — on the order of about a hundred pieces a year in total, often in numbered runs of just a few units per execution — remaining among the most exclusive and expensive names in contemporary Swiss watchmaking as a whole.