DANIEL ROTH

makes watches – for half a century. In fact, 2017 is the 50th anniversary of Mr Roth’s arrival in Switzerland to start his watchmaking career in the halcyon days before the Quartz Crisis.

Many frigid winters have passed since Mr Roth arrived in the Vallée de Joux. While the industry has changed drastically, not much has changed in the landscape, and neither has the manner in which Mr Roth makes watches.

Ups and downs, and up again

Now 72 years old, Mr Roth has enjoyed a career that spanned the modern watch industry, from the bleak days of the 1970s to its 21st century renaissance. He went from being an employee of a luxury group to a solo watchmaker, and repeating the cycle once over.

But he was not just a bit player; Mr Roth was a crucial figure in establishing Breguet and movement maker Nouvelle Lemania. And by extension he was responsible for many of the complicated movements Lemania supplied to numerous brands from the 1990s to mid 2000s.

 Though Mr Roth himself was born in Nice, his forebears were watchmakers in Switzerland. It was Mr Roth’s grandfather who moved the family to the south of France for the sun, setting up a watch repair shop where a young Daniel Roth apprenticed. After Mr Roth completed his basic watchmaking education in Nice, he moved to the cradle of Swiss watchmaking, the poetically named Vallée de Joux, in 1967