Christophe Claret founded his eponymous movement workshop in Le Locle in 1989 after training as a watchmaker and developing an early specialisation in grand complications: minute repeaters, tourbillons, perpetual calendars, and other complex movements. Through the 1990s and 2000s the workshop built a reputation as one of the Swiss industry's most respected complication suppliers, producing movements and complete complication modules for Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin, Harry Winston, and many other haute-horlogerie houses. Many of the most-celebrated minute repeater wristwatches of the 1990s-2000s era from these brands had Claret's workshop fingerprints on their movement architecture.
In 2009 Claret launched the eponymous brand, applying his complication expertise to watches sold under his own name. The first reference, the Soprano minute repeater, established the brand's positioning at the absolute apex of complication watchmaking. Subsequent references took an unusual direction: combining traditional grand complications with playful gaming and life-themed dial-side innovations. The Blackjack (2013) integrated a working blackjack card-dealing mechanism on the dial; the 21 Blackjack added a roulette wheel; the Poker implemented poker-game complications; the Margot (2014) added a charming 'he loves me, he loves me not' petal-plucking love-game animation.
Claret's other modern signature references include the Aventicum (with intricate 3D animal motif dials), the Maestoso (constant-force escapement), and various tourbillon and minute-repeater references. The brand operates from the original Le Locle workshop with annual production small (estimated single-digit pieces per year for most references) and pricing in the high CHF 100,000s to CHF 1,000,000+. Christophe Claret remains personally involved in design and movement development. The brand is widely considered one of the most technically distinctive haute-horlogerie complications specialists in modern Swiss watchmaking, sitting alongside Greubel Forsey and MB&F in the technical-statement-piece tier.
