British luxury watch brand Christopher Ward has announced the development of its own watch movement, the Calibre SH21.
Mike France, one of the co-founders, explains that the brand breaks the rules and ‘to be the masters of our own destiny.
‘Last year, the CEO of a major Swiss luxury watch brand heard rumours about SH21 and his—frankly, affronted—comment was, “What gives you the licence to do that?”
‘We give ourselves licence to do this. Ten years ago we launched the world’s first pure online business model for luxury watches; a new paradigm in blending supreme quality with unprecedented value that challenged the industry norm. Today, we are advancing to a new level of independence that strengthens the future growth of the business and enables us to develop a family of movements, the first of which is the beautiful C9 Harrison 5 Day Automatic, housing the Calibre SH21, which we also launched today.’
France expects to see Calibre SH21 being the core of a whole suite of movements.
The development was spurred by young watchmaker Johannes Jahnke, who examined medical industry tooling and car manufacture, thinking outside the square.
Jahnke, along with industry veteran Jorg Bader. came with Christopher Ward’s merger with Synergies Horlogères.
Chris Ward, the co-founder from whom the brand takes its name, calls the development of the new movement ‘probably the most significant watch industry development by a British brand in the past 50 years.’
The new movement gives Christopher Ward independence from movements supplied by Swiss companies, with Swatch the largest player.
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