Perfect Timing: The Return of Swiss Watch Industry Legend Jean-Claude Biver
by Victoria Gomelsky
June 2025
PHOTOGRAPHS BY SEBASTIEN AGNETTI
The history of the Swiss watch industry is awash in mythical figures, from the 18th-century watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet to the 20th-century industrialist Nicolas Hayek. The contemporary equivalent of these icons is Jean-Claude Biver. A living legend famed for his visionary leadership and inventive marketing, Biver helped the industry rise from the ashes of the 1970s quartz crisis, when a flood of battery-powered timepieces from Japan nearly decimated the Swiss mechanical trade.
Today the 75-year-old Biver is channeling more than half a century of expertise into JC Biver, the small company he cofounded two years ago with his youngest son, Pierre. They produce a limited collection of exquisite watches, all handcrafted by masters and all with price points from just over $91,000 to well over $750,000, with a few pieces over $1 million. Biver sees the brand as part of his legacy and the timepieces as works of art that will transcend his lifetime. “A mechanical watch is a piece of eternity,” as he explains it. “In 100 years, it will still work.”
Defying the Odds
To understand Biver’s impact on the high-end watch world, one must travel back to 1974, when a young Jean-Claude chanced upon an apprenticeship at the Swiss brand Audemars Piguet shortly after his university days. “The big boss, Georges Golay, told me, ‘You must accept that for one year, you will have no traveling, no reports, no secretary. You will just have to sit and understand and know each watchmaker,’” Biver told Elliman on a recent phone call from his part-time home in Saint-Tropez, on the French Riviera. “‘Slowly, their art and passion will come over you. You will feel it.’ And that’s what I did.”
After five years in sales for Audemars, Biver accepted a job at Omega, which had gone all in on quartz. During his two years with the brand, he realized something essential: “I was nostalgic for the ticktock of mechanical watches,” he says. The experience set the stage well for his next move.
In 1981, the Luxembourgian native paid 22,000 Swiss francs (about $16,000 at the time) for rights to the name Blancpain. Founded in the early 18th century, Blancpain was the oldest watchmaker in Switzerland but had fallen on hard times with the rise of quartz watches. Biver and his business partner, Jacques Piguet, reintroduced the brand with a tagline that defied the skeptics: “Since 1735 there has never been a quartz Blancpain watch. And there never will be.”
It was a bold gambit at a time when the future of the mechanical watch industry seemed uncertain, but it worked. Biver reestablished Blancpain as a prestige brand and sold it to the Swatch Group for 60 million Swiss francs (about $43 million) in 1992. In his more nostalgic moments, he regrets the decision. “It was my first brand, my first adventure, the first time I did something that made me independent,” he says. “Why did I sell? Stupidity.”
A more generous reading of Biver’s personal history would emphasize what he was able to achieve in the aftermath of the sale. In 1993, he rejoined Omega, which at the time was struggling to define itself in the post-quartz-crisis landscape. Two years later, he hired supermodel Cindy Crawford to be the face of its Constellation collection, kick-starting the industry’s tradition of hiring celebrity ambassadors.
Biver found similar success at Hublot and TAG Heuer, where his talent for ingenious marketing and brand turnarounds brought him to the attention of a Harvard Business School professor who lionized his accomplishments in a 2014 case study exploring how industries reinvent themselves. That same year, LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault appointed Biver to serve as president of the group’s watchmaking division.
The Comeback
In 2018 Biver retired from watchmaking, but he soon found himself drawn back to his passion for mechanical timepieces. In 2022 he and Pierre cofounded JC Biver, where they are free to explore creative approaches Jean-Claude couldn’t use in earlier phases of his career. The firm’s workshops are located in the Bivers’ 19th-century Swiss farmhouse in the village of Givrins near Lake Geneva.
JC Biver watches appeal to a highly selective clientele who “understands that luxury is about ‘mastering the invisibility,’” Biver says, referring to the meticulous work that goes into every component of the company’s timepieces—not just the aesthetics but also the functionality that is not obvious at a glance.
“Our designs are postmodern,” Biver explains. “We have elements and attitudes that belong to the past but also designs and materials that belong to the future. The combination is what gives tension to the product—it’s a mixture of yesterday and tomorrow.”
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