The managing director of Girard-Perregaux on why authentic legacy matters more than any marketing campaign
Girard-Perregaux has spent 235 years doing things the hard way. Founded in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1791, it remains one of the few manufactures that still conceives, develops and produces its movements entirely in-house, a discipline that runs through the company’s entire repertoire of watches.
That inheritance has taken on new urgency under Marc Michel-Amadry, who joined as managing director in February 2025. In the ensuing months, Girard-Perregaux has released four major new calibres, among them the GP4800 that powers the Laureato Fifty and the GP9530 within the Minute Repeater Flying Bridges, a pace of horological output he says few, if any, independent manufactures can match.
Michel-Amadry arrives with almost three decades across the industry, including senior roles at TAG Heuer, LVMH Watch & Jewellery Singapore, Ebel, Sotheby’s Switzerland, and IWC Schaffhausen. At Girard-Perregaux, he has inverted how the brand talks about itself, leading with grand complications and manufacture credentials rather than entry-level pieces, on the premise that authority should be projected throughout Girard-Perregaux’s creations.
What have you heard recently from watch collectors whom you met that stood out to you?
I think it is about gaining a better understanding of collecting habits. What drives the collector? What kind of watches do they expect in terms of how what should be crafted? How they define value for a watch or a brand? It is always important for a watch brand to be open and have a dialogue.
You have been at Girard-Perregaux for over a year. Before that you were working at brands like IWC. What lessons from that experience have you brought to a more independent manufacturer?
The approach is very different, and it’s interesting. Girard-Perregaux is not a marketing powerhouse in the way that some bigger brands are. We don’t have big advertising campaigns, big ambassadors, or big global stories. At the end of the day, our marketing is essential in a different sense: it is about the mastery behind each watch, our levels of craftsmanship, expertise, and dedication to the art.
What quality does the brand have, despite being a small company, that lets it achieve such highly technical and innovative watches?
It’s the talent and expertise we’ve built up over the years, that we continue to nurture. We have our own academy. In the past 12 months, we have launched four major new calibres. I don’t know of any other watchmaker that has brought so many new calibres to market in the space of a year. But we invest in that — we make sure we always have the very best watchmakers. I wouldn’t say watchmakers dream of working for us, but when there’s an opportunity to work at Girard-Perregaux, the name alone, and what it represents, mean people want to work with us.
How do you see the product roadmap unfolding for the brand?
You’ll see an acceleration in grand complications, and an acceleration in how our watches embody horology at smaller diameters too. Next year, for example, we celebrate the 160th anniversary of the Three Bridges watch. It is a very important anniversary for a signature creation, so we will be expressing that across a number of different movements built around the collection. At the same time, we will inject more horological spirit and craftsmanship into the entry level.
Can you explain the strategy behind this?
Previously, the brand was communicating from the ground up, from the entry level, and was forgetting that all this mastery at the top is really the driving force of our identity. So, we simply inverted the pyramid. I shifted the approach to communicate starting from these fundamental horological pillars — the know-how, the expertise, the legacy — because we can explain everything through these elements. We’re not making anything up about ourselves; we’re simply the result of 235 years of horological DNA. But we need to project the brand’s nature and values from the top down, so that if I buy a Laureato three-hand automatic, I know I have a very special movement inside—one that’s fully made in-house. We need to explain all of that — but ultimately, we need to project our name, with all its legacy, from the top.
How has the market’s perception responded?
Since the start of this year, the sales of our grand complications performance have tripled year-to-date, from January to April. People are starting to look again at what we’re doing, and I feel collectors’ groups and are communities sensing that something is happening at Girard-Perregaux. It’s not a marketing trick. It’s not about looking at the landscape and saying, ‘there’s a gap up there, let’s go fill it.’ There’s no calculated positioning involved — it’s simply representing what the brand is truly about, re-explaining where we come from, telling the story. That’s why I say proudly that it took us 235 years to create our watches.
