In September 2006, Rolex bought a plot of land in the city of Biel. Following a public consultation on June 1st 2008, it can now build on it. Rolex says it intends developing a new complex that will combine existing buildings into a single unit, thereby considerably facilitating logistics.

Pascal Dubois has watches in his blood. He and his brother Jean-Philippe are the fourth generation at the head of Dubois Dépraz, a family firm, founded in 1901 in the Vallée de Joux, that produces complications for the leading names in Swiss watches.

Born in 1950 in Val-de-Travers, Michel Parmigiani couldn't help but be immersed in the watchmaking culture that runs through this part of the Neuchâtel mountains. What began as curiosity became a life-long passion for his work as a restorer, a profession in which he never stops learning.

Back in the limelight, Universal is set to launch its very own in-house movement, the Microtor, this October. A now obligatory stage in the life of any watch firm.

Plans are well under way for the establishment of an English chronometer test certificate. And its qualifying standard is to be higher than the Swiss COSC and German equivalents. Watchmaking in England, a new story.

It's a simple piece of arithmetic. Take a company that produces 10,000 watches a year. If success is on the cards, after twenty years it will have sold 200,000 watches to customers at the four corners of the globe (Fine Watchmaking being an international market). Of these, the company can expect an annual return rate of around 10%, ranging from vintage pieces to watches suffering from stopped mechanisms, manufacturing defects, misuse or simply in need of a service. Add two and two together and some 20,000 watches will be making their way to the company's after-sales service door: twice annual production.