The Status Of In House Movements Vs. Supplied, In 2025
A quarter of the way through the new millenium, do collectors still think in-house movements give you more bang for the buck?
When I started reading about watches seriously, the internet was in its infancy, and most of the information available about watches had to be gotten from print – specialist magazines, books, and to a certain extent, auction catalogues. This was at a time – over thirty years ago – when mechanical watchmaking had already begun its recovery from the combination of quartz technology and economic factors which had led to the near-collapse of the Swiss watch industry. Then, as now, the industry depended on a wide range of suppliers, both in Switzerland and internationally, but the idea that a brand which designed and manufactured its own movements, was inherently better, had already taken hold by then. The idea has proven remarkably resilient and though long-time enthusiasts and collectors may seem to have moved on to finer distinguishing points, it is still a commonly held belief that all other things being equal, in-house beats supplied (this is an anecdotal observation but you can still, in comments and on social media, see a watch described as overpriced or poor value for the money on a regular basis, on the grounds that the movement is a supplied one).
In general, I think that the idea that in-house movements are inherently better is, as a blanket statement, provably false – for one thing, some of the most prestigious watches in the world have relied, and in some cases still rely, on supplied movements and specialist manufacturers, especially when it comes to complicated watchmaking. However, I think that there are reasons that the idea hangs on and will probably continue to hang on, which might be a little more complex than that it’s a misguided attempt to simplify decision making in a very complex subject.
What You Can Get From Supplied Movements, And Why Brands Use Them
In-house movements certainly don’t offer much that supplied movements can’t and movement suppliers are able to fulfill an amazingly wide range of requests, both in terms of functionality and finishing. To take just one example, if you look at Sellita’s catalogue, you will not only see fifteen different movement families, but also 21 different functional categories, including several different configurations for chronographs, date displays, and time displays; the total number of permutations is in the hundreds of possibilities, if not more. The online catalogue shows that there are currently 127 different possible variations on calendars alone.
If you want high complications, you could do worse than to work with longtime industry supplier Dubois Dépraz, which has been around since 1901. Dubois Dépraz creates movements as well as modules for pretty much any complication you can think of, including automatons, annual and perpetual calendars, perpetual calendar chronographs, flyback chronographs, big date displays, GMT/multi time zone displays, and on and on.
If you want movements that are a little more hifalutin’ because you want to sell hifaluntin’ watches (with hifalutin’ prices) you have hifalutin’ suppliers standing ready to hook your hifalutin’ self up. This includes La Joux-Perret (owned by the Citizen Group, although LVMH recently bought a minority stake) complications specialist Agenhor (whose Agengraphe chronograph movement is the go-to choice for many independents looking for a more technically and aesthetically interesting chronograph, and which is available in a number of configurations) and Vaucher Manufacture, whose clients have included luxury brands up to and including Richard Mille (and which is partly owned by Hermès which has a minority stake).
Smaller independent brands with the technical capacity to do so, also offer specialist manufacturing services – Kari Voutilainen, for example, owns Comblémine (dials) Voutilainen & Cattin (cases) and Brodbeck Guillochage (métiers d’art, including guilloché dials). And there are high end movement suppliers who combine technically sophisticated and aesthetically high end bespoke work with considerable discretion about their clients – Le Cercle des Horlogers, for instance.
And then there are the giant companies and groups of companies which act as suppliers to the industry as a whole, including the other suppliers under the Sandoz Family Foundation umbrella with Vaucher (including casemaker Les Artisans Boîtiers, escapement component maker Atokalpa, dial-maker Quadrance et Habillage, etc. etc.) and component manufacturers whose supplied parts can be found in many “in-house” movements, including of course, Nivarox-FAR (balance springs and escapement components) and one of the Most Important Companies In Switzerland You’ve Never Heard Of, the Acrotec Group, whose website says it is ” … the largest independent watch components supplier for the Swiss premium mechanical watch market” and whose companies include (forgive me for not being comprehensive, but the list is long) Mimotec, Sigatec (micromachining, including LIGA and manufacture of silicon components respectively) Générale Ressorts (mainsprings) and KIF Parechoc (antishock assemblies). We also should not forget manufacturing centers which produce what are sometimes called “in-house” movements for other companies in the group which owns them; this includes the Richemont Group’s ValFleurier manufacture, as well as its Geneva Campus of Fine Watchmaking.
Supplied Movements: Common Sense, Historical Precedent
In a certain sense, therefore, the whole idea of an in-house movement is at least to a certain extent, a bit of a charming fiction; the Swiss watch industry historically has consisted of a very complex network of suppliers and manufacturers, with movements sometimes made by the company whose name is on the dial, but which much more often makes use of movements made with some or most of the components supplied, or with the movement entirely supplied. Fully integrated manufacturing is very much the exception rather than the rule – Aegler supplied movements to Rolex exclusively for decades but Rolex did not actually acquire the company until 2004; Vacheron Constantin for much of its history relied on supplied movements almost entirely (often from Jaeger-LeCoultre) and did not produce its own in-house automatic movement until 2006 (the caliber 2450). One of the most completely vertically integrated watch manufacturers is, as a matter of fact, not Swiss at all; it’s Seiko, which makes its own mechanical and electronic components (including integrated circuits and quartz oscillators) in house.
When you consider the maturity of the Swiss watchmaking supply chain, including the manufacturers who support the manufacturers with machine tools and testing instruments (like the acoustic machines which perform automated chronometry tests at COSC and elsewhere) you wonder why anyone with any sense, and with any desire to make a profit, would want to make an in-house movement at all. Making a movement truly “in-house” means a duplication internally of an already in-place supply chain of enormous size and sophistication which moreover, benefits from economies of scale.
Defining The In-House Movement
All this being the case, and all of this being a matter of public record, and considering the extent to which the idea of in-house movements has been dissected and discussed over the last three decades, you would think that the general level of discourse on the subject would be exhausted and yet here we are.
Having looked at the pros and cons of supplied movements let us now consider why a brand might set up to produce movements in-house, or have decided at some point in its history to shift from using mostly supplied movements, to exclusively in-house production.
For the sake of clarity it’s probably worth defining what we mean by “in-house” at all, since everyone, even the most vertically integrated of makers, has suppliers. I would say that a reasonable definition would be a movement with a unique design, the majority of whose static components (plates, bridges) and active components (gears, pinions, pivots, and escapement components inclusive of the balance spring, balance, and escapement) are manufactured on the premises of the brand whose name is on the dial. (Most brands outsource, at the very least, jewels, lubricants, and mainsprings).
This is with the caveat that larger brands may have different manufacturing centers not necessarily in the same physical location. It also leaves open the question of whether or not a manufacturing center which is owned by the company that owns a watch brand, which makes movements for that brand but also supplies other brands owned by the group, is really making “in-house” movements; for less clear cut cases such as this it is I suppose, ultimately up to the (hopefully informed) buyer to decide to what degree they want a certain extent of vertical integration to factor into their buying decisions.
Do You Actually Get Anything Special From An In-House Movement?
Well, that, as they say, depends, but I think that sometimes you do – and for reasons that are actually pretty dependent on in-house production.
First of all, you get a sense that the manufacturer is committed to its own products.
This is an intangible plus, but a plus nonetheless. It is extremely costly to set yourself up to produce movements, and taking even something as relatively straightforward as CNC machining plates and bridges in-house is an expensive undertaking – so are designing, prototyping, and homologating, as far as that goes. It sends a message that you regard your watches not just as the outcome of efficient and cost-effective supply chain management and logistics, but of a real (shared) passion for the history of the brand and the larger cultural history of watchmaking, in Switzerland and elsewhere. Using supplied movements is not a sign of cost-cutting per se – it’s more often than not simply about cost effectiveness and efficiency – but as I said to a colleague while writing this article, no client buys a luxury product because they’re impressed by how efficiently a brand manages its supply chains (although someone shopping around for brands to acquire might).
Secondly, you can often get something which is functionally unique in one way or another.
To take a somewhat extreme recent example, the new Audemars Piguet caliber 7138 allows you to set all the perpetual calendar indications from the crown, forwards or backwards, eliminating the usual correctors; this is an industry first and the keyless works which make this possible, are highly complex and unavailable in any form from any other manufacturer. You can certainly get perpetual calendars a-plenty from suppliers; you can only get the keyless works in the caliber 7138 from Audemars Piguet.
Going further back, when A. Lange & Söhne relaunched in 1994, the Lange I was unavailable in any form from anyone else and its patented big date display was also a technical first in the industry. This is a less cut and dried case, as much of the basic mechanism was produced with technical assistance from Jaeger-LeCoultre and IWC, but it was and is still an instance where a unique movement was presented in a watch with a unique design; with a supplied movement, the general configuration might have been approximated but it would have been a poor approximation at best. It would also have been off-brand; one of the core aspects of Lange’s identity was making watches in its ancient home in Glashütte, not importing movements to Glashütte.
Third, you may get a movement which is a technical improvement over what’s available from suppliers. A manufacturer may feel that it wants to have certain technical features in its movements which would not be available from suppliers – a particular balance spring alloy, for instance (Parachrom) a particular escapement (for all that Omega uses hundreds of thousands of co-axial escapements a year, they’re not getting them from suppliers) or even an entire timekeeping technology (Spring Drive, for instance). And of course technical distinctiveness can be an important part of a brand’s identity, not just reassuring background info for movement gearheads; Spring Drive produces a unique visual effect (the smoothly sweeping seconds hand) and is uniquely indicative of Grand Seiko’s strengths as a brand.
The upshot, I think, is that while in-house isn’t everything, it isn’t nothing, either. I think you do have to dig a bit deeper in specific cases to find out exactly what if anything you are getting that you are unlikely to get from a supplied movement – whether it’s some special functionally or aesthetic or design, or even just a connection to a brand’s larger history. (An in-house movement may also set you up for incredible headaches in the future in terms of servicing and repair, especially in the case of exotic components made from exotic materials, but that’s probably a story in itself). But as much as “in-house” is an oversimplification if you just leave it at that, it also connects to a meaningful trend in the recent history of modern watchmaking, and an in-house movement might – just maybe – offer you something qualitatively distinctive as well.