Notes from a workshop visit with an independent Swiss maker who still builds their own movements — and what it taught me about building something small, slow, and entirely on purpose.
On 23 June 2025, I took the train from Basel to Biel. Not for a lecture, not for a fair, not for any of the usual reasons someone in the watch world takes a train to Biel. I was going to visit Horage — an independent Swiss maker I had reached out to through a contact at my school's specialist department — because I was building a watch of my own, and I had run out of things I could learn on my own.
I spent the ride reading through my notes. I had prepared questions. I had brought sketches. I did not want to arrive as a student. I wanted to arrive as someone who had done the work.
Laura Bonderer met me at the door.
She is a watchmaker whose focus is technical. Richard Gfeller was there too — also a watchmaker, but studying design in parallel. I could not have designed a better pair to look at my project. One person to tell me whether the geometry was right. Another to tell me whether the geometry was interesting.
The first thing I noticed was the atmosphere.
I had expected the polished distance you get from the big houses — the security desk, the appointment, the sense that you are being managed. Horage was the opposite. Open. Familiar. The kind of place where you get the impression that everyone knows what everyone else is working on this week, and that this is on purpose.
Horage has existed since 2007. Their first watch, the Omnium, came out in 2009 with a supplied movement. In 2015 they released their own — the Jonas K1, running on the in-house K1 calibre. Since then: the K-TOU tourbillon. The K2 micro-rotor. For a company of their size, the number of calibres they have brought into existence is not normal.
Laura took me through the entire workshop.
The parts room came first — thousands of tiny components, most of them no bigger than a grain of rice, catalogued in drawers. Then assembly. Then quality control. What I had never understood before walking through it was how much of watchmaking is not the assembly itself. It is the waiting — for a case to arrive, for a batch of components to be checked, for a movement to settle. The finished watches sit at the very end of a very long corridor of patience.
The number that stuck with me was seven.
Seven years. That is what it took Horage to bring the K1 movement into production. Not seven years of continuous manufacturing — seven years of iteration, revision, tooling, failure, and re-tooling before the first movement left the workshop. Seven years for a component most people who buy the watch will never see.
I thought about that for the rest of the day.
We went upstairs. The digital department sat directly above production, which is not how most companies arrange things. At Horage, the two worked hand in hand. The people designing the communications knew what the people building the watches were working on this week — because they could hear them working.
The social media area had watches laid out for photography. Richard explained how the lighting was set up. I remember thinking: this is a company that treats their images the way they treat their movements. Slowly. Carefully. Made in-house.
I gave my presentation in the break room.
I had my sketches, my CAD renderings, the case I had been iterating on. I walked them through the diameter debate — whether to stay at 37mm or push to 40 — the movement fitting, the crown choice. Laura and Richard listened without interrupting. Then they told me what they would change.
The lugs, Richard said, could be softer. Not rounded exactly, but less abrupt at the transition. It would sit better on the wrist. Laura had a point about the caseback. The threaded version I had originally planned would be harder to execute than a screw-down. She was right. I changed it that week.
We also talked about Gérald Genta — the reference point I had kept returning to throughout my sketches. Richard understood immediately why. When you look at a Polerouter or a Royal Oak, you are not looking at decoration. You are looking at proportion. Genta made watches that read as architecture. That was what I was trying to reach for.
The last stop was the CNC workshop.
The metalworker explained the machines. Some of them cost hundreds of thousands of Swiss francs. Each one was capable of producing components at tolerances measured in microns. He showed me a part being machined and explained why every parameter — the speed, the cooling, the tool path — mattered for a component that would end up invisible inside a case.
I remember thinking: this is the actual cost of Swiss watchmaking. Not the marketing. Not the boutique. The room.
I took the train back to Basel that evening with more than I had arrived with. Not just technical corrections, though those were useful. Something quieter. A conviction.
Horage does not exist because Swiss watchmaking needed another company. It exists because a small number of people decided that building movements from scratch — patiently, in a room in Biel — was still worth doing in 2025.
INFINI is a smaller idea than Horage. I am not building movements. I am not seven years into a calibre. I am one watch in, with a prototype on my wrist and a plan for what comes next. But the lesson from that morning was not about scale. It was about posture.
You do not need to be the loudest maker in Switzerland to make something worth wearing. You need to be patient, honest about what you can and cannot do, and willing to spend seven years on a component nobody will see.
I am grateful to Horage. Not just for the tour. For the reminder that the way I want to build is still a legitimate way to build.
— D.S.