The Breitling Watch Source Forums

I have posted many times about how impressed I am with my AD, and today I had an interesting conversation with them about the movements in Breitlings. The manager is a knowledgeable guy, and he is 100% confident that Breitling are now manufacturing virtually all of the movements themselves. According to him they are buying the tray (the 'base plate' for the movement) from ETA and are then producing all of the parts that fit on the tray themselves - usually to a modified version of the appropriate ETA design.

Clearly this isn't the same as a manufacture - they are building to someone else's design, but if true that's a lot more in house work than I thought was happening.

That is very interesting. I wonder, though, if they are just building a modified ETA designed movement would they really be a manufacture? They are most likely paying ETA for the use of their design. If this news is true they could be moving towards the ability of designing and manufacturing thier own movements.

On a similar topic, it was recently mentioned that the movements in our Breitlings are fantastic looking and great care is being made to the appearance of the movements.... but why?? Noone is ever able to view the movements unless your a watchmaker, the few with a DB or really brave(or stupid) to remove the caseback. Maybe this combo of news signals a move (soon) to total in house and possibly more display casebacks.

I dunno....

Scott

_________________
Breitling Steelfish(black)
Breitling Steelfish(silver)
Panerai PAM 312
Bell & Ross BR03-92 Phantom
Steinhart BreitlingSource LE #5/15

Not sure if there is an 'official' definition of a manufacture, but in my book you would have to be building your own design, not just modifying / adding to someone else's.

Breitling movements have always been well decorated, I guess it's just a source of pride - but no argument from me, if they started producing complete in house movements and display backs.

That is a very odd thing to do... I guess its in preparation for the impending movement drought. I would rather them put the effort into manufacturing their own movements though.

_________________
BreitlingSource Admin
http://www.breitlingsource.com - http://blog.breitlingsource.com

Breitling buys "ebauches" from ETA. That means movements in parts. Those parts are ensambled to working movements in the Breitling Chronometrie. The parts have to pass the Breitling-qualitycontrol first. Very few alterations are made in the ensambling process (usually only last minute changes, which will already be changed with eta on the next delivery charge).
This is not enough to call a movement manufacture movement. A manufactue produces the ebauches by themselfs.

That was what I thought Thomas - thanks for confirming. Looks like my AD was wrong this time.

I was once told that it costs the average company close to a million USD to develop their own movement. And then they have to be able to produce enough movements for their watches. Im not sure how it works, but Im assuming they would need a bunch of new and different machines and so on, if they were to do this I would speculate that Breitlings would cost a great deal more than they currently do. As it is, IMO you get ALOT for your money when you purchase a Breitling. People say the same thing about Omega, but I think you get more with Breitling. The finishing, ruggedness, durability, the fact that all of their movements (even quartz) are COSC certified, and overall beauty of Breitling is hard to match, let alone beat for the price. Still would be nice to see maybe one or two new models with a manufacture movement in them. Maybe someday.