Creating a tailor-made timepiece

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If you have the patience to wait, the firm of Vacheron Constantin (VC) is willing to help you build a watch according to your specifications, and have you along during the whole exciting process - with personalised Internet and hotline access to your watchmakers in their Geneva atelier. Their value proposition, according to the man who heads up VC's bespoke Ateliers Cabinotiers division, is that a 250-year watch-making pedigree should have some positive effect on future value - especially when backed up by both technical and service guarantees from this manufacture.

It won't be cheap of course, but it sure sounds like a lot of fun, especially if you're the kind who likes to supervise challenging projects like the building of your home from top to bottom. Based on the amount of complexity undertaken, Dominique Bernaz has divided the scope of work into three broad categories, although he tells us that in practice, the three will often overlap.

In ascending degrees of difficulty, Category I would primarily involve the modification of a regular production watch from VC's current collection; for Category II, we would be talking about building a piece unique (a one-only watch) timepiece using existing VC movements and modules; and, in Category III, we would be talking about commissioning the design and construction of everything from scratch.

In terms of time frame, that depends on how much work we are talking about but, based on what he already has on his plate, Mr Bernaz tells us that it's unlikely to take less than a year from start to finish.

So how exactly does one go about ordering a watch, we asked him.

Here's how it works. The client first has to commission the work, either at a VC boutique or through a retailer, and VC undertakes never to replicate such a commissioned piece for others. An estimate of time and costs follows, but only after an in-house committee is satisfied the final product will have a distinctive VC 'look'.

Thereafter, a contract is signed between VC and the buyer, at which point a deposit is payable based on a sliding scale, starting with 50 per cent for contracts valued at up to 100,000 Swiss francs (S$129,473). Once the work has begun, the client will have personalised Internet and hotline access to the VC atelier in Geneva, and a monthly progress report delivered in a bound book. Finally, when the watch is ready for delivery, the client pays the balance due to VC.

Mr Bernaz informs us that since he first proposed this bespoke service to VC's top collectors in late 2006, he has signed no fewer than 50 contracts, most of them in either Category I or III, and had delivered at least a dozen completed works by early 2008.

'Categories were used at the beginning to make people understand what bespoke could be,' he explains. 'For us, in fact, they are all one of a kind, and require the same type of work with, of course, more or less new development. The basic challenge here for us is that we are talking about something set aside from the regular production process. What I can say is that delivery of our confirmed orders will take place between 2008 and 2013. But if you are commissioning a project today, it's unlikely to be completed before 2012.'

And, in terms of full-time manpower resources committed to his atelier, Mr Bernaz told us that he has two technicians who develop the project on paper from A to Z and do the necessary follow-up. In addition, there is a four-man team who builds the watches - two watchmakers, a technician and a constructor - as well as the flexibility to call on VC's other resources if required.

All said and done, the best part of the story is that we managed to persuade Mr Bernaz that it would be much more fun for our readers if we could offer them a real-life example of a watch made to specification, rather than just talk about it in the abstract.

So we sat down and researched some possibilities, and in the table that goes with this story, we detail the specs that we threw at VC, and the watch we challenged them to make for us. To ensure that our object of desire retained a modicum of VC DNA, we drew our inspiration from a pocket watch that they made in the 1920s.

BT readers are the first to see this, so here's the fun part - you are free to order this unique watch if you want to. Just return the favour by telling our readers all your experiences along the way. Cost: 800,000 to 900,000 Swiss francs. Time frame: Probably not before 2012.

Pictured here below are three variations that VC drew up for us based on the requirements we set out for them. Go for it!

Cheers