Louis Erard

Louis Erard was founded in 1929 in La Chaux-de-Fonds by Louis Erard and André Perret, originally as a watchmaking school and case manufacture before producing its first watches under the Louis Erard name in 1931. The house grew into a full manufacturer through the mid-20th century, weathered the quartz crisis, relocated to Le Noirmont in 1992, and went largely dormant for nearly a decade before being relaunched by private investors in 2003. Its modern identity, though, dates to industry veteran Manuel Emch's arrival — first as strategist, later as a board delegate and the brand's de facto artistic director. Emch had previously been the youngest CEO in the Swatch Group's history at Jaquet Droz and had led independent brand Romain Jerome; at Louis Erard he found a sprawling catalogue with no clear identity and reshaped it around two ideas: a single hallmark design, the regulator dial, and a relentless stream of collaborations with independent watchmakers, designers, and artists, made accessible at a fraction of those collaborators' usual prices. Famously, the brand's collaboration with Vianney Halter traces back to Emch accidentally pocket-dialing him.

That collaboration model has become the engine of the brand: a Halter piece that might otherwise cost well into six figures became available through Louis Erard for around a tenth of that, and the formula has been repeated with a widening circle of names. The Noirmont X line carries the brand's regulator-format collaborations with master watchmakers Vianney Halter (across two Régulateur chapters) and Konstantin Chaykin (the Time Eater, reinterpreting his 'wristmon' concept with 94 patents' worth of horological mischief behind it) and Cédric Johner (an independent watchmaker known for intuitive, plan-free, largely CNC-free construction), alongside artist-designer Alain Silberstein's instantly recognizable Bauhaus-bright reworkings of the regulator dial. Past collaborators across the wider catalogue have also included Kudoke, Massena LAB, Seconde/Seconde, designer Eric Giroud, and artists Olivier Mosset and Sylvie Fleury, with the 2340 sport-luxury line recently opening up to pop-culture crossovers such as a collaboration built around Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy.

Alongside the collaborations, the Noirmont Métiers d'Art collection channels the regulator format into rare hand-crafts at unusually accessible prices: grand feu enamel dials (Émail Grand Feu) and wood marquetry (Marqueterie) made by some of Switzerland's most accomplished artisans, alongside hand-guillochéd and hardstone-dial executions elsewhere in the catalogue. The standard Noirmont collection — including Le Régulateur and La Petite Seconde variants — carries the same regulator DNA in a more conventional production run, while the 2340 (named for Le Noirmont's own postal code) is the brand's modern sport-luxury line, the first Louis Erard with an integrated bracelet, built on a hybrid titanium-and-steel case. The 2300 covers Louis Erard's chronographs, and a small Hall of Fame line gathers standout pieces from the collaboration archive. Louis Erard states that its watches exceed the official 60% Swiss-made value threshold, and the brand has become a fixture at auction houses like Phillips — which had never offered a Louis Erard watch before 2019 and has sold close to twenty since — a measure of how far Emch's strategy has taken what was, not long ago, a near-forgotten name.