“The planets are aligning to welcome 2025,” the email from Ateliers Louis Moinet promised. “Our watchmakers are carefully assembling the first STARMAN watches. These exceptional works conceal secrets related to our fascinating solar system. On a celestial tableau, the craftsmen meticulously arrange the planets as they stood on a date chosen by their future owner.”
If you’re a watch aficionado and lover of complications, your eyes may have widened at the promise of a timepiece concealing “secrets related to our fascinating solar system.” And while you may respect Rolex’s watch industry contributions, its refusal to explore complications beyond its own orbit of day dates and simple chronographs simply leaves you uninspired. To be fair, this same sentiment applies to many heritage brands – until you encounter Louis Moinet, an under-the-radar brand that has succeeded without being Rolex because it boldly goes where no brand has gone before.
“If you look at the history of watchmaking, it has always been both a business and an art,” Jean-Marie Schaller, owner and creative director of Louis Moinet, told me over Zoom. “Of course, we all have to pay the bills. But at the same time, it is—above all—an art. I regret to see that, today, some of us have lost this dimension. For them, it is just about the product, about market shares, about marketing concepts. But this is not what watchmaking is truly about. What it is, is not about products; it is about creations.”
Louis Moinet and The Art of Curating Desire
“It is not about a customer,” Schaller added. “It is about a friend. It is about building a relationship, not selling a watch.”
Louis Moinet shifts watch buying from a retail transaction into something far more intimate. Personalization is an expectation, not an afterthought. A Louis Moinet watch isn’t merely sold; it’s curated into a personal collection where rarity outweighs ubiquity.
And herein lies the secret to Louis Moinet’s success apart from Rolex, particularly since “friendship” isn’t within the world’s most recognized watch brand’s marketing playbook. Schaller makes it central, dismissing mass production to create only 500 timepieces annually. Some models exist only in ultra-limited runs of 12 to 28 pieces total. And some, only as one-of-a-kind pieces, limited to just one of one, for the brand’s dearest friends.
“I purchased a unique Tempograph modified by Jean-Marie according to my wishes,” entrepreneur and Louis Moinet client, Pierre Abrezol, shared via email. “I asked Jean-Marie to modify the Tempograph watch because, for me, the notion of passing time on a watch is conveyed through the seconds’ hand. So, I asked him to change the color of this hand, originally blue, to red, which would make it stand out better.”
For the Louis Moinet customer, nay, friend, owning something with a name everyone recognizes is unimportant. What’s valued most is being able to wear horological artistry existing nowhere else but on their wrist. This is the very essence of luxury marketing and speaks to the consumers passionate pursuit of luxury. Luxury cannot exist without that emotional appeal, whispering private words into the customer’s heart.
“They like to talk about how they feel about the watch,” Schaller shared of Louis Moinet’s clients. “They like having something truly special on their wrist. We put in a great deal of effort to ensure that what we create is not just a simple customization, but something far more meaningful. We strive to connect the watch to both the DNA of Louis Moinet and the personal story of its owner.”
Louis Moinet and The Art of Complicated Design
But back to complications. After all, they are how I, as an engineer’s daughter with her father’s analytical mind, first fell in love with watches in my former Tourneau days. Various models from Jaeger LeCoultre initially piqued my interest, but it was handling the Girard-Perregaux Opera Three that secured my lifelong attention. This timepiece could play Mozart’s Ein Kleine Nachtmusik and Tchaikovsky’s No Great Love, without an orchestra or a battery!
Complications are any feature on a watch that goes beyond telling time. Showing the date or having a chronograph (a stopwatch) is considered a complication, but these are too simple for Louis Moinet. Take the brand’s Black Gold Derrick, a tourbillon whose entire movement – the watch’s brain, if you will – mimics the drilling process every oil man will recognize. A drive shaft powering the walking beam (the mechanism used to pull oil from the ground) is central to the watch’s design.
“The first time I saw this magnificent Louis Moinet brand was in a Porsche magazine,” Christophe Chappuis, entrepreneur and Louis Moinet customer shared. He was drawn to the brand by, “The beauty of the watch and its originality, these details of the movement and the possibility of making it unique by adding your personal touch when ordering.”
Personal touch is a recurrent theme in Louis Moinet’s business model. Collectors can request engraved celestial maps based on the precise arrangement of the stars on a personally significant date. Certain Louis Moinet models also allow for an actual piece of the cosmos to be displayed on the wrist.
Schaller has been collecting meteorites for over 20 years, beginning after finding an extraordinary, 100-year-old, highly complicated movement with a chronograph, minute repeater, perpetual calendar and a moon phase. This movement inspired Schaller to ask his team, “What can we do which is very special, which has never been made?”
Louis Moinet and The Art of Global Friendships
Answering this question led to the Super Moon, a stunning and quite literal moon dial watch, accented with one of only 371 known lunar meteorites in existence. The dial is engraved to mirror humanity’s first view of the moon from space, captured in 1968 by Apollo 8. This watch became the brand’s entry point into the Omani royal court.
“I met somebody from Oman at a Basel trade show at the time,” recalled Schaller. “I showed him the watch, and I said, ‘Oh, by the way, this meteorite was found in Oman.’ He looks at me, and he said, ‘But I know the minister!’”
The Omani royal family has since become one of Louis Moinet’s most prominent collectors, acquiring pieces as gifts for others as well as for their private museum. As a result, the Middle East has become a strong market for the brand, as has the Japanese market. The company’s first customer and subsequent distributor after Schaller relaunched Louis Moinet in 2004 came from Japan.
While the limited Japan Rocket timepiece, made with fragments from the Japanese H-IIB rocket, a lunar meteorite and a Gibeon meteorite, is truly a thing of beauty honoring the brand’s deep-rooted connection with the country, it’s the yet unannounced upcoming creation Schaller teased that has me waiting with bated breath.
“We have a Japanese meteorite,” he began. “It’s very rare to find a meteorite from Japan. It was super difficult to find. This meteorite fell in Japan when Louis Monet was alive. So we will make a limited edition of 12 pieces only for Japan.”
Louis Moinet and The Art of The Celestial Tableau
The celestial connection is inherent to the brand. Louis Moinet – the man – was an astronomer, an inventor and an artist. A Renaissance man, he studied architecture, sculpture and painting in Rome, stone engraving in Florence, astronomy in Paris, and watchmaking in various Swiss cities. Moinet would go on to make extraordinary clocks and pocket watches for Napoleon Bonapart, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and quite a few emperors, queens and kings.
What is often a point of contention in the watch industry when it comes to who did what first, Moinet is the true original inventor of the chronograph. His 1816 Compteur de Tierces was the world’s first chronograph, measuring time to 1/60th of a second, an innovation far ahead of its time. Yet history forgot him until Schaller serendipitously discovered the Compteur de Tierces at a Christie’s auction in Geneva.
“Louis Moinet was the most important watchmaker after Breguet in the 19th century,” Schaller said. “But since 1853, unfortunately, he became a nobody, if I may say. There was a time span of 150 years where he was completely forgotten. And I had to rewrite a new book about Louis Moinet. I was blind because all the history—what you find today on the website—like that he was the inventor of the chronograph, like he crafted the most incredible pieces of art for the American presidents, Napoleon, and so on… All of this had disappeared.”
In restoring Moinet’s name in horological history, Schaller has introduced cosmic-inspired masterpieces earning both international acclaim and a world record. The 2023 launch of the Cosmopolis, a breathtaking tourbillon with hours marked by ten extremely rare meteorites found across the world, won the Guiness World Record for “Most Meteorite Inserts in a Watch” and “Design of the Year 2024” from Muse Design Award. The Jurassic Tourbillon, with a dial made from a 150-million-year-old fossilized dinosaur bone, won first prize in the International Chronometry Competition. Its seventh Red Dot Design Award in 2023 for Time to Race put the brand in the design hall of fame, along with luminaries like Apple and Ferrari.
With the Time to Race collection, personalization again takes the driver’s seat: each watch features a one- or two-digit “lucky number” chosen by the owner, rendered in colors reminiscent of iconic 1960s race cars. No two watches are alike.
“Being passionate about watches, I find the history of the Louis Moinet brand fascinating,” noted Chappuis, owner of a Time to Race marked with the number 74 (his birth year) and made with a custom apple green bracelet. “That a small factory can offer such objects in creation, originality and very high quality must be better known.”
Louis Moinet and The Art of Remaining Independent
There is an emerging acquisition trend in the watch industry, which first caught my eye when Chanel acquired a 25 percent stake in MB&F, a watchmaker known for its avant-garde designs and experimental horology. Would Schaller ever consider such a partnership?
“During the years, I’ve received some offers, but no, no, no, no!” Schaller rejected. “They have a different view on business, and they would not have respected what is, in my opinion, the true essence of this name, Louis Moinet.”
Instead, he’s found an investor aiding in the company’s growth as Schaller retains complete control. Yet this growth doesn’t mean in annual production. “We want to keep the same recipe. We want to offer quality and special experience to our customers. We’ll take it from there, and we’ll see. In any case, if we grow, it will be in keeping the same concept.”
The idea of jumping from 500 to 5,000 pieces annually feels like a nightmare, as Schaller can’t conceive sustaining the ingenuity, high level of detail and precision at such quantities. The very essence of Louis Moinet’s business model is intimacy. Scaling production would erode the personal experience he’s cautiously cultivated.
“The best for all of us—for them and for me—is to meet in person, to understand each other, and to create something truly personalized. How many brands can offer a product of this rarity, so exclusive? We make only 500 pieces a year. If you own one that is uniquely made for you, you will never get that from brands who produce 100,000 pieces a year. This is what we are proposing.”
Louis Moinet and The Art of Business
Louis Moinet has turned storytelling into a core brand strategy. Every timepiece tells a story, with the brand’s website designed to draw you deeper and deeper into that story. You could lose hours on the site, exploring the dynamics of each creation. And this fundamentally is a key component to the brand’s success. It’s the stories the brand regularly tells that lure customers back to hear the latest tale.
“For me, Jean-Marie is the poet of watchmaking.” Abrezol responded to my question of what drew him to the brand. “He always chooses materials that are very original, and every one of his creations tells a special story that makes you dream.”
Here are four lessons for marketers looking to replicate Louis Moinet’s success:
Lesson 1: Lead with storytelling.
Ensure every component of your product has an engaging story to tell; lead with the story to spark curiosity. While most luxury brands use premium materials to justify cost, Louis Moinet uses them as a narrative device. Meteorites, lunar fragments, and fossilized dinosaur bone are storytelling anchors which inspire intrinsic emotional value. A Louis Moinet watch is a historical artifact, not a status symbol.
Lesson 2: Every product is a collaboration, not a transaction.
Personalization is core to Louis Moinet’s business model, allowing customers to co-create as part of the purchasing process. Beyond simply owning a Louis Moinet, the customer also owns the story of its creation, a story no one else can ever have. The lesson? Bring customers into the creative process. Don’t underestimate the value of bragging rights in motivating consumer behavior.
Lesson 3: Rethink scale.
Aggressive growth is less important to Louis Moinet than ensuring every one of its 500 watches produced annually never disappoints a client. Quality will always trump quantity. What you lose in targeting a large audience, you gain in establishing a pricing strategy based on what the market will bear, with the market being controlled by the emotional value you cultivate within your audience.
Lesson 4: Build your brand into a world worth sharing.
First and foremost, Louis Moinet customers are friends, each of whom Schaller has personally engaged to learn their preferences and construct watches reflective of their unique identity. This approach has fueled organic growth, as Louis Moinet friends introduce their friends to the brand. If you nurture intimate customer relationships, they will grow your market share for you.
Of the three Louis Moinet timepieces he owns, Abrezol counts the Jurassic Tourbillon his favorite.
“The dial is made of a dinosaur bone, and that takes me back to a time when life on our planet was totally different and no longer exists as such,” he shared. “Mankind was not a part of the world then. So wearing it means wearing a bit of our planet’s history. As I mentioned earlier, Jean-Marie and the Louis Moinet brand make us dream and travel in time, in history, and in space.”
It’s this emotional resonance, this ability to bridge history, the heavens, and horology, that’s made Louis Moinet a success without being named Rolex. The brand thrives not on ubiquity, but in capturing the imagination of those who seek something beyond time.