It was a bold move on the part of Dutch couple Peter and Aletta Stas when they set out to establish an all-new business making mechanical watches – in 1988. Traditional watch manufacturing was still deep in the doldrums after being knocked for six by the wide-scale arrival of quartz movements during the ’70s, and the revival of some of the great dial names of old was still years away.
All the same, the couple forged ahead with their aim to create ‘affordable luxury’ with the Frederique Constant brand, a name created from the first names of their respective great-grandfathers. Thirteen years later, they achieved their dream with the launch of Frederique Constant’s first in-house movement, the so-called Heart Beat Manufacture that proudly displayed its balance wheel through an opening in the dial.
As the years rolled by, the number of such ‘manufacture’ movements steadily grew to an impressiveive 30-plus, while innovations came thick and fast in the form of the use of silicon for key components (2007); an affordable tourbillon watch in 2008; a unique WorldTime mechanism in 2012 and, in 2018, the launch of the world’s first ‘hybrid’ smartwatch – a model featuring Bluetoothoth technology beneath a traditional, analogue dial.