Concepto

Concepto Watch Factory is an independent watch movement manufacture based in La Chaux-de-Fonds. The company supplies simple and complicated movements to many smaller brands, typically on a "white label" basis. Clients supply their concept or design and Concepto handles the engineering and production, including milling, cutting, and stamping. Concepto can produce the entire assortiment (balances, balance springs, pallet jewels, and escape wheels) in-house. The firm can also finish movements, including exotic and craft techniques.

Concepto Watch Factory was founded in 2006 and is headed by Valérien Jaquet, son of Jean-Pierre Jaquet, the watchmaking industrialist who founded La Joux-Perret. According to a 2008 article, the firm employed "a hundred people" at three sites, with the goal of "repatriating" all aspects of movement production at Rue du Collège 85 in La Chaux-de-Fonds. The factory sports a 1.2 ton Montbéliard clock, the largest in the world according to the elder Jaquet.

Concepto quickly gained fame by developing a tourbillon movement, enabling smaller companies to offer more affordable watches with the complication. According to the 2008 article, Concepto already had "about twenty customers" in just two years. At that time the company was working on an in-house chronograph movement to be available in a number of variants at more affordable prices than the tourbillon.

The company manufactures almost all of its components in-house, including movement decoration, having deployed a mix of traditional and ultra-modern CNC machines.