Turning the world of watchmaking upside down

Getting to know Philippe Defour & Claude Sfeir in private. Both have a genius talent and a gifted knowledge of the watchmaking world, together they promise a big success.

Philippe Dufour & Claude Sfeir have established a bond that transcends mere friendship, between the two is assured creativity, delight, an eye for detail and beauty, they like to call themselves 'watchmaking brothers'. Philippe Dufour is considered a master of modern watchmaking and his watches are always among the finest ever made, watches that makes himself by hand. He devotes himself wholeheartedly to his productions, in his workshop located in the Vallée de Joux, in the Neuchâtel region. Philippe Dufour has always defended the craftsmanship and refinement of watchmaking, valuing quality above all else.

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Claude Sfeir is actually consider one of the world's leading watch collectors, a passion that runs in his family. His history as a collector began in the Abu Dhabi souk, where he owned a stall and sold gold. To do so, he had to smash the watches he bought with hammers to extract the precious metal. Until one day he was offered 10,000 dollars for a Rolex he owned. From that moment on, he dedicated himself entirely to the world of watches, but he became a passionate and careful collector, above buying and selling, he has valued so much the pieces he has acquired over the years. Claude began by buying what he liked or what caught his attention, exploring the best cities and talking to the most prominent creators, until he achieved the notoriety and knowledge that he now possesses.

Phillippe Dufour & Claude Sfeir have a long and deep relationship, since they met about four decades ago. Dufour has always made very good recommendations to Sfeir on what to buy or what to look out for. Together, they have already shown their value to the industry at the Phillips auction just over a month ago in Geneva. Their model built a new limited edition series of the Dufour Simplicity, for the 20th anniversary of the Simplicity company. In order to make the watch known and to arouse public interest, Claude wanted to promote it at the Phillips auction in Geneva in November. The lot 206 of the auction estimated to be worth around 200,000-400,000 francs, were sold for over a million pounds, a price far, far higher than other models from the same company would normally fetch.

-How do you value recent Phillips auction results?. ‘ What happen this year, in the auction, is that people has no confidence in vintage, especially in Patek and Rolex, because there is many fake dials. There is no value. When you want to buy a vintage, you should buy something very high quality, so if you pay 1 million, yours piece will be 5 million, but when you buy midium quality you can never shell. So people now understand that independent is the best. You see the result’. (Claude Sfeir).

-Claude, you know Philippe since, many many years?. ‘Many years, we have been always seeing each other in auctions. Every time there is some “Bourse” or Basel Fair or whatever, always we are together. Last we check, at that memorable Basel fair, we both looked at the same jewelled watch. It was a watch around 50, 60 millions, a lady’s watch. After, we came to the Plaza Hotel and we had a small drink talking on that watch. And we decide something together, making the world's most expensive jewellery watch. Maybe in, two, three or five months, we won’t know yet, we can tell people what we do. ‘

Know more about the story in the Financial Times article of Nick Foulques.

-And you, Philippe, can you tell us a bit more about your relationship with Claude?. ‘Yes, it start as a friendship but now he’s like my brother. We really call each other ‘brother’. We are very close and we always say, it’s a shame that we didn’t met before, because it was so may things to do. But still, we are young. We are going to show something interesting, I think.

-’Yes, Yes, we do something that nobody can do’ (Claude).

We are very much looking forward to following in their footsteps and discovering what they have in store for us. So far, the watch sold at the Phillips auction has triggered many requests from all sorts of sectors and backgrounds. So Philippe and Claude have decided to distribute the models through a lottery. The reaction of the fans to the raffle has been frenetic, we are told that they are receiving up to 5,000 emails a day from interested people trying to get one of the 10 remaining watches.

-How do you see your collaboration in the future?. ‘We have to finish first the 21 pieces. As we said there is some project, a new project to come, maybe by the end of 22, we can show something. We have been working on it for 3 or 4 years, it's something incredible and we will unveil it soon. Philippe is 72 years old, but he still has a young mind and keeps his passion intact, now, thanks to the help I can give him, he is going to be more focused on the watch production side and the rest of the business will be run on a family level, Philippe's daughter is already working with her father, in fact they are going to present a watch created together, she is as talented as her father and she is going to take over the generational baton. We do a lot of teamwork, Philippe's wife also helps with the communication work. I believe that with this support we will ensure that the brand and the production of Philippe, who already has great recognition at the artistic level and as a master watchmaker, will also receive a business value commensurate with his cache’ (Claude Sfeir).

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