Pequignet, French watchmaker, spent itself almost bankrupt creating an in-house movement

Pequignet was founded in 1973 by Émile Pequignet in Morteau, France — a town in the Franche-Comté region, the historic heart of French watchmaking. The brand built a reputation for affordable mechanical watches with distinctive designs, drawing on equestrian and exotic themes in collections named MOOREA, SAKKARA, and MASSAI.

In 2004, Didier Leibundgut, a former marketing director at Zenith, acquired control of the company. He set out to transform Pequignet from a mid-market watch brand into a genuine fine watchmaking manufacture. The centerpiece of this ambition was the Calibre Royal, an entirely in-house mechanical movement. A dedicated laboratory was opened in 2006, and the movement was launched in 2010. The cost of research, development, tooling, and manufacture was enormous for a company of Pequignet's size.

The investment in the manufacture transformation proved financially unsustainable. By 2012, the company was almost bankrupt. The balance sheet could not support the gap between the R&D expenditure and the revenue from watch sales. Pequignet was rescued by two private investors, Laurent Katz and Philippe Spruch — the managers of LaCie, the French computer hardware company — who took over the company.

Under Katz's chairmanship, Pequignet was restructured. Investment shifted to modern research, design, and manufacturing facilities. The Calibre Royal became the foundation of the Manufacture Collection, while the brand continued the MOOREA line. The company survived, but it had come within a single year of liquidation.