his is a first in the watch industry.

Movements, positions, shocks, as well as also ambient temperature, hygrometry, atmospheric pressure... To start with, De Bethune is going to offer some of its customers a chance when purchasing their DB28GS Grand Bleu to first wear a test watch equipped with a multitude of sensors that will be able to record the wearer’s environment and specific behaviour.

Two weeks of wearing the test watch will be enough to harvest all the necessary data enabling the De Bethune Chronometry Workshop in Switzerland to analyse the type of ’wear’ and thus adjust the timepiece specifically for its owner.

To achieve this, De Bethune has built a robot arm inside its Manufacture in L’Auberson. Installed in an atmospheric chamber and using state-of-the-art technology, this device will receive all the data collected by the test watch’s sensors and thus be able to accurately recreate the wearer’s movements in their specific environment.

By thus reproducing the future environment of the timepiece, De Bethune will be able to carry out its customised chronometric (precision timekeeping) adjustment before delivering the watch to its new owner.

Denis Flageollet, Master Watchmaker and co-founder of De Bethune, is constantly striving to improve the highest standards of precision for all his timepieces. With this programme dubbed the “Sensoriel Chronometry project”, he is paving the way for a new vision of chronometry.

Whereas the entire watch industry – including the most prestigious certifications – works when adjusting watches on averages and static tests that still do not take into account the dynamic wear and the daily constraints specific to each watch, De Bethune has chosen the path of truly customised and unique adjustment based on wear that is not theoretical and dictated by a machine, but instead on the real-life conditions awaiting each of its watches.

Each watch that benefits from customised chronometric adjustment will leave the workshops accompanied by a personalised report detailing all the data used for its adjustment. In concrete terms, purchasers of a De Bethune timepiece who requests the adjustment of their watch will simply have to wear a test watch on their wrist for a two-week period.

Approximately 2’000’000 pieces of information per hour generated by each test watch will be harvested and added to a valuable database for the De Bethune Chronometry Workshop, which will analyse the real-life constraints to which each timepiece is subjected and thus be able to adjust them precisely in relation to these exact constraints.

The information from the test watches will be harvested every few seconds. Wearers will not have to do anything special, except wear the test watch in exactly the same conditions as their future timepiece and regularly recharge it on a simple charging station or using a classic USB cable.

Finally, as the Manufacture De Bethune and Denis Flageollet’s team have maintained a human-scale size, it goes without saying that this service is part of a very exclusive context of the brand’s production and will benefit from a gradual ramp-up, starting with a few timepieces per year.

While the concern for the specific adjustment of each of its watches reflects the full extent of the passion that De Bethune devotes to making them, it can also be explained by the very strong ties woven between every owner of a De Bethune and their timepiece. A De Bethune is far more than an instrument that tells the time: it is a deeply personal, unique object.

Independently-minded, driven by an innovative reason for being, constantly challenging itself – and all for the intimate and intact pleasure of rethinking approaches, improving, optimising and inventing... De Bethune remains firmly focused on its projects while pursuing its efforts and its resolutely futuristic vision of the Art of Watchmaking. This degree of mastery unleashes creativity, opens up the spectrum of possibilities and serves to embody an ideal of precision cherished by Denis Flageollet.