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MAKER-DIRECT · LIMITED TO 80 PIECES

Direct From My Bench: After 20 Years, I'm Selling My Last 80 Watches Direct

A fourth-generation Besançon watchmaker spent 20 years trusting agencies that promised everything and delivered debt. Now Henri Meylan is appealing to collectors directly.

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By Catherine Holloway · June 14, 2026

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Henri Meylan at his Besançon bench, the watch he refuses to outsource.

My name is Henri Meylan. I am 71 years old, and I am the fourth generation of my family to build watches in Besançon, the old heart of French horology. My great-grandfather opened our atelier. I learned to true a balance wheel by hand before I learned to drive.

I am writing to you directly because I have run out of other options. For 20 years I trusted marketing agencies who swore they could carry my work to buyers across America. They took my money, delivered almost nothing measurable, and I found myself deep in debt.

So I am doing the one honest thing left to me. I am offering my last 80 watches straight from my bench, direct from my atelier, to the people who still care about how a thing is made. This is my last call.

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How I Learned This Craft From My Grandfather

The atelier my great-grandfather opened in 1921 sits on a narrow street in Besançon, the city that once cased most of the watches sold in France. I grew up in the back room of it. My grandfather, Armand, sat me at the bench when I was 9 and would not let me touch a movement for almost a year.

First I learned to clean. Then to oil, one jewel at a time, with a pin he had ground himself. I can still smell the benzine and the hot brass. By 14, before I had ever driven a car, I could true a balance wheel by hand until it ran dead flat.

I took over the atelier in 1984. For 20 years it was enough. We made rectangular tank-style watches with Roman dials, the shape French horology made famous, and people came to the door to buy them.

Then the door stopped opening. My son moved to Lyon. Buyers shopped online, and I did not know how to reach them. I was a watchmaker, not a marketer, so I trusted people who said they were.

20 Years, 4 Agencies, And Nothing To Show For It

Let me show you exactly where the money went, because I have kept every invoice.

In 2007 a digital agency took €14,000 to build my brand online. In 18 months my website went from 22 visitors a day to 19. In 2013, a search advertising firm charged me €31,000. Of 240,000 ad impressions, I sold 9 watches. In 2019 came a social-media agency.

They posted 41 times and ran one sponsored campaign with an influencer. It generated 6 sales and a bill for €22,000. The last one, in 2023, simply stopped answering my emails after cashing the first €9,000.

The pattern took me too long to see. Every one promised reach. Every one billed in advance. Every one delivered nothing I could measure. Nearly €80,000 over 20 years, gone. I finally understood the truth that should have been obvious. I am not a marketer. I am a craftsman.

What I Never Compromised, Even At The Worst

When the debt was at its worst, my supplier offered me a cheaper case alloy and a movement from a factory that stamps out thousands a week. It would have saved me real money on every watch. I sent it back the same afternoon.

I have never substituted a material to cut a cost. Every case is solid brushed rose gold, not plating. Every movement is Swiss, regulated by hand at my bench. Every dial carries the Roman numerals my grandfather drew, printed the old way, not stuck on.

Each watch takes me close to 30 hours across 2 weeks. I will not speed that up. In 2021, pressed for cash, I let a contractor in Lyon assemble a batch of 12 to save time. When they arrived, the case backs were misaligned by a fraction of a millimeter. I returned all 12 and finished them myself.

That is the one thing the agencies could never take from me. The watch is still honest, even when the business was failing.

Expert View

Émile Garnier, Watch Specialist at a Geneva Auction House

"I have handled thousands of cased movements, and you can feel the difference in a Lavigne piece within seconds. The hand-finished bevels, the way the balance is poised by hand, the brushed rose-gold case. That is easily 30 hours of bench work per watch. You do not see this level of finishing from a workshop this small anymore."

The Honest Math Of Selling Direct

Here is the honest arithmetic, because you deserve to see it. A watch like this costs me close to 30 hours and around €180 in materials before I have earned a centime. A wholesaler offered to take the whole batch off my hands, but at a price I could not survive on. I would have lost money on every piece.

So I am skipping the shops and the markup entirely. Sold direct from my bench, bypassing the boutique markup entirely, each watch still leaves me enough to pay my supplier and chip away at the bank.

Every euro I once handed to a marketing agency simply burned. I cannot afford that gamble again. The math is simpler now. If 80 people buy one watch, I clear what I owe my supplier and keep the atelier open another year.

I am not asking for charity. You get a hand-built Swiss watch at the price the boutique would have charged anyway. The exchange is fair to both of us.

Why People Keep These Watches For Decades

What keeps me at the bench is not the marketing. It is the letters. I still have customers wearing watches I cased in the 1990s, watches that have outlived 3 of the phones they photograph them with.

A dress watch like this is not a gadget you replace. It is the thing a man reaches for on the mornings that matter, the watch a woman fastens before a wedding or a funeral. The rectangular tank shape never looks dated because it was never trendy. It was right in 1925 and it is right today.

The rose-gold case warms against the skin and reads as quiet, not flashy. My oldest customer, a retired surgeon in Maine, has worn his Lavigne every day since 1996 and has sent it back to me only twice for cleaning. That is what I build for.

People do not keep these because I told them to. They keep them because, 30 years on, the watch still keeps perfect time and still looks like something made by a person who cared.

What Actually Arrives At Your Door

These are not claims. Each one is something you can check the moment you open the box.

A rectangular tank-style case in solid brushed rose gold, 32mm by 38mm, not plated and not hollow. A Swiss mechanical movement, regulated by hand and signed on the bridge. A white dial with hand-set Roman numerals printed the traditional way. A genuine leather strap, hand-stitched, with a matching rose-gold buckle.

Inside the box you will also find a certificate signed and dated by me, carrying the individual number of your watch and my maker's mark stamped into the case back. The watch arrives wound and running, set to the correct time, packed by my own hands in Besançon.

It is covered by a 30-day return, no questions asked, and a lifetime repair promise. If anything ever goes wrong, you send it back to my bench and I mend it, the same bench where it was born. Those are facts you can hold, not promises in an advertisement.

What His Long-Time Owners Tell Us

These are not paid endorsements. They are a few of the collectors and everyday owners who have kept Henri's watches on their wrists for decades, and who wrote to him when they heard he might close.

"I bought mine for my retirement in 2004, and it has not left my wrist for anything that mattered since. People half my age stop me to ask about it. They never believe one man still makes them by hand."

— Robert M., 68

"My husband gave me this watch the year we married, and I wore it to both our daughters' weddings. The rose gold still looks warm against my hand at 64. When I heard Henri was struggling, I ordered a second one for my granddaughter."

— Linda K., 64, Ohio

"I have owned 3 so-called luxury watches that all needed expensive servicing within a few years. The one Henri built me has run for 12 years on a single cleaning. It is the only watch I will leave to my son."

— Gerald P., 71, retired engineer

Editor's note, updated June 16: since this article first appeared, Henri's atelier reports that fewer than 40 of the original 80 watches remain, each still finished and packed by hand.

How To Buy One Of The Last 80

There are 80 watches in this run, and there will not be a quick second one. Each takes me close to 30 hours, and I am one man at one bench. When these are gone, the waiting list starts again.

Because you are buying straight from my atelier, with no boutique and no distributor taking a cut, I can offer them well below the price a shop would have asked. That is the whole point of selling direct. The markup that used to disappear into other hands now stays with the watch and with me.

Order one and I pack it myself, set and running, and ship it to you within 5 to 7 days. It comes with my signed certificate, a 30-day return, and my promise to repair it for life. One watch per customer, so that as many of you as possible can own one.

Get Yours Before The Stock Runs Out

If These 80 Sell, The Atelier Survives

I will be honest with you, the way I have tried to be honest about everything here. If I can sell these 80 watches direct, I clear my supplier, I keep the bank quiet, and the atelier my great-grandfather built stays open another year. I will be back at the bench in the morning.

If I cannot, I will have to take whatever the wholesalers are willing to pay, and a workshop that has run for 4 generations will close before next winter. I am not asking for charity. I am asking you to buy a watch I am proud of, at a fair price, while there are still a few left to buy.

Get Yours Before The Stock Runs Out

Henri Meylan, fourth-generation watchmaker, Lavigne atelier, Besançon

What Buyers Are Saying

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Carol M.

I wear it every day and it still draws compliments at 63. It keeps better time than the expensive brand I retired to a drawer.

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David R.

The finish on this watch is something you feel the moment it touches your wrist. Knowing one man in France built it makes it mean more.

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Susan B.

My husband searched for a proper dress watch for years. The tank shape is timeless and the rose gold suits him perfectly. He has not taken it off.

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James W.

Ordered after reading Henri's letter. It arrived running, beautifully boxed, with a signed certificate. This is what craftsmanship used to mean before everything went mass-produced.

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Patricia L.

Bought one for my husband's 70th birthday. He nearly teared up reading the founder's note tucked inside. It is more than a watch to him now.

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Robert K.

I was nervous buying direct from overseas, but it shipped fast and the quality is undeniable. You can tell a real watchmaker stood behind every detail.

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