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 Gerome De Witt was a watch collector and didn't even think of creating his own watch, but he became a co-investor of a watch company, headed by a watchmaker Cedric Jeauner. When the cooperation was over, De Witt had a simple choice to make: either to continue what he had started or to throw up the game.
“Negative experience sometimes gives us very good results in the future”, – De Witt says about his brand's first hard steps. He didn't despond when Jeauner left, though the perspectives were not very optimistic. “I spoke to our workers, – De Witt tells, – and they said that we had to go on working. I have always loved and collected watches, but I had never made them before. I understood, though, that if I wanted to produce genuine, serious watches, then I had to learn a lot”.
De Witt decided to continue what he had started and, having applied some creativity and talent, made DeWitt company into a thriving centre of technical innovations, not foreign to the exquisite neoclassicism aesthetics. De Witt learned with phenomenal speed. When his first tourbillons, retrograde perpetual calendars and split-chronographs with the legendary Venus calibers saw the light of day, it became obvious, that De Witt had a unique instinct for watches. All the models had great commercial success.
De Witt did the most important thing for the brand – he created a notable shape of the case. The Academia line watches have cases, that look like car compensation gears. The shape was inspired by an idea of what the compensation gear would like in section.
Thanks to cooperation with talented watchmakers, who had created most of the highly complex Frank Muller watches in due time, De Witt designed the Academia Tourbillon Differentiel watch, which was awarded the Geneva Grand Prix for technical innovations in 2005.
“To tell the truth, – De Witt says, – I didn't count on such great success when I had just founded the company. The fact, that our Academia Tourbillon Differentiel watch was awarded the Grand Prix in 2005 was a huge and unexpected honor for us. I've never thought that one could reach such success in such a small period of time”.
The watch is notable for its planetary gears system, which allows you to make just 8 crown rotations for full watch rewinding, after which the differential movement disconnects the winding drum, and the watch's owner can continue watching the fascinating rotation of planetary wheels without risk to damage the watch. But later DeWitt company was waited by another ascent – Claude-Daniel Proellochs, the ex-managing director of Vacheron Constantin watch company, joined it.
Proellochs' influence on Vacheron Constantin's affairs was so huge, it seemed, that Proellochs and Vacheron Constantin watches were bound together forever. Still, at the end of 2005, on the company's 250th anniversary eve, Proellochs left Vacheron Constantin on his own free will and switched over to DeWitt, showing great interest to the brand and its potential. However, this occasion was not so rare for DeWitt. For example, one of Patek Philippe's great experts, Mr. Meunier, who created such masterpieces, as the ultra-thin split-chronograph, switched over to DeWitt, because he was inspired by the company's plans for the future. Proellochs explains it in this way:
“DeWitt had what most of other watches don't have, – its face, its individuality, and it's so strong, that their watches imprint in your memory forever. First, these are the columns along the perimeter of the case. I like them for their recognizability, flawless elegance and the fact, that they look monumental, but still modern”.
What is a DeWitt watch? It's a movement and half of a dial or a movement without a dial at all. It's multilevelness and a lot of light, reflecting from the mirror-like surfaces.
De Witt's watches will leave nobody indifferent. Each piece is handcrafted by one watchmaker and the client can always watch each piece's production.
“Every time I offer my experts some novelty, there's a big probability, that they'll consider it impossible, because nobody has done it ever before. But if there are only limitations around us, where is freedom then? Where is creativity? Only freedom can bring you unprecedented result and only such results bring you experience as a result”.
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