I have talked with Xavier de Roquemaurel a good few times now, at Watches and Wonders, at various fairs, always standing up, always with a queue of other journalists waiting their turn. This time was different. We sat down in the basement of Czapek’s brand new boutique at Quai des Bergues 27 in Geneva, with almost nobody around, and I finally got to ask the questions I had been saving for a room without a schedule pressing on us. Valeria and Roman joined too, and between the four of us we started, only half joking, the first meeting of the Anonymous Watch Winders. If you own a mechanical watch and forget to wind it sometimes, you already know which member you would be.
A boutique with the address to prove it
Czapek did not pick Quai des Bergues 27 because it looked good on that side of the lake. The address sits a door down from Quai des Bergues 29, where François Czapek and his then partner Antoine Patek ran their atelier in the 1830s and 1840s, before the two went their separate ways and Patek carried on with a rather more famous name. Xavier told me the ground floor of buildings in that part of Geneva used to house shops precisely because the noise and dim light down there made them useless for watchmaking. The good light and the calm went to the upper floors, where the dial makers, engravers and movement finishers worked. So when Czapek eventually found space right next to its own birthplace, it made the kind of sense that does not need explaining twice.
The new flagship roughly doubles the footprint of the brand’s previous Geneva address on rue de la Corraterie, and it includes a basement chambre séparée, the very room where we filmed. The boutique quietly opened its doors in July 2026, with the official inauguration held on the first of September, the eve of Geneva Watch Days. Xavier admitted the negotiation was nowhere near as poetic as the story now sounds. It took roughly six months to agree a price and another nine to clear permits and reach something close to an understanding with the landlord’s architect, and real estate being real estate, every week brought a fresh surprise, none of them the treasure-in-the-basement kind.
Two watches marked the opening. The first is a new take on the Quai des Bergues “Midnight in Geneva,” now cased at 40.5mm rather than the original 42.5mm from 2019, still fitted with the hand-wound SXH1 and its seven day power reserve, and still limited to 18 pieces as a nod to the address of Czapek’s first modern boutique at rue de la Corraterie 18. Xavier laughed when he told me he only realised after the fact that 27 pieces would have matched the new street number better. He called it a good mistake, and it is a phrase that came up more than once during our chat, almost as a house philosophy. The second watch, a Place Vendôme Complicité in Glacier Blue and limited to ten pieces in platinum, celebrates the ongoing collaboration between Xavier and master watchmaker Bernhard Lederer and carries a price of CHF 103,000 before tax.
Beyond the two novelties, there is a scent now too. Czapek worked with a French perfumer, himself an owner of one of the brand’s limited editions, to create a candle blending leather, wood and a touch of tobacco, a nod to the cigar habits of more than a few Czapek collectors. It debuted at the opening event and Xavier admitted, without much shame, that he is rather fond of it.
The people behind the watches
What struck me most was how relaxed everyone was about admitting the messier parts of running an independent house. Xavier does not come from watchmaking. He came in through marketing and communications, unemployed at the time, and he told me that gap between jobs mattered because it let him keep the good habits from his career and drop the bad ones before building something new with co-founder Harry Guhl and master watchmaker Sébastien Follonier back in 2015. Valeria found her way in after attending the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève the year Czapek won a prize she had never heard of, which tells you something about how under the radar this brand still was less than a decade ago. Roman joined more recently, in 2023, and openly said he is still working through the brand’s back catalogue to catch up with everyone else in the room.
We also talked about the words everyone in this industry is tired of. Xavier cannot stand “between tradition and innovation” unless the person saying it actually explains what they mean. Roman added “disruptive,” and somebody else in the room, half regretting it, admitted the team has occasionally been guilty of “dial animation” too, which really just means another sub-dial dressed up in fancier language. Fair enough, I have used a phrase or two like that myself over the years.
What you will find in the video
The full interview runs a little over half an hour and I kept most of it unedited on purpose, because the value here is in the unscripted moments, not in a polished highlight reel. You will hear Xavier explain why he never lets his team say “I like” or “I don’t like” a design internally, insisting instead on an objective, almost data driven case for every choice. You will hear who gets treated like the office’s biggest kid whenever a finished watch reaches the workshop bench, and who counts as the boutique’s resident geek for finishes nobody else notices. And you will get Xavier’s honest reflection on the Midnight in Geneva’s limited run of 18 pieces, including the number he now wishes he had chosen instead.
If you have ever wondered what actually happens behind the counter of an independent Geneva boutique, away from the fair booths and the polished product shots, this is about as close as it gets. Go and press play.