Known for its excellent craftsmanship, the French art of watchmaking has a longstanding tradition of excellence. It goes back more than six hundred years but it is in the 18th century that it takes off in Franche-Comté, the French region in the Jura mountains just a few miles away from Switzerland where YEMA's workshops are located.

YEMA's in-house calibers are designed, developed and assembled in our Morteau (France) workshops by our expert watchmakers averaging +30 years of service.

With a modest yearly output of 30,000 in-house calibers, YEMA does not produce sufficient volumes to become a full vertically integrated manufacture, nor does it aim to be. Opting for full vertical integration would require five times as many employees to produce the millions individual components required each year.

For some watch brands like YEMA it makes more financial sense to partner with French, Swiss and Asian components suppliers while completing the final assembly in our workshops. Reality is that there’s no market for a mid-range in-house caliber at the price of a tourbillon. It’s not our business, we’re organised to deliver performance at the right price for proprietary mechanics designed and assembled by our own watchmakers. This makes our in-house calibers more cost-effective than Swiss movements.

All the initial stages of our in-house calibers production, including R&D, design and prototyping take place in our Morteau workshops.

The final assembly is performed by hand by our Morteau team, with batches of movements moving from bench to bench. We employ designers, engineers, watchmakers, as well as specialists performing quality control of the finished components. This allows us to assemble the final in-house calibers only with excellent characteristics, and avoid exposing defective or low-quality in-house calibers to our customers.