⏱ 1 min read
Background
Biel, in the canton of Bern, is best known for its bilingualism. Yet the town also lives from watchmaking. Rolex is its largest private employer, as in Geneva. Yet debates on Swiss watchmaking more often mention Geneva and the Vallée de Joux.
The key points
Le Temps devotes an article to the charity sale Watches for Tomorrow, held in Biel. The auction brings watch collectors together to support the organisation Terre des hommes, which works to help children.
The initiative comes from Alexander Grouet, a 45-year-old Franco-American and former Parisian, who settled in Biel with his family. He has worked for fifteen years at Google in Zurich. His blog timefiles.ch brings together, he says, “a few thousand collectors”.
His starting point is simple: collectors keep pieces they no longer wear. Yet they do not want simply to resell them. The charity sale offers them another option. It was launched in 2024. According to its founder, “Biel too has a rich history”.
Key figures
- 2024 : launch of the Watches for Tomorrow sale
- 15 years : Alexander Grouet’s length of service at Google in Zurich
- A few thousand : collectors gathered around the timefiles.ch blog
