Company profile:
Bell & Rossi is a company with head office in Paris, and manufacturing facility in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. It was founded in 1992 by French-Swiss designer Bruno Belamich, who had studied at the École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle, in Paris, and entrepreneur Carlos A. Rosillo, who had studied at the HEC (École des Hautes Etudes Commerciales) business school in Paris. They were both 28 at the time, and shared a passion for watches. Their concept for the brand was based on highly functional watches, whose form is defined by their specialist functions – linked primarily to aviation, but also diving and bomb disposal work. And so they initially began working with German brand Sinn, which had a powerful aviation background and also made cockpit instruments. The first collections of watches had Swiss-made movements by Valjoux and Lemania, and were co-branded by Sinn and Bell & Ross.
In 1997, Chanel Horlogerie became a minority shareholder of the company and injected capital. Successively this also gave Bell & Ross the chance to begin manufacturing their own watches in the Chanel manufacture named Châtelain, based in Le Chaux-de-Fonds, which makes watches for Chanel and other third-party clients; in 2002, the partnership with Sinn came to an end. The partnership with Chanel contributed another important factor: their familiarity with ceramics as a case material.
In 2005, Bell & Ross presented their BR 01, a watch based on the design of a cockpit altimeter. Other watch families include the BR-X1 aeronautical chronographs, the BR 03, another aviation watch family, the diving watches BR 02, and the Vintage BR collection based on vintage aviation models.
Most of the movements that Bell & Ross use for their watches are manufactured by Swiss company Sellita. The company’s annual production has been estimated at about 65,000 watches per year (source: thewatchworld.ch), and the company has about 170 employees, 50 of whom at the Paris head office. It has about 750 points of sale worldwide, and its products are sold for about 50% in Europe, 50% in the rest of the world, principally the USA, Middle East and Asia.
Location:
Head office:
Bell & Ross
8, rue Copernic
75116 Paris
France
Tel. +33 (0)1 73 93 93 00
www.bellross.com
Manufacture:
Châtelain
Le Chaux-de-Fonds
New watches:
Bell & Ross BR V1-92 Bellytanker
Bell & Ross BR V2-94 Bellytanker chronograph
Bell & Ross Vintage Garde-Côtes Chronograph
Bell & Ross Vintage Garde-Côtes Automatic
Other posts:
Bell & Ross Instrument de Marine
Bell & Ross BR-X1 Instrument de Marine Skeleton Chronograph
Bell & Ross BR S Diamond Eagle
Bell & Ross BR-X1 RS16 chronograph
Bell & Ross BR 03-92 AeroGT three-hand watch
Bell & Ross BR 03-94 AeroGT chronograph
Bell & Ross BR-X1 Skeleton Chronograph Carbon Forgé
Bell & Ross BR 01 10th Anniversary
Bell & Ross WW1 Edición Limitada
Bell & Ross BR03-92 Military Type
I own a Bell & Ross Geneva 123.001b, scissor-hands, early model. I also own 2 Rolexes, Omegas, etc. In my profession, I occasionally am exposed to magnetic fields surpassing ‘hundreds’ of Gaussian magnetic fields. What is the extent to which my Geneva will withstand the magnetic force (upper limits)? I was told that the Geneva uses an ETA 2824-2 mechanism. May you please help me?
Thank you,
Most modern ETA movements such as the ETA 2824-2 are compliant to the ISO 764 standard, which requires resistance to a magnetic field of up to 4800 A/m (equivalent to 60 gauss), retaining a precision of +/- 30seconds/day. It sounds like you are exposed to far more powerful magnetic fields than this. If your watch is running fast, it could have become magnetized. Any watchmaker will be able to tell you immediately and de-magnetize it with one simple operation.
If you are worried about magnetism It is advisable to purchase a degausser, it cost me approximately 35 euros and I placed my magnetized watch ontop put it on and slowly lifted the watch out of the magnetic field counting from 0 to 10. Then incase a calibration is needed, a watch master can calibrate the watch. In the modern world many watches get magnetized from ipad covers , mobile phones, clips and money holders with magnets, even the older blackberry 10 covers and pouches had magnets to switch off the phone screens and people kept the phones on their belts and hung their hands down next to them. Rolex Milgauss is said to be of high resistance but even that is not as high as some other specialized watches. Also consider a quartz as the magnetized watch if left alone will recalibrate itself with the internal magnets as no degaussing is needed. Good luck!!!