History of Le Cheminant Watches

Recently I have been contacted by Peter Betts whose, late, father was the owner of the chain of seven shops in the UK which sold Le Cheminant watches. Mr Betts has kindly offered to give me more details about his father's and mother's, who was a co-director in the company, interests in Le Cheminant watches. The following is a summary of the information passed onto me by Peter Betts.

The translation of Le Cheminant means ‘The Wanderer’ and one wonders whether this was a take off of The Mariner.

Le Cheminant watches have been in production, continually, since 1822, hence the use of the 1822 on the dials of many of their watches.

The modern business was formed in the late 1950s by Peter Betts father and mother – Gordon and Iris Betts, when they purchased the shops and the name from the Le Cheminant chain of jewellery shops. They had two branches in Ipswich – Carr Street and The Buttermarket, in addition there was an office/workshop in Ipswich. In London there was the main branch of Le Cheminant at 106 Wigmore Street, the sole distributor in the UK with another smaller branch in the Marylebone High Street. In addition to these there were several other branches around the country at

17 Castle Street, Norwich,
1 Odean Arcade, Market Place, Leicester
81 The Horsefair, Bristol .

Essentially, Mr Betts had a number of contacts within Swiss watch industry and Le Cheminant was the ‘Flag brand’ of the UK business, hence, the Le Cheminant branch in Wigmore Street. It was very interesting to find out that Le Cheminant Watches actually had a factory in Switzerland producing their watches a fact, up to now, I had no knowledge of. In the late 70’s, when the 3 day working week came along, Mr Betts sold the business to Mappin & Webb, being retained as a consultant for a few years until his retirement.

Peter told me some facinating stories about his father's exploits to do with the marketing and selling of
Le Cheminant watches.

Like the time he came through UK customs in the old days of ‘One customs channel only – both red and green together’ and when asked by a customs officer ‘Do you have any goods to declare?’ he replied ‘Yes, A bottle of scotch, 200 cigarettes, oh, and 1,000 swiss watches’ to which the customs officer replied ‘Please do not waste our time’, and his father passed through. He did, in fact, have a large quantity of Swiss watches in his possession at the time.

During his years in business, Mr betts made many ‘firsts’ in the watch industry, such as:-

First to market an Incabloc watch.

First to warn the Swiss watch manufacturers, in the 1960’s, that the Japanese watch industry would overtake them in the near future. His opinion was dismissed at the time as being sensational.

He also had some excellent strategies for displaying how good the build quality was of his Le Cheminant watches. Many of his Le Cheminant watches were offered for sale with a 5 year guarantees, something unheard of at the time, and showed Mr Betts faith in the watches he was selling. As well as this, he had some novel ways of demonstrating the quality in a more pactical way, he:

Owned one of the first jewellery chains to sell his watches by mail order to clients all over the world. He offered a full money back guarantee if the customer was not delighted with their purchase.

Once stopped a London bus outside his shop and asked the driver to drive the bus over a Le Cheminant watch placed underneath the tyre. The watch survived the test, carried out in front of the customer and he successfully sold the watch to him.

Strapped a watch to a football and asked Ipswich Town FC to kick it around before the first whistle. This reminding me of some of the Timex adverts of the time, strapping a watch to the impellor of an outboard motor and running the engine with the watch submerged.

In 1978 Mr Betts presented all the footballers in Ipswich Town FC with a Le Cheminant watch after they beat Arsenal 1-0 in the FA Cup Final. The watch he presented to the players was believed to be a Le Cheminant Moeris Master Mariner, a watch I was lucky enough to acquire recently.

This does demonstrate, to me, that Mr Betts had total and utter faith in the quality of the Swiss watches that he was selling. I would like to thank Peter Betts and his mother for passing on this information to me and hope this is a fair representation of the information as given to me.

On the retirement of Mr Betts, Mr Reade took over Le Cheminant Watches Ltd and run it as a successful business, remaining in Ipswich, until July 2007. In late 2007 the company passed into the hands of the present owner Stephen Grostate who moved the business to Surrey. It was Mr Reade who assisted with my many enquiries, allowed me to scan the last remaining copy of the old 1967 Le Cheminant catalogue and assisted me with several of my purchases from the company, including discussing the watch designs. I would like to wish Mr Reade a long and happy retirement.