Laurent Ferrier joined Patek Philippe in 1973 and spent 37 years there, rising to director of creation for complications. He left in 2010 to co-found his own brand in Geneva with his son Christian Ferrier, a former auto-industry executive. From its first reference, Laurent Ferrier was positioned in the league of the top independents, cited by collectors alongside Philippe Dufour and F.P. Journe despite launching with only a handful of watches per year.
The house aesthetic is the Galet (French for pebble), a softly curved round case with stepped lugs and a dial vocabulary based on traditional Patek and Breguet cues: sector dials, small seconds, assegai hands. The inaugural Galet Classic Tourbillon Double Spiral (2010) won the Men's Watch Prize at the Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix the following year. Its technical core is the natural double-balance-spring escapement, a direct-impulse escapement using two balance springs working in opposition to improve isochronism, one of the brand's few true technical signatures.
The collection expanded with the Galet Micro-Rotor (2013), a three-handed dress watch that quickly became the most accessible entry point, and the Galet Annual Calendar (2015) and Traveller dual-time. In 2019 the Bridge One tonneau case broadened the design vocabulary, and in 2020 the Grand Sport Tourbillon added an integrated-bracelet sport dimension to the portfolio. Every watch is hand-finished to haute-horlogerie standard, with anglage bevelled by hand and Côtes de Genève applied on visible bridges. Production stays at roughly 200 pieces per year across the entire collection.
