In 2019, the GENUS team released a timepiece that looked like no other - the GNS 1.2 WG. All GNS timepieces, belong to the realm of high-end watchmaking and that of disruption, as evidenced by the patented free-elements display principle.
The hours are indicated by mobile indices, which pivot as they travel around the circumference of the movement and are read thanks to a fixed arrow at 9 o'clock. Tens of minutes are shown by the lead element, in a trail of free elements, called genera (the Latin plural of genus). These mobile pieces slide along a trajectory shaped like an analemma right in the middle of the watch. There are either twelve genera (GNS 1.2) or a single genus (GNS 1.1) depending on the model. They travel back and forth from one orbit to the other, from one loop to the next, a metaphor of the ever-moving nature of time. The shape drawn by the genera is therefore a symbol of infinity. Within this symbolic space lies the nature of GENUS' watchmaking.
GENUS was co-founded by Catherine Henry and Sébastien Billières. Catherine Henry, COO; started a career in the insurance business before turning to consulting and counseling start-ups and SMEs. Sébastien Billières is a Master Watchmaker, a movement inventor and a professor. He worked with Messrs Roger Dubuis,Svend Andersen, and Felix Baumgartner to name but a few, and was the first employee at Urwerk before creating GMTI his own manufacturing company, in 2007.
