That Raymond Weil decided to get his pilot's licence at age fifty-six comes as no surprise to anyone who is even remotely familiar with him. A man seemingly drive by the need to challenge convention, Raymond Weil was fifty years old in 1975 when he lost his job with Camy - then one of Switzerland's leading watchmakers, and rather than settle for a sedate life of comfortable retirement, he mortgaged his home, took out a loan, and established his own watchmaking company.

"I knew nothing else," he says today of that momentous decision. "I had been in the watchmaking industry since I was in my early twenties and there was nothing I knew better. Although I must confess to there being some degree of sentimentality involved in my decision-making at that time. One cannot be in an industry for as long as I had been and not feel some affinity with it."

But sentimentality is hardly a firm basis upon which to start a watchmaking company. This even less so in 1976 when the Swiss watchmaking industry was undergoing perhaps its greatest crisis since the 1930's. Having recently discovered quartz technology which circumvented the need for craftsmen to manufacture the movements, the Japanese Had begun flooding the world market with inexpensive timepieces. The Swiss watchmakers, refusing to change or adapt their traditional approach were left reeling from the impact that the Japanese were making in terms of market share.