There are trades that one learns. And others that one carries within oneself without realising it.
For Jérôme Marcu, bringing matter to life has always been part of his life.
In his childhood home, automatons and mechanical musical instruments taught him how an object could come to life without being alive.
MARCU is the name of an independent watchmaking brand from Geneva; a signature Haute Horlogerie, a workshop, a watchmaker.
Jérôme Marcu
Watchmaker-Creator
Founder of MARCU and TechnoWatch Partners.
Watches and automatons share many similarities: storing energy, transmitting it and regulating it. He trained at the Morteau School of Watchmaking and, as a skilled apprentice, joined prestigious and renowned Houses.
He began his career in the workshops of Vacheron Constantin, where he discovered the exacting standards of grand complications under the guidance of Gérald Genta; he honed his understanding of movements in Patek Philippe’s complications workshop; and he deepened his understanding of the dynamic balance at the heart of the adjustments and specific constraints of perpetual calendars at Harry Winston.
Since the 1950s, the Marcu family has been developing automatons and mechanical musical instruments. His grandparents and parents transformed gears, porcelain and steel into animated figures. A creative world at the intersection of engineering and movement. Jérôme Marcu grew up in this environment, attuned to materials and craftsmanship.
As a child, Jérôme watched his father cut gears, adjust mechanisms, fine-tune invisible sequences and bring the automata to life. By the age of ten, he was already helping out in the workshop. He learnt precision, patience and humility.
In 2016, Jérôme Marcu founded Techno Watch Partners in Geneva. Specialising in complications, he designs, assembles and restores watches there for the great watchmaking houses.
His workshop is involved at every stage: from prototyping to the development of complex calibres, from the manufacture of components to the most demanding finishes.
He also develops his own solutions and constructions there, some of which are patented.
But beyond the technical aspects, this workshop marks his independence, a freedom to think and to create.
Designing a movement requires expertise; making it reliable takes time.
2026 marks the right moment: the creation of his brand in Geneva and the launch of his first timepiece : INITIAL.
For Jérôme, lending his name to his watches is a responsibility, a commitment – the mark of his signature. It is also a tribute to the tradition whose craft and passion he carries forward. It means accepting that every detail carries weight, every choice becomes visible, and every decision becomes personal.
In his workshop, time is not a constraint, it is a material. He knows that there is a right moment for everything. He works guided by a simple requirement: that everything be as precise as sheet music. A personal metaphor, inherited from childhood, inspired by those mechanisms capable of playing, even a hundred years later, a melody with perfect precision, simply from a perforated strip.
Without alteration, with the same precision.
Absolute rigour: the promise of repeatability. A commitment he engraves directly onto the gear bridge, his words evoking the traditional “adjusted in five positions”. A sensitivity and humility that can be found, silently, in each of his pieces.
