Groh+Ripp: loved by the best in watchmaking

10:10 1st JSH® PRINT MATERIALS OPINION SUPPLIERS

Groh+Ripp: loved by the best in watchmaking

8 Jun, 10:10

Temps de lecture : 2 minutes

Over the past 20 years, the watchmaking industry has invested a lot of energy in vertical integration. However, even today, it still depends on specialists in many cases, some of whom are based outside Switzerland. One such specialist is the family-owned company Groh & Ripp à Idar-Oberstein.

Timm Delfs Loyal journalist at the Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie JSH
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Idar-Oberstein, a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Groh & Ripp is one of the most renowned gemstone cutting companies. This family-run SME dates back to an agate cutting workshop founded in 1953 by Theo Groh in Rhaunen, about 20 km north of Idar-Oberstein. He had a daughter, Stefanie, who married Bernd Willi Ripp. The latter joined his father-in-law’s company in 1973.

Under the leadership of Stefanie and Bernd Willi Ripp, the company relocated to Idar-Oberstein in 1985. With around 50 employees, including Sandra since 1996 and Nicole since 2003, the founder’s granddaughters, and now with the recent arrival of Richard Brunk, Sandra Ripp’s son, the company is already on the verge of entering its fourth generation…

Sandra Ripp: Our House is built on treasures that can no longer be bought anywhere because the deposits are often exhausted»

Sandra Ripp: ‘We deliver what we call semi-finished products. These can be stone bases with or without holes. The finishing of the dials with decals, apliques, etc. is done by our customers, the dial manufacturers. Our production includes dials, but also gemstone components such as pushers, cases, etc.’

Timm Delfs: “Stones and expertise”

This independent and specialized journalist, fluent in English and German, was born and lives in Basel. He spreads the good word about watchmaking in the institutional publications NZZ am Sonntag, NZZ, Bilanz, Armbanduhren, Horological Journal, and Journal suisse d'horlogerie JSH, with which he has been collaborating since the 1990s. A former English and Italian teacher, he is also published in the Basler Zeitung and in the private magazines of Beyer in Zurich and Huber in Vaduz.
For the 2024-2025 (winter-spring) edition of JSH, Timm Delfs went to meet Groh+Ripp, a family business loyal to the Journal Suisse d'Horlogerie JSH and Swiss watch brands: “Today, Idar-Oberstein is the only place in the world where all existing precious stones are cut and sold,” he explains.
Read his article “The art of watchmaking excellence” about Groh+Ripp, published in the JSH edition at the end of 2025-spring 2025.

Groh+Ripp (Official)

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✍ Joel A. Grandjean

Chief editor & publisher of the online watch magazine "Swiss Watch Passport® (by JSH®)" and of the Swiss watch journal JSH® (founded in 1876). Member of Impressum, PressTourim and Club Suisse de la Presse, this Ivory Coast-born Swiss, descendant of a family of watchmakers, co-founded the magazines Montres Passion & Uhren Welt at Ringier in 1993 with Kenan Tegin, as well as the Prix Montre de l'Année. Founded in 2005, his press agency TàG Press +41 contributes to some twenty media. These include Journal Suisse d'Horlogerie (2008-2014), Heure Suisse/Schweiz and Année Horlogère, F/D/E (2011-2014), Watchonista.com (2013-2019). In 2019, he founded and chaired "JSH Archives & Patrimoine" to relaunch the Swiss watchmaking journal JSH. Then in 2021, he built on his very first editorial venture, the "bloghorloger.ch" founded in 2003, to come back online with the Swiss Watch Passport® (by JSH®). Joël A. Grandjean is a member of the SSC, the Swiss Society of Chronometry, and of the jury of the Prix Gaïa, aka the "Nobel of watchmaking" awarded since 1992 by the MIH, Le Musée International de l'Horlogerie in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

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