Featured in Legends magazine. In the night, the only recognisable headlights opposite are those of a Porsche. Ramon Iso has become a prince of gem-setting and diamonds in the heart of Swiss watchmaking excellence, and his eyes are still filled with wonder of childhood.
Joël A. Grandjean / JSH® Magazine & Swiss Watch Passport’s Publisher and Editor-in-Chief
Insta SWP | Insta JSH® | Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin
In his eyes, the same sparkle: as a child, on the long journeys without highway tolls, to and from the Basque country, his family land, this son of immigrants would look out for the large billboards glorifying the car models of his time on the roads of the south and along the famous Nationale 7. And after the sunset, he amused himself by guessing the models that appeared across the road in the night. The headlights of Porsche…
Move to Tourbillon, 2’000 square meters
Ramon ISO is still WFO, “without a fixed office”! That’s how I nicknamed him a few years ago. I find him again, intact, just as passionate, direct, freshly installed in the smell of new paint and barely dry floors: The territory is huge, 2’000 square meters, a vast square of glass with a central glazed area, and already, on a floor obviously designed to support such a load, the giant machines that have just moved in. It’s already working, almost no interruption, a move that’s going well, in successive waves. The next colleagues arrive tomorrow, they already have their workbench ready, with their personal cubicle and a little welcoming attention.
It’s done, the Sercab group has just swapped its legendary address in Thônex for Geneva, for the new Tourbillon watchmaking real estate complex, backed by the most prestigious brands and located in the heart of a town that would do well, once and for all, to swap the “Ouates” in its name for a more appropriate “Watch”. Only the freshly renovated address of the former Val’Hour, the Bioux factory, has remained in the Vallée de Joux, linking the expansion of Plan-les-Watches to other watchmaking regions. The Sercab group is also Michel Salvi, General Manager…
The Company, a body and soul journey
Ramon Iso is convinced that he is as hard on others as he is on himself. Above all, he must be a very fair person. You only have to walk with him through the still raw corridors of his company. People are always friendly and close to each other; turnover is ridiculously low. More than 210 colleagues, a confidence that fills the atmosphere, punctuated here and there by “old-timers”, companions of the first hour. An old-fashioned boss? 62 years old and above all, in the eyes of his colleagues, the incarnation of respect. Their boss, a jeweller, had started at the bottom, had been paid very little, concentrated, studious and full of infinite patience.
Married to his company, he suddenly mentions the lack of family time… Time passes. He remembers, he was 10 years old. His mother was expecting him for lunch. He came home in tears, unable to calm down. Under his arm, he had torn off the headline of a box from the stand. It read “Jo Siffert is dead”. Even today, he remembers his mother’s incomprehension.
Unconditional Porschist, from Siffert to Killy
He already knew, from his childhood, that the 917 of this legendary racing driver was the best Porsche of all Porsches. It was sometimes exhibited at the Geneva Motor Show. At the age of 12, he got lost in the film “Le Mans”, thus thwarting a film style that was not intended for boys of his age. Since then, he has had normal, family cars, cars to transport, to move around in.
Finally, at the dawn of his forties, for a very reasonable price, he bought his first Porsche, with a rally safety bar. He dismantled it completely and rebuilt it entirely, for five years. Obviously, the model’s value climbs, as do the few other exceptional pieces that make up his modest collection, about ten units…
He tells us that he used to practice extreme skiing at a high level, with guides and uncertain bivouacs, and suddenly, he evokes Jean-Claude Killy, the incarnation of the perfect reconversion. The «kid from nowhere», who has become “an integral part” of the microcosm of the watchmaking excellence, admires him. He knows that he was an official Porsche driver. The connection is genuine, and he sells him one of the Porsches from his fine collection, a 1986 Carrera with 23’000 kilometres on the odometer. At the time of writing, he is enviously eyeing another of his pieces, with few kilometres: “Maybe he will sell it one day, I hope I can get it...”
Cars and passions shared: Arnoux, Ickx and…
There are other stars that children’s eyes remember with emotion. René Arnoux, one of the most mythical French drivers, very famous on Youtube for his crazy duel against Gilles Villeneuve during the 1979 French Grand Prix. Certainly, one of the most beautiful racing fights in history. Ramon Iso is proud to have seen him drive his Almeras 911 2.4 S from the Montpelier workshops, a car that he bought on a whim at the end of an auction at Artcurial. In a bad state, totally crashed after a crazy accident, he had completely restored it.
He had passed the steering wheel to Arnoux during a spectacular speed ring competition at the Linas-Montlhéry autodrome. Lucid, Ramon realised from his contact with the sacred monster Arnoux, successfully recycled in the bumper watch industry, that he would never be a great driver: “You have to love speed too much. A driver is above all riding at full throttle and braking at the last moment”… Alas, the famous Almeras will only do two laps, its brakes having failed…
Between collectors, distances shorten. And in Geneva, he talks with José Perujo, head of the first of the three unique “Porsche Classic Centers”, evoking the careers of legends, such as Jacky Ickx, a successful racer in Formula 1, endurance and rally-raid. Ramon Iso is always closer to where the hands are in the grease than to where the million-dollar vehicles are transported in the belly of semi-trailers for rich worldly epics: “Porsche remains the car brand that has the oldest cars in circulation, all manufacturers included”, reminds this over-enthusiast porschist, while unpacking the paintings intended to hang his mechanical dreams on the walls of his brand new conference room…
On two sites, more than 210 employees and the hope of a new generation that must join the group. Ramon Iso is actively looking for young people to train. He went to the Arts Déco because at the age of 16, he was only top of the class in drawing and sculpture. His first job? Jeweller at Ludwig Muller, the inventor of blue gold, and above all one of the most prominent jewellers in Geneva. It’s in the Old Town, it’s handmade and the clients, prestigious watchmaking houses of the place, let themselves go without limits in terms of set watches.
Then, refusing to give in to the siren call of a “guaranteed job” in one of these large brands, he embraced independence. For more than 30 years, his group – the result of the merger of three entities – has continued to grow. It is a benchmark for setting in Swiss fine jewellery and watchmaking. It uses both traditional skills and the most advanced industrial technologies, focusing on the manufacture of high added value pieces… With a few tangible references to watchmaking, and even to the watch case. Specialist in all types of settings: grain, mechanical, traditional, baguette and invisible settings with diamonds and coloured stones. Sercab is exclusively Swiss owned.
