By Brent Robillard

The first time you meet Torsti Laine, you sense you’re in the presence of someone who is comfortable being an outsider—and who has turned that distance into his greatest strength. A Finnish-trained watchmaker now working from Le Locle, Switzerland, Laine has built his reputation among collectors and peers by doing things his own way: beginning with the movement, refusing shortcuts, and finding joy in the quiet craft of finishing more than in applause.

“I start with the movement,” he told me in Toronto, seated in his suite at the Novotel just before the opening of the Toronto Timepiece Show. “If I can figure out that… if I think, okay, this movement can look good, then I start to think about other stuff.” It’s the inverse of how most brands begin—with dial or design first—and it underscores his entire philosophy of watchmaking.

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Early Steps, Finnish Roots

Born and educated in Finland, Laine originally studied computer science. He worked in that field and even taught before, as he puts it, reaching “a moment where I thought that, okay, I want to do something else… and that ended up with me in the watchmaking school.”

He enrolled at Kelloseppäkoulu (The Finnish School of Watchmaking), a decision that carried risk. The school lacked big investors, vast machine shops, and the prestige of Swiss institutions. Yet those limitations shaped him.

“The school teaches how you approach problems with your own resources,” he explained. “You have to survive with simple equipment … you build it from the ground up, piece by piece.” That mindset—starting small, solving what you can, growing only when necessary—remains central to how he works.

Laine first attracted wider attention in 2014 when he won the A. Lange & Söhne Watchmaking Excellence Award. The challenge was to build a moon-phase display. His entry, praised for its ingenuity and balance, stood out. More importantly, it gave him confidence. “Yes, I can make all the parts, put them all together … and it will work.”

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Building in Switzerland

After school, Laine relocated to Le Locle, one of Swiss watchmaking’s historic centres. Partly it was for lifestyle—mountains, travel opportunities—but also, as he said with a smile, “why not go to the centre of the universe?”

There, he set up a modest atelier: not grand, not corporate, but filled with traditional tools and carefully restored machines. “The workshop is a very traditional, small watchmaker’s workshop full of machines … polishing tools … electroplating equipment … laser engraving…”

Scaling has been slow and deliberate. “It once took me six years to buy a machine,” he recalled. “It was a straight-line guilloché engine. They haven’t made those in over 50 years.” Now, with both circular and straight-line engines at hand, he produces components himself—bridges, gears, screws—while finishing each piece painstakingly. “They are all done by hand. Each one hand-polished. It can take three hours just to polish one surface.” That kind of labour, invisible to most, sets his watches apart at their price point.

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The P37 and Beyond: Craft, Constraint, and Signature

Laine’s latest release, the P37, reflects these values: the tension between artisanal care and limited serial production, the balance between customization and a coherent brand identity, and the response to collectors seeking smaller, more wearable pieces.

“We have five different variants … it’s like a hundred-movement limited edition … roughly 20 per dial,” he explained. The movement, based on the Peseux 7001, is extensively reworked. “We throw away all the bridges … we do all the gears … the black polished pieces …”

Maps of frosting, polished surfaces, and meteorite inlays surface frequently in his work; however, in the P37 the guilloché takes centre stage with variants of twill weave, diamond, flame, grain of rice, and lighting—a pattern his customers refer to often as “spider.”

Pricing for these pieces lands in the ballpark of CHF 9,900–11,500 depending on the variant. This puts them in luxury territory, but he is clear about what goes into that price—and that much of what he does is visible, tactile, and manual without outsourced machine-assistance or invisible subcontracting.

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Outsider, Artisan, Independent

Laine embraces his position outside the traditional centres of watchmaking. He is not Swiss-trained, has no corporate investors, and works at a scale many would consider unsustainable. Yet through resourcefulness, skill, and conviction, he has carved a distinct path.

Decoration, he emphasizes, was not something schools taught, but something he apprenticed himself into—slowly, painstakingly—before combining it with ultra-fine finishing. His appearance at the Toronto Timepiece Show was, he admitted, something of a surprise. “I am not part of the official fair, but I managed to get to the final of the Timepiece World Awards. Then I thought: I’ve never been in Canada, so let’s do it.” Not obligation, but curiosity brought him.

His watches embody the same outlook: rooted in classical calibres like the Unitas and Peseux, but transformed through hand decoration, customization, and obsessive finishing. He resists trends and marketing flash, choosing instead to pursue what he calls the “beautiful movement”—where frost, guilloché, polish, and light meet.

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In Pursuit of Craft

Independent watchmaking often veers in two directions: toward loud, hype-driven designs, or toward hyper-technical complications. Laine has found a rarer middle ground: modest scale, intense craft, and quiet honesty. His watches are not about spectacle but possibility—that a man from Finland, without Swiss family legacy or institutional power, can still produce timepieces that rival those many times the price.

“You build it up from the ground up … you figure it out. You think this time maybe I could … try something a little bit extra,” he told me. Those words echo in every bevel, every sliver of mirror polish, every guilloché line traced by hand. He may be an outsider—but he is now firmly part of the conversation.

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