In 2005, when Maximilian Büsser founded his avant-garde watch brand MB&F, he became an early champion of the nascent category of independent watchmaking. The label loosely referred to artisans who were producing limited numbers of high-end mechanical timepieces with total creative freedom, not beholden to any corporate interests.

It was a sharp contrast to the manufacture of most luxury watches: made by teams of unidentified engineers in state-of-the-art factories owned by brands under a handful of luxury holding companies, chiefly LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Compagnie Financière Richemont and the Swatch Group.

Today, that definition of independent watchmaking is still accurate. What has changed, though, is the degree of influence that independents wield, the prices their pieces command and the lengths to which watch enthusiasts go to acquire their creations — so much so that the big groups have been trying to get in on the action.

In late August, for example, Chanel said that it had acquired a 25 percent stake in MB&F.

Five days after the announcement, Mr. Büsser explained why the deal was, for him, “a match made in heaven.”

“In the first 10 years of MB&F, we were in survival mode,” he said in a phone interview from the brand’s headquarters in Geneva. “I was 38 when I created the company. The next five to six years, between 2015 and 2020, it was the grind. It was not survival anymore, but there was no thought of legacy or succession.

“And then in 2020, on the 17th of March, lockdown happened. And I thought, ‘Who’s ever going to buy a watch again?’ But the contrary happened. Suddenly everybody started to want our pieces, and also those from other independents. That was a turning point. I started thinking, ‘What would happen to MB&F if something happened to me?’ And from there, it became my No. 1 project.”