Seiko Group Corporation, commonly known as Seiko, is a Japanese maker of watches, clocks, electronic devices, semiconductors, jewelry, and optical products. Founded in 1881 by Kintarō Hattori in Tokyo, Seiko introduced the world's first commercial quartz wristwatch in 1969.
Patek Philippe SA is a Swiss luxury watch and clock manufacturer, located in the Canton of Geneva and the Vallée de Joux. Established in 1839, it is named after two of its founders, Antoni Patek and Adrien Philippe. Since 1932, the company has been owned by the Stern family in Switzerland and remains the last family-owned independent watch manufacturer in Geneva. Patek Philippe is one of the oldest watch manufacturers in the world with an uninterrupted watchmaking history since its founding. It designs and manufactures timepieces as well as movements, including some of the most complicated mechanical watches. The company maintains over 400 retail locations globally and over a dozen distribution centers across Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania. In 2001, it opened the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva.
Vacheron Constantin SA is a Swiss luxury watch and clock manufacturer founded in 1755. Since 1996, it has been a subsidiary of the Swiss Richemont Group. Vacheron Constantin is one of the oldest watch manufacturers in the world with an uninterrupted watchmaking history since its foundation in 1755. It employs around 1,200 people worldwide as of 2018, most of whom are based in the company's manufacturing plants in the Canton of Geneva and Vallée de Joux in Switzerland.
Piaget SA is a Swiss luxury watchmaker and jeweller. Founded in 1874 by Georges Piaget in the village of La Côte-aux-Fées, Piaget is currently a subsidiary of the Swiss Richemont group.
Zenith SA is a Swiss luxury watchmaker. The company was started in 1865 by Georges Favre-Jacot in Le Locle in the canton of Neuchâtel and is one of the oldest continuously operating watchmakers. Favre-Jacot invented the concept of "in house movements", believing that only through control of the entire watchmaking process could the highest quality be achieved. Zenith was purchased by LVMH in November 1999, becoming one of several brands in its watch and jewelry division, which includes TAG Heuer and Hublot. Benoit de Clerck is president and CEO.
In horology, a tourbillon is an addition to the mechanics of a watch escapement to increase accuracy. Conceived by the British watchmaker and inventor John Arnold, it was developed by his friend the Swiss-French watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet and patented by Breguet on 26 June 1801. In a tourbillon the escapement and balance wheel are mounted in a rotating cage, with the goal of eliminating errors of poise in the balance giving a uniform weight.
In horology, a complication is any feature of a timepiece beyond the display of hours, minutes and seconds. A timepiece indicating only hours, minutes and seconds is known as a simple movement. Common complications include date or day-of-the-week indicators, alarms, chronographs (stopwatches), and automatic winding mechanisms. Complications may be found in any clock, but they are most notable in mechanical watches where the small size makes them difficult to design and assemble. A typical date-display chronograph may have up to 250 parts, while a particularly complex watch may have a thousand or more parts. Watches with several complications are referred to as grandes complications.
Nathan George Horwitt was an American industrial designer. He is most renowned for his Museum watch, which featured a black dial with a single silver circle situated at 12 o'clock. The Museum watch is part of the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art. The watch was intended to suggest a sundial, the most ancient form of keeping time.
Franck Muller is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer named after its founder. The company's estimated total sales were €290 million in watches with an average unit price of €38,000. Franck Muller's watches are worn by various celebrities, among them Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elton John, Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham, Kanye West, Conor McGregor, Floyd Mayweather, Paris Hilton, and Chris Brown.
Manufacture Jaeger-LeCoultre SA, or simply Jaeger-LeCoultre, is a Swiss luxury watch and clock manufacturer founded by Antoine LeCoultre in 1833 and is based in Le Sentier, Switzerland. Since 2000, the company has been a fully owned subsidiary of the Swiss luxury group Richemont.
The quartz crisis (Swiss) or quartz revolution was the advancement in the watchmaking industry caused by the advent of quartz watches in the 1970s and early 1980s, that largely replaced mechanical watches around the world. It caused a significant decline of the Swiss watchmaking industry, which chose to remain focused on traditional mechanical watches, while the majority of the world's watch production shifted to Japanese companies such as Seiko, Citizen and Casio which embraced the new electronic technology. The strategy employed by Swiss makers was to call this revolution a 'crisis' thereby downgrading the advancement from Japanese brands.
Maîtres du Temps is a Swiss watch company. Founded in 2005 by Steven Holtzman, the brand is based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. The brand launched in Geneva in 2008 with Chapter One, a watch developed by Christophe Claret, Roger Dubuis and Peter Speake-Marin.
Gallet (ˈgæl.eɪ) is a historic Swiss manufacturer of high-end timepieces for professional, military, sports, racing, and aviation use. Gallet is the world's oldest clock making house with history dating back to Humbertus Gallet, a clock maker who became a citizen of Geneva in 1466. The Gallet & Cie name was officially registered by Julien Gallet (1806–1849) in 1826, who moved the family business from Geneva to La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Prior to this date, operations commenced under the name of each of the Gallet family patriarchs.
Gedalio "Gerry" Grinberg was a Cuban born watchmaker who was the founder and chairman of the Movado Group, based in Paramus, New Jersey, US.
Concord Watch Company is a Swiss luxury goods company that is part of the Movado group, which produces and distributes Movado, Ebel, Coach, and Hugo Boss-branded watches. Founded in 1908, Concord was purchased in 1970 by the North American Watch Company, which also distributed the Piaget and Corum lines of watches. From the late 1970s to the late 1980s, Concord produced luxury quartz watches. Flagship quartz models such as the Concord Centurion and Concord Delirium ranged from $2,000 to $20,000, surpassing the price of base automatic Rolex, Cartier and Omega wristwatches. By the 1990s, Concord watches fell out of style and grew obsolete amidst the rebranding of the company. While the brand still exists today, it never regained its market position nor visibility that it once had.
Czapek & Cie. is a Swiss watch brand named after the Polish watchmaker François Czapek.
Philippe Dufour, AHCI is a Swiss-born watchmaker from Le Sentier, Vallée de Joux. He is regarded as a master of modern watchmaking, and his watches are referred as among the best ever made. He finishes all of his watches himself by hand. In 1992, Dufour was the first watchmaker to put arguably the most complex of complications in a wristwatch, a Sonnerie. His other two models include Duality and Simplicity.
Vulcain is a Swiss luxury watchmaker based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. It was founded in 1858 by Maurice Ditisheim as Manufacture Ditisheim' in La Chaux-de-Fonds, being rebranded as Vulcain in 1894. In 1947, Vulcain developed the first alarm watch, the Vulcain Cricket.
A Movado Ermeto watch was a pocket/purse watch manufactured between 1926 and 1985 by Movado in La Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland). The model, a joint creation between case maker Huguenin Frères and watch maker Movado, was introduced in 1926. It won the Grand Prix at the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition.
A Boule de Genève is a type of pendant watch in the shape of a small ball or sphere originating from Geneva, (Switzerland). The dial is usually at the bottom of the sphere facing the floor, at the opposite side of the jump ring on the upper part of the sphere, although there are examples with a front view face. Usually, they were arabic numeral dials, sometimes Roman, and from the 1950s different types of hour markers were also used. This objet de vertu frequently came with a matching brooch, chain or chatelaine.
US$752 million (2023)
