This article needs additional citations for verification .(April 2019) |
Company type | Public |
---|---|
| |
Founded | 1881La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland | in
Founders |
|
Headquarters | Paramus, New Jersey, U.S. |
Key people |
|
Products | Watches |
Revenue | US$752 million (2023) |
US$120 million (2023) | |
US$97 million (2023) | |
Total assets | US$788 million (2023) |
Total equity | US$511 million (2023) |
Number of employees | 1,457 (2023) |
Website | MovadoGroup.com |
Footnotes /references Financials as of January 31,2023 [update] [1] |
Movado is an American watch brand originally founded in 1881 in Switzerland. Movado means "movement" in Esperanto. The watches are known for their signature metallic dot at 12 o'clock and minimalist style; [2] [3] the company is best known for its Museum Watch.
Movado Group's brands include Movado, Concord, EBEL, Olivia Burton and MVMT, plus licensed brands Coach, Hugo Boss, Lacoste, Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. Movado previously manufactured other licensed brands, plus previously owned Piaget. [4]
The company was founded by Achille Ditesheim in 1881 in the watch-making town of La Chaux-de-Fonds. The Ditesheim family, a Jewish watchmaker family, owned several companies in the area.
In 1892, the brothers Leopold, Achille, and Isidore combined their separate businesses to create "L.A. & I. Ditesheim, Fabricants". This was one of the first modern factories in the area following the watchmaking crisis of the 1870s. Having arrived over the course of the century, many Jewish traders, craftsmen and entrepreneurs were less attached to traditional working models, and thus played a major role in innovating the Swiss watch industry. [5]
Within 20 years, the company had more than 80 employees and was internationally known for its wide variety of pocket watches. Movado began to produce wristwatches, and the company expanded again in 1905, now employing more than 150 workers. It was at this time that it was renamed Movado, which means "always in motion" in Esperanto. [6]
In 1983, the company was purchased by North American Watch Corp, founded by Gedalio Grinberg, [7] a Cuban-born Jew, who fled Fidel Castro's Marxist Revolution in 1960 with his family.
His son, Efraim Grinberg, is the chairman and chief executive officer of Movado Group, Inc. The North American President of Movado is Alan Chinich.
On February 23, 1999, Movado Group, Inc. completed the sale of Piaget business to VLG North America, Inc., for approximately $30 million. [8] In August 2018, Movado acquired watch startup MVMT, which was founded in 2013, for more than $100 million. [9] [10]
The company markets the Museum Watch, designed by the American designer Nathan George Horwitt in 1947. Influenced by Bauhaus, the watch dial has a very simple design defined by a solitary dot at 12, symbolizing the sun at high noon. It was first made by an American importer of Swiss watches called "Vacheron & Constantin-LeCoultre Watches Inc." (not the Swiss watchmaker Vacheron Constantin), [11] and later produced by Movado. [12] Horwitt's dial was selected for the permanent design collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1960, the first watch dial awarded this distinction. [13] Movado finally settled with Horwitt in 1975 with a payment of US$29,000(equivalent to $164,000 in 2023). Following Horwitt's death, Movado started heavy promotion of Horwitt and the design of the Museum Watch. [12] [14] [15] Photographer Edward Steichen called Horwitt's design "the only truly original and beautiful one for such an object". The single dot dial now appears in many of Movado's timepieces.
Some Movado watch models have names in Esperanto, a constructed language, such as Bela ("beautiful"), Belamodo ("beautiful fashion"), Fiero ("pride"), Brila ("brilliant"), Linio ("line"), and Verto [16] ("head top").
In November 2015, Movado announced the release of the Movado Motion collection of fine Swiss-made watches, powered by the Manufacture Modules Technologies (MMT) MotionX technology platform. The collection includes the women's Bellina and the men's Museum Sport models. [17]
Movado commissioned Time Sculpture by architect Philip Johnson. The bronze sculpture with granite base, located outside Lincoln Center in New York City, was dedicated on May 19, 1999. [18]
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.
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 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.
Ulysse NardinSA is a Swiss luxury watchmaking company founded in 1846 in Le Locle, Switzerland.
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 upheaval 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.
Universal Genève SA is a Swiss luxury watch company, founded in 1894 as Universal Watch. It is a subsidiary of Breitling SA. Since its beginnings, the company has produced complete watches with in-house movements. Along with neighboring Geneva companies Audemars Piguet, Girard-Perregaux, Patek Philippe and Rolex, Universal is internationally regarded for its style of craftsmanship as a manufacture d'horlogerie. Universal Genève is known for creating the first-ever chronograph in 1917.
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.
Ebel is a Swiss luxury watch company that was founded in 1911 at La Chaux-de-Fonds in the canton of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
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.
Paul Ditisheim (1868–1945) was a Swiss watchmaker, inventor and industrialist.
MVMT Watches Inc. is an American watchmaker that sells quartz watches, as well as sunglasses and other accessories. The company was founded in June 2013 and was acquired by Movado in August 2018.
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.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)