The Swatch Group Ltd is a Swiss manufacturer of watches and jewellery. The company was founded in 1983 by the merger of ASUAG and SSIH to move to manufacturing quartz-crystal watches to resolve the quartz crisis threatening the traditional Swiss watchmaking industry.
Compagnie Financière Richemont S.A., commonly known as Richemont, is a Switzerland-based luxury goods holding company founded in 1988 by South African businessman Johann Rupert. Through its various subsidiaries, Richemont produces and sells jewellery, watches, leather goods, pens, firearms, clothing, and accessories. Richemont is publicly traded as CFR on the SIX Swiss Exchange and the JSE.
A. Lange & Söhne is a trademark of Lange Uhren GmbH, a German manufacturer of luxury and prestige watches. The company was originally founded by Ferdinand Adolph Lange in Glashütte, Kingdom of Saxony in 1845. The original A. Lange & Söhne was nationalized and ceased to exist in 1948, following the occupation by the Soviet Union after World War II. The current A. Lange & Söhne trademark was re-registered when Lange Uhren GmbH was founded in 1990 by Walter Lange, the great-grandson of Ferdinand Adolph Lange.
Ulysse NardinSA is a Swiss luxury watchmaking company founded in 1846 in Le Locle, Switzerland.
Kering is a French-based multinational corporation specializing in luxury goods. It owns the brands Gucci, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Yves Saint Laurent, Creed and Alexander McQueen.
Girard-Perregaux SA is a luxury Swiss watch manufacture with its origins dating back to 1791. In 2022, then-owner French luxury group Kering sold its stake in Sowind Group SA, the parent company of Girard-Perregaux, via management buyout. Headquartered in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, the company opened the Girard-Perregaux Museum near its headquarters in Villa Marguerite in 1999. It is best known for the historic Tourbillon with three gold bridges, which was awarded a gold medal at the 1889 International Exposition in Paris soon after the launch of the watch. Other notable models from the company include the collection 1966, Vintage 1945, and models such as Tri-Axial Tourbillon and Laureato, an icon inspired from the 1970s.
Glashütte Original is a German producer of luxury watches founded in 1994 by the privatization of VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe (GUB), an East German conglomerate formed in 1951 from the watch companies based in Glashütte. Glashütte Original uses its own movements, and has 10 proprietary movement innovations. Glashütte Original is currently owned by The Swatch Group.
The "Watch Valley" covers all the Swiss Jura Arc, from Geneva to Basel, and is the primary location of the Swiss watch-making industry.
Manufacture d'horlogerie is a French language term of horology that has also been adopted in the English language as a loanword. In horology, the term is usually encountered in its abbreviated form manufacture. This term is used when describing a wrist watch movement or watchworks fabricator which makes all or most of the parts required for its products in its own production facilities, as opposed to simply assembling watches using parts purchased from other firms.
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.
NOMOS Glashütte is a German watchmaking company based in Glashütte, Saxony, specializing in artisan manual-winding and automatic mechanical watches. It was founded by Roland Schwertner in January 1990, two months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The first collection of designs was drawn up by Susanne Günther, who took influence from the Bauhaus purist style. NOMOS designs are known for their clean and modernist aesthetic. NOMOS Glashütte is a member of the Deutscher Werkbund—a predecessor of the Bauhaus movement. The Werkbund Association aims to represent the interests of companies that combine both handcrafts with industrial production and design with functionality.
The trench watch (wristlet) is a type of watch that came into use by the military during World War I, as pocket watches were not practical in combat. It was a transitional design between pocket watches and wristwatches, incorporating features of both.
Luigi Macaluso, also known as Gino was an Italian rally navigator and manager. Together with Raffaele Pinto, he won the European Rally Championship in 1972 and the Italian Rally Championship with Maurizio Verini in 1974. He was then the chairman and CEO of the Sowind group, under whose roof Girard-Perregaux, the watchmaker GP Manufacture and JeanRichard were united.
The Sowind Group SA is an independent parent company of the Girard-Perregaux and Ulysse Nardin Swiss watch brands. The brands were acquired in 2011 and 2014, respectively.
Rolf W. Schnyder was a Swiss businessman known for his role as the owner and CEO of watchmaker Ulysse Nardin.
Mühle-Glashütte GmbH nautische Instrumente und Feinmechanik is a German maker of nautical instruments, ship's timepieces and wristwatches, based in Glashütte, Saxony, founded in 1994, and refounded in 2007 following bankruptcy.
Moritz Grossmann is a manufacturer of luxury wristwatches based in Glashütte, Germany. Annual production is approximately 200 pieces.
Bucherer Ltd. is a multibrand watch and jewellery retailer based in Switzerland with over 100 stores worldwide. It was founded in 1888 by Carl F. Bucherer, who also became the namesake of a luxury Swiss watch brand. Bucherer retails brand including Rolex, Carl F. Bucherer, Baume & Mercier, Blancpain, Breguet, Cartier, Chopard, Girard-Perregaux, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Longines, Oris, Panerai, Piaget, Rado, Roger Dubuis, TAG Heuer, Tissot, Tudor, Ulysse Nardin and Vacheron Constantin.
