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.
TissotSA is a luxury Swiss watchmaker. The company was founded in Le Locle, Switzerland by Charles-Félicien Tissot and his son, Charles-Émile Tissot, in 1853. After several mergers and name changes, the group which Tissot SA belonged to was renamed the Swatch Group in 1998.
Omega SA is a Swiss luxury watchmaker based in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. Founded by Louis Brandt in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1903, the company formerly operated as La Generale Watch Co. until incorporating the name Omega in 1903, becoming Louis Brandt et Frère-Omega Watch & Co. In 1984, the company officially changed its name to Omega SA and opened its museum in Biel/Bienne to the public. Omega is a subsidiary of The Swatch Group.
Swatch is a Swiss watchmaker founded in 1983 by Ernst Thomke, Elmar Mock, and Jacques Müller. It is a subsidiary of The Swatch Group. The Swatch product line was developed as a response to the "quartz crisis" of the 1970s and 1980s, in which inexpensive, battery-powered, quartz-regulated watches were competing against more established European watchmakers, focused on artisanal craftsmanship producing mostly mechanical watches.
ETA SA Manufacture Horlogère Suisse designs and manufactures quartz watches and both hand-wound and automatic-winding mechanical ébauches and movements. Commonly referred to as ETA, the company is headquartered in Grenchen, Switzerland, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Swatch Group.
Oris SA is a Swiss luxury manufacturer of mechanical watches. The company was founded in 1904 and is based in Hölstein in the canton of Basel-Landschaft.
Nicolas George Hayek, was a Swiss businessman of Lebanese descent, and the co-founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board of The Swatch Group.
Compagnie des Montres Longines, Francillon S.A., or simply Longines, is a Swiss luxury watchmaker based in Saint-Imier, Switzerland. Founded by Auguste Agassiz in 1832, the company has been a subsidiary of the Swiss Swatch Group and its predecessors since 1983. Its winged hourglass logo, registered in 1889, is the oldest unchanged active trademark registered with WIPO.
Frédérique Constant SA is a Swiss manufacture of luxury wristwatches based in Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva. It was acquired in 2016 by Citizen Holdings of Tokyo, Japan. The company was established in 1988 by Peter Stas and Aletta Stas-Bax.
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 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.
Allgemeine Schweizerische Uhrenindustrie AG was the former biggest Swiss Watch Industry Group that had been created with the assistance of the Swiss Government and the Swiss Banks, as an answer to the crisis caused by the Great Depression, in 1931.
General Watch Co. (GWC) was the watch companies holding of ASUAG.
Montres Edox et Vista SA (EDOX) is a Swiss manufacture of luxury wristwatches that operates under the Era Watch Company. Christian Ruefli-Flury, a watchmaker originating from Grenchen, Switzerland, founded the company in 1884 in Biel/Bienne. Edox has remained in continuous production since their foundation.
Ernst Thomke is a Swiss physician and watchmaker. Training first as a mechanic, he later acquired the Swiss federal maturity degree and pursued academic studies whilst in employment.
Peter Stas is a Dutch entrepreneur and author. In 1988, after he completed his studies in Business Economics at the Erasmus University and worked as Product-Marketing Manager for Royal Philips Electronics, he founded, with his wife Aletta Stas-Bax, the watch company Frédérique Constant. The manufacture's initial strategy was to focus its energy on classical luxury watches at an affordable price. The Accessible Luxury positioning was the basis of strong growth during the financial crisis when consumers came back more to classical values and accessible prices.
Tesa SA is a Swiss company in precision measurement products. It was set up in 1941 and is currently headquartered in Renens, Switzerland. It is a division of Hexagon AB, a Swedish multinational corporation.
