Louis Vuitton founded his fashion house Louis Vuitton Malletier in 1854 in Paris, France. The brand is mainly known for their luxury small leather and travel goods, but started to manufacture watches in their first workshop at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland in 2002. The first Tambour models were launched later that year. By 1983 Louis Vuitton was taking…
The history of Maurice Lacroix begins in 1961 with the establishment of an assemblage business in Saignelégier, Switzerland, by the parent company Desco von Schulthess AG. Initially watches were manufactured for customers under different brand names. In 1975 the first watch model under the name of Maurice Lacroix comes to market in Australia,…
In 1926 Ebauches SA was created by three major watch companies (A. Schild AG, Fabrique d’Horlogerie de Fontainemelon and A. Michel AG), as a holding company for Swiss watch movement manufacturers. The purpose of this merger was to bring order in this chaotic industry, and to keep the prices of watch movements from…
In 1988 the Memotime S.A. company was founded as a sub-brand for Corum. The company focused on nautical watches (Memosail), dive timers (Memodive) and chronographs (Memostart). Apparently the rights for the name Memosail have been taken over by Memotime. For a new series of yachttimer watches Memotime worked with Conseilray, a watch movement design…
In 2001 Memotime is taken over from the prestigious Corum group by TLC, a company of young watchmakers who had been working for Memotime regarding service and maintenance. After two years of studies, the brand is coming back with the same basic concept but with technically updated products. In reference to the prestigious America’s…
Omega was founded in 1848 in Biel, Switzerland, by Louis Brandt and is today part of the Swatch Group. The brand has participated actively in some of the most challenging and fascinating adventures in the human history. In 1932 Omega introduced the world’s first divers’ watch and the brand has been active in underwater…
In 1860 Giovanni Panerai opens his watchmaker’s shop and workshop Guido Panerai & Figlio in Florence, Italy. The shop later moves to its current location in Piazza San Giovanni in Rome. The family Enterprise, later renamed to Officine Panerai, is initially concerned with the production of nautical precision instruments. For a long period many kinds of equipment for the Royal…
The Piquot Meridien company was founded in 1983 and was located in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. For their new regatta watch series Volantis, Dubois-Dépraz had developed two new regatta movements in 1993. The first one, module DD 2027 integrated on top of an ETA 2892-A2 chronograph, with both a subdial with a 30 minutes register and the coloured…
The German Hans Wilsdorf and his brother-in-law Alfred Davis, founded the company Wilsdorf & Davis, in London, England in 1905, specialising in the distribution of timepieces. In 1908, Wilsdorf registered the trademark ‘Rolex’ and in 1919 he would leave England again and move the company to Geneva, Switzerland, where it would eventually become Rolex SA. In…
The Seiko company was founded in 1881, when Kintarō Hattori opened a watch and jewelry shop in Tokyo. Eleven years later, in 1892, he founded the company Seikosha Co, where initially wall clocks were produced. Soon they were followed by pocket watches and watches with an alarm function. In 1913 Seiko (which means ‘precision’ in Japanese) manufactured its first…