An Interesting Insight Into Swiss Watches

By Fausto Capello


The major producer of Swiss Army watches, International Watch Company, was put up in 1868 by Florentino Ariosoto Jones. His idea was to incorporate modern engineering with Switzerland's unquestionable craftsmanship, thus resulted in the modern Swiss Army watch.

Jones started the company in Schaffhausen, a town in Switzerland, that was so backwards during the Industrial Revolution. Swiss people were not sure about Jones' abilities. They were thinking that the product will not yield good results and they would end up losing a living.

Johann Heinrich Moser chose the city for the location of his first hydroelectric plant. Jones and Moser eventually met up and, together, built the first Swiss Army watch plant in the city.

Year 1888 made changes to the Swiss Army watches' quality due to the introduction of electricity to the company. International Watch Company started providing additional worker's benefit like health insurance, pension, housing plans and the like, after World War I.

The International Watch Company has consistently been at the forefront of Swiss Army watch technology. It was the first to introduce electronic batteries in their watches in the 1940's, and they invested heavily in quartz movement.

The watch company had a hard time during the mid-1970s. Reasons were that gold prices went immensely high and Japan started to make cheap, low quality quartz watches. This made it impractical for IWC to ship their products worldwide and to compete with the mentioned country.

International Watch Company responded by employing outstanding designers and engineers with the likes of Porsche. This led to luxurious, high end fashion and jewellery watches which helped recapture the consumers' trust and appeal towards Swiss Army watches.

International Watch Company records the details of every single watch they made since 1880. As a result, owners of Swiss Army watches can bring their pieces to the company to have it checked also repaired.

Today, the company's Swiss Army watches range in price from the low $100's to the high $1000 (U.S. Dollars). Every year the company auctions off Swiss Army watches to benefit a school in Mali.




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