History of the Swiss Watch Industry PDF Download

Author: Pierre-Yves Donzé
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
ISBN: 9783034316453
Category : Clock and watch making
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book tackles the history of the Swiss watch industry in a global perspective: it gives particular attention to rival nations such as the United Kingdom, the USA and Japan. The author demonstrates how Swiss watchmakers succeeded in facing various challenges: the industrialization of production at the end of the 19th century, the delocalization of production in the interwar years and globalization since the 1960's. These challenges helped Switzerland to maintain and strengthen its position as a leader on the world market. This study shows how innovation and new technologies, the industrial policy of the Swiss authorities, the industrial district organization and the relations with trade unions explain the worldwide success of the Swiss watch industry.

Author: Alun C. Davies
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000571904
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
This survey of the rise and decline of English watchmaking fills a gap in the historiography of British industry. Clerkenwell in London was supplied with 'rough movements' from Prescot, 200 miles away in Lancashire. Smaller watchmaking hubs later emerged in Coventry, Liverpool, and Birmingham. The English industry led European watchmaking in the late eighteenth century in output, and its lucrative export markets extended to the Ottoman Empire and China. It also made marine chronometers, the most complex of hand-crafted pre-industrial mechanisms, crucially important to the later hegemony of Britain’s navy and merchant marine. Although Britain was the 'workshop of the world', its watchmaking industry declined. Why? First, because cheap Swiss watches were smuggled into British markets. Later, in the era of Free Trade, they were joined by machine-made watches from factories in America, enabled by the successful application to watch production of the 'American system' in Waltham, Massachusetts after 1858. The Swiss watch industry adapted itself appropriately, expanded, and reasserted its lead in the world’s markets. English watchmaking did not: its trajectory foreshadowed and was later followed by other once-prominent British industries. Clerkenwell retained its pre-industrial production methods. Other modernization attempts in Britain had limited success or failed.

Author: P. Donzé
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137389087
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book offers a detailed and full analysis of the strategy which enabled the Swatch Group to establish itself on the world market. In particular, it tackles the issues of production restructuring, with the opening of subsidiaries in Asia, and the implementation of a new marketing strategy, characterized by the move towards luxury.

Author: Amy Glasmeier
Publisher: Guilford Press
ISBN: 9781572305892
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Since the large-scale manufacture of personal timepieces began, industry leadership has shifted among widely disparate locations, production systems, and cultures. This book recounts the story of the quest for supremacy in the manufacture of watches--from the cottage industries of Britain; to the preeminence of Switzerland and, later, the United States; to the high-tech plants of Japan and the sweatshops of Hong Kong. Glasmeier examines both the strategies adopted by specific firms and the interplay of such varying influences as technological change, cyclical economic downturns, war, and national trade policies. In so doing, she delineates a cohesive framework within which to address such broader questions as how sustained regional economic development takes place (or starts and then stops); how decisions made by corporations are structured by internal and external forces; and the ways industrial cultures with different strategic learning capabilities facilitate or thwart the pursuit of technological change.

Author: Stacy Perman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439190100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 527

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Book Description
Two wealthy and powerful men engage in a decades-long contest to create and possess the most remarkable watch in history. James Ward Packard of Warren, Ohio, was an entrepreneur and a talented engineer of infinite curiosity, a self-made man who earned millions from his inventions, including the design and manufacture of America’s first luxury car—the elegant and storied Packard. Henry Graves, Jr., was the very essence of blue-blooded refinement in the early 1900s: son of a Wall Street financier, a central figure in New York high society, and a connoisseur of beautiful things—especially fine watches. Then, as now, expensive watches were the ultimate sign of luxury and wealth, but in the early twentieth century the limitless ambition, wealth, and creativity of these two men pushed the boundaries of mathematics, astronomy, craftsmanship, technology, and physics to create ever more ingenious timepieces. In any watch, features beyond the display of hours, minutes, and seconds are known as “complications.” Packard and Graves spurred acclaimed Swiss watchmaker Patek Philippe to create the Mona Lisa of timepieces—a fabled watch that incorporated twenty-four complications and took nearly eight years to design and build. For the period, it was the most complicated watch ever created. For years it disappeared, but then it surfaced at a Sotheby’s auction in 1999, touching off a heated bidding war, shattering all known records when it fetched $11 million from an anonymous bidder. New York Times bestselling author Stacy Perman takes us from the clubby world of New York high society into the ateliers of the greatest Swiss watchmakers, and into the high-octane, often secretive subculture of modern-day watch collecting. With meticulous research, vivid historical details, and a wealth of dynamic personalities, A Grand Complication is the fascinating story of the thrilling duel between two of the most intriguing men of the early twentieth century. Above all, it is a sweeping chronicle of innovation, the desire for beauty, and the lengths people will go to possess it.

Author: R. James Breiding
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847658091
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 751

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Book Description
Why has Switzerland - a tiny, land-locked country with few natural advantages - become so successful for so long at so many things? In banking, pharmaceuticals, machinery, even textiles, Swiss companies rank alongside the biggest and most powerful global competitors. How did they get there? How do they continue to refresh themselves? Does the Swiss 'Sonderfall' (special case) provide lessons others can learn and benefit from? Can the Swiss continue to perform in a hyper-competitive global economy? Swiss Made offers answers to these and many other questions about the country as it describes the origins, structures and characteristics of the most important Swiss companies. The authors suggest success is due to a large degree to sound entrepreneurial thinking and an openness to new ideas. And they venture a surprising forecast on the country's ability to keep pace in an age of globalisation.

Author: Gene Stone
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1683353358
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 1477

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Book Description
The Watch is the most popular book on vintage and contemporary mechanical watches, appealing to both beginners and experts. In the decade since it was published, the international audience of watch lovers and watch collectors has grown exponentially. It’s time for The Watch, Thoroughly Revised. For this new edition, the original author, Gene Stone, is joined by Stephen Pulvirent of Hodinkee.com. Together, they have thoroughly revamped the book to reflect the current state of the watch world, with the addition of new brands, new models, and more focused and nuanced coverage of the traditional brand leaders, including Rolex, Patek Philippe, Omega, and TAG Heuer.

Author: Pierre-Yves Donzé
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811052360
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
This book explores the luxury industry and how it has undoubtedly been one of the fastest-growing sectors since the 1970s, and one in which Europe has managed to strengthen its competitiveness in the world market. While many aspects of globalization remain abstract and intangible, the luxury industry has created markets where previously there were none, by educating Japanese about the history of French handbags, Chinese about the finest wines, and setting global standards for an elite, inspirational lifestyle. In this edited volume, a wide range of scholars comes together to analyze the history of the business and the innovations in management and marketing that have emerged from it. Invaluable for scholars, industry figures, and dilettantes alike, it will define the field of study for years to come.

Author: Alexis McCrossen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022601486X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
In Marking Modern Times, Alexis McCrossen relates how the American preoccupation with time led people from across social classes to acquire watches and clocks, and expands our understanding of the ways we have standardized time and have made timekeepers serve as political, social, and cultural tools in a society that not merely values time, but regards access to it as a natural-born right.

Author: Isabelle Schluep
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
Corporatism is often seen as the way Swiss stakeholders in business and politics are handling industrial challenges in a reasonable and flexible way. The following paper argues, however, that the emergence of corporatist structures in the Swiss watch industry has often encouraged rent-seeking and collusion at the expense of innovation and competition. This legacy makes it currently difficult for the industry to effectively respond to new technological challenges and changing societal preferences in the global watch business. The book draws on archival sources, accessible since 2015, that have also been extensively discussed in the Swiss print media in early 2016. They provide increasing evidence of corporate governance failure in the 1983 merger of SSIH (Société suisse pour l'industrie horlogère) and ASUAG (Allgemeine Schweizerische Uhrenindustrie AG) that led to today's Swatch Group. The merger, induced by the Swiss banks, was portrayed as a necessary step to save the two allegedly bankrupt watch companies. Yet, the archival sources show that ASUAG had already been successfully restructured and ready to conquer global markets with its new product, the Swatch.