For its 2023 fiscal operating year, Swatch Group reported CHF 7.89 billion in net sales [1]. The company further stated a 17.2% operating margin for its Watches & Jewelry segment.
As reported by WatchTime during the fourth quarter of 2017, Bienne, Switzerland-based “Swatch Group is the largest watch company in the world [2].
The publicly traded company owns 18 watch brands spanning the entire price spectrum. … Omega generates the most revenue ….
The Swatch Group is the most powerful company in the Swiss watch industry due to the many components makers it owns. Thanks above all to ETA [3], its movement-production company, the Swatch Group is far and away the top supplier of watch movements to the Swiss industry ….
HISTORY
Christmas Day of 1969 marked the first day of “The Quartz Revolution” — in Tokyo, Japan [4]. On that date, future James Bond watchmaker Seiko introduced “the world’s first commercial quartz wristwatch,” with a less-than-twelve-month total production run that topped-out at a few hundred pieces.
By the time that Roger Moore appeared as Agent 007 in his last film for EON Productions, quartz-tech was ubiquitous and had proven a watershed for consumer access to unparalleled accuracy in personal timekeeping. It would go on to serve as basis for the modern marvels of “smartwatches” [5]. But for Swiss watchmakers, which would return with James Bond watches when Timothy Dalton took on the mantle, it was dubbed “The Quartz Crisis” [6].
From the perspective of The Seiko Museum Ginza in Japan, the following is what happened next [7].
Switzerland responded to this adversity with a new organization and strategy.
According to a plan hatched by Nicolas G Hayek, a consultant in a partner bank, the Swiss watchmaking industry established a new organization in 1983 by merging two financially troubled groups: SSIH, a group of major companies including Omega and Tissot [and Hamilton] [8], and ASUAG, a group including Longines and Rado. The newly formed organization was called SMH.
The aim of this merger was the logical reconstruction of a manufacturing system and reexamination of a new marketing strategy. SMH, [as] a starting point to revive the lost volume …, decided on … providing the ‘Swatch,’ a cheap 50 francs disposable analog watch that could be worn as a fashion item.
The Swatch was released in 1983. … SMH sold a cumulative total of 23 million pieces in 1986 and 100 million pieces in 1992. Annual sales rose to 30 million pieces in 1993 ….
With the profit from this mass production effect, they were able to restart their factories and recreate employment. The base of the Swiss timepiece industry was revived.
The logistical “Counter Strategy by SMH” [9] called for “all brands that independently manufactured and assembled movements, such as Omega …, [to consolidate] all of their processes into ETA (the former ‘Ebauches’).
ETA now supplies the movements to all SMH brands.
ETA has condensed the types of movement as common parts for use among all SMH brands, promoted sales to watchmakers in Switzerland and other countries outside the group, and intensified the manufacturing process to reduce costs and expand sales efficiently ….
Afterwards, SMH purchased a steady succession of parts subcontractors while establishing a more logical production system globally through international division of labor in China, Thailand, etc ….
Omega was under SMH, then, during the productions of GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies. The parent company then changed its name to the Swatch Group in 1998 [10].
EN ROUTE TO JAMES BOND WATCHES
The aforesaid history and structuring provides important context for understanding the decision to place a quartz model on the wrist of Pierce Brosnan as first contracted Omega James Bond watch.
Again: Roger Moore exclusively wore quartz wristwatches manufactured in Japan throughout his last five EON Productions movies, ending with a then-unprecedented three very different Seiko models for A View to A Kill in 1985. Two years later, Timothy Dalton made his debut in The Living Daylights with a Heuer Night Dive on his wrist; exclusively quartz.
But in 1989, his James Bond returned wearing only a mechanical Rolex.
Omega went into its partnership with EON Productions as part of a comprehensive strategy to position the brand as a luxury watchmaker and to directly take-on Rolex [11]. Its 1993 Seamaster 300m Chronometer was a concurrent release [12] along side the quartz Reference 2541.80 and arguably its answer to the Oyster Perpetual Date Submariner from Licence to Kill; arguably, it was a better answer for GoldenEye.
Yet Omega went with quartz — for a reason.
— Dell Deaton
Latest update: February 8, 2024
Published: January 13, 2024
OFF-SITE REFERENCES
- “Swatch Group: Key Figures 2023”
January 23, 2024 / Swatch Group (accessed February 5, 2024). - “Who Owns What: A Guide to the Watch Groups”
October 12, 2017 / Jay Deshpande / WatchTime (accessed January 13, 2024). - “ETA”
Swatch Group (accessed February 8, 2024). - “Quartz-Astron, the world’s first quartz watch”
Andrea Secco / The Seiko Guy (accessed February 5, 2024). - “Smartwatches 1927-2023: The devices that paved the way for the Apple Watch”
March 13, 2023 / Paul Lamkin / Wearable (accessed February 4, 2024). - “The Quartz Crisis: The (Almost) End of the Watch Industry”
June 14, 2022 / Sideprojects (via YouTube, accessed February 4, 2024). - “Reorganization of the Swiss Timepiece Industry and the Appearance of Swatch”
The Quartz Crisis and Recovery of Swiss Watches / The Seiko Museum Ginza (accessed February 5, 2024). - “Hamilton”
1994 / Pieter Doensen / Watch: History of the Modern Wrist Watch, page 226 (Snoeck-Ducaju & Zoon: The Netherlands). - “Logical Counter Strategy by SMH”
The Seiko Museum Ginza. - “Reorganization of Major Watch Groups,” Id.
- “Jean-Claude River On The James Bond Partnership, Hublot And Hip-Hop, And Starting The Biver Brand”
November 13, 2023 / Hodinkee (via YouTube, accessed February 4, 2024) - “2531.80.00: Seamaster – 300 (James Bond)”
1993 / Omega (accessed January 22, 2024).