SPOILER ALERT!

Omega

Omega SA is owned by Swatch Group of Switzerland — “the largest watch company in the world” [Deshpande]. Among its eighteen brands owned, “Omega generates the most revenue and is the third-largest Swiss brand.” The Morgan Stanley Swiss Watch Industry Report estimated Omega earnings at 2.6 billion Swiss francs (U.S. $2.9 billion) with 570,000 units sold in 2023 [Italian Watch].

The watchmaker itself has traced its founding to 1848, by Louis Brandt, who opened a workshop in the Swiss village of La Chaux-de-Fonds to develop “the most accurate watches he could” [Omega, 1948].

It has vocally credited Lindy Hemming, “the Oscar-winning costume designer” as having been “responsible for casting 007’s watch in GoldenEye,” EON Productions 1995 [Omega, Beloved Spy]. She discussed this in greater detail during a 2012 interview for Christie’s [Goldsmith].

Prior to wearing an Omega, Bond had been a Rolex and Seiko man, but once Hemming came into the picture she decided an Omega was the best fit and the producers agreed ….

‘In my head, I got an image that Omega would be correct for Commander Bond,’ Hemming says. She then researched the watch and came to the conclusion that it would perfectly suit Bond …. The Seamaster Professional Quartz had a blue bezel and ‘to me blues were the colors of James Bond,’ Hemming says.

Jean-Claude Biver, who at the time of GoldenEye had been head of Omega, shared his personal perspective on the history from the other side of that deal during a November 2023 sit-down [Milton].

Select Horology

Within fifty years of its start, “Louis Brandt & Fils” had become “the largest watch-making enterprise in Switzerland, producing 100,000 watches a year [Doensen]. When sons of the founder developed a caliber that they regarded as the “ultimate achievement” in terms of accuracy and serviceability, they named it “Omega.” In 1903 the firm was re-branded as “Louis Brandt & Frère-Omega Watch Co,” and in 1925 entered into “an intensive and commercial co-operation” with Tissot to “found SSIH, the ‘Société Suisse pour l’Industrie Horlogère SA.'”

Significant progress in improved timekeeper accuracy led in 1931 to Omega having “set precision records in all six trials at the Geneva Observatory” [Bredan; Université de Genève]. In 1937, Omega set a record in accuracy “that remains unbeaten to this day.” At the outset of World War II, “Omega was commissioned as the single largest supplier of watches for the British armed forces and its allies … [and] had to fast-track its advances in water-resistant, shockproof and antimagnetic watches through industrialization ….”

Prior to earning its pedigree as a “Bond watch,” Omega was likely best defined by “The Space Race.” This puts it in good company among fellow watchmakers including Breitling and Heuer. But Omega went on to become known as “the moon watch” [16]. As the late Chuck Maddox directed: Just ask Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin.

During this same period — and more personal to the wrists of twenty-first century consumers — however, is the path of Omega through “The Quartz Revolution,” or, from a manufacturer-centered perspective, “The Quartz Crisis.” Much of the Swiss watchmaking industry came together as one through the Centre Electronique Horloger (“CEH”), chartered to competitively answer the impending sea change in the basis for wrist-worn timekeeping technology. On its own, Omega went beyond this, with its “Megaquartz” movement, built upon “a decade of development …. [Smithsonian].

[This was] a wristwatch-sized calibre that was certified as a ‘Marine Chronometer.’ Due to its routine variation of less than 0.002 seconds per day, it remains the world’s first and only wristwatch to receive this distinction.

It wasn’t enough; nothing ever would be.

In 1982, SSIH incurred “a loss of 17 million Swiss francs,” fired employees in fleeting attempts to “reenforce their position,” and took infusions of financing from Swiss banks [Seiko Ginza]. Mergers and reorganizations followed, ultimately leading to Omega being taken under the holding company, “Société de Micro-électronique et d’Horlogerie,” or “SMH” — “the most important group of Swiss manufacturers.”

En Route to 007

In 1983, Roger Moore was James Bond in Octopussy, then again in 1985 in A View to a Kill; Seiko was the exclusive watchmaker for both, and prior, dating back to 1977. But when Timothy Dalton stepped into the lead role for The Living Daylights, he wore Cartier and TAG Heuer. And when he next returned two years later, it was with the latest Rolex Submariner model on his wrist.

In retrospect, authors Lee Pfeiffer and Dave Worrall provided an appropriately succinct summary for the unprecedented years that 007 was absent from the big screen following Licence to Kill in 1989, not to pick up again until GoldenEye in 1995. Those who lived through that period will undoubtedly recall the insistence that “James Bond … was finally dead” read as an accurate sentiment at the time [Cork and Scivally].

In 1989, James Bond’s fate seemed less dependent on the battles of the Cold War than the battles for control of MGM. 007 was tied firmly to the studio …. Unfortunately for Bond, MGM was in trouble — major financial trouble.

… Although Licence to Kill made a healthy profit, it could not single-handedly save the studio …. The studio could not afford to make a Bond film, despite their exclusive contract with Danjaq to produce more ….

On 8th August 1990, Cubby Broccoli declared Danjaq was for sale and all reasonable offers would be considered …. Michael Wilson has [since] described the proposed sale as [merely] an attempt to put a value on the company.

A survey of then-foundational considerations would including the following. Barbara Broccoli stepped up to co-produce her first James Bond movie, with Michael G Wilson. Pierce Brosnan, who had been initially blessed by Albert R Broccoli for The Living Daylights, secured the role in GoldenEye (with “a yellow gold Pasha de Cartier around his wrist” [Green]). A 1964 Aston Martin DB5 appeared in multiple scenes — exactly thirty years since the model had last appeared in Thunderball. And during the summer of 1994, Cubby Broccoli, “at the age of 86, … under went emergency coronary bypass surgery, from which he never fully recovered” [Cork and Scivally].

GoldenEye was the first time that Lindy Hemming worked on a James Bond motion picture.

Watchmaker-side, Jean-Claude Biver had just stepped up to head Omega [Raffaelli] as GoldenEye went into production. And he was charged with reviving “the once venerable, but ailing watch company Omega.

Between 1995 and 1999, Biver led [a] turnaround effort that increased Omega’s revenues from $350 million to $900 million.

Double-0 Watch Status

Omega first became a James Bond watch through the premier of GoldenEye on November 13, 1995.

By then a part of Société de Micro-électronique et d’Horlogerie, Omega would have run under its parent strategy of utilizing movements that had been produced by its sister entity, ETA SA Manufacture Horlogère Suisse. ETA (fka Ebauches SA) had been heavily leveraged in quartz movements, and was continuing to assiduously raise the bar on long-term performance of that technology well into the mid-1990s.

That certainly made strategic sense: Total worldwide production of wristwatches more than quintupled during the two decades leading up to the release of GoldenEye, but the number of mechanical watches produced during that period had dropped by almost forty percent from baseline [Doensen]. In 1975, commercial production of quartz wristwatches had been negligible; in 1995, quartz accounted for over eight-five percent of all wristwatches made. Moreover, the value of the quartz wristwatches that came out of Switzerland was on par with its mechanicals of 1995.

Regarding “her choice of the Omega Seamaster,” Lindy Hemming said, “‘I was convinced that Commander Bond, a naval man, a diver, and a discreet gentleman of the world, would wear this watch as opposed to the one everyone expected me to use’ [Tatler].

Consequently, Hemming said, ‘I went to a props and hand props meeting and argued for the use of Omega ….’ The particular timepiece Hemming chose was a Seamaster 300M Professional, a contemporary take on the Omega watches that were issued to Royal Navy divers in the late 1960s.

In a fourth-quarter 2023 interview for Hodinkee, he recalled how, back in the mid-1990s, he had become aware that “we can have James Bond, … [Milton].

I started with two, even three, fantastic ideas. The first one, it didn’t come from me: It was a young student. And she said, ‘… I heard that they are ready to sell, … we might have James Bond … as an ambassador. And we will be in the film, and nine seconds,’ et cetera, et cetera …. I’m not sure ….’

Finally, I went to Hollywood. I saw Universal Studios. And we discussed. And I came back with a contract where we did not have just James Bond wearing a watch, but we had a full campaign — all around the world, with Pierce Brosnan: He was … the newest James Bond ….

Ironically, it was Jean-Claude Biver who had famously said while head of Blancpain, earlier in his career: “Since 1735 there has never been a quartz Blancpain watch. And there never will be” [Watch Affinity]. And yet, well after the Quartz Revolution had been sorted, with Omega counted among Swiss survivors, Mr Biver was integral to the decision that chose the 2541.80 quartz Seamaster over its mechanical 2531.80 sibling to resurrect 007 six years after The Living Daylights had shown legacy watch tech return after a thirteen-year absence.

Cubby Broccoli passed away on June 27, 1996. Tomorrow Never Dies premiered eighteen months later in London. And the James Bond character was onto the second official Omega watch for EON Productions motion pictures: A Seamaster chronometer that was all-but indistinguishable at arms-length in appearance from its predecessor.

In 1998, SMH changed its name to Swatch Group.

And through acquisition of “Co-Axial” escapement technology by its Omega subsidiary [Swatch Group], the Swiss watchmaking conglomerate that had answered The Quartz Revolution on its own terms led a “Mechanical Watch Counter-Revolution” — that would also play out through selections on the wrist of 007 in EON Productions motion pictures in the years that followed.

Note

  1. Among watch enthusiasts, the question of Who made the innards responsible for its timekeeping functions? can be a matter of (great) interest. Is it the same entity as the named watchmaker? Some go even further, arguing the very definition of “in-house” movement. As its Bond-era timeline above shows, the in-house bragging rights (including an increasing distancing from its own Swatch sibling ETA) appears to be increasingly important to Omega, if not a significant shift in corporate strategy on the part of its Swatch Group parent.

Related Page

  • James Bond Watches Blog: “Omega“

— Dell Deaton
Updated: September 1, 2024
December 9, 2005

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