HERMES Watches

Hermès International S.A., Hermes of Paris, or simply Hermès (French pronunciationi) is a French manufacturer established in 1837, today specializing in leather, lifestyle accessories, perfumery, luxury goods, and ready-to-wear. Its logo, since the 1950s, is of a Duc carriage with horse.

HISTORY

The designers throughout the company's history have included Lola Prusac, Jacques Delahaye, Catherine de Karolyi, Monsieur Levaillant, Nicole de Vesian, Eric Bergère, Claude Brouet, Daniel Deakin, Alex Bartaska, Tan Giudicelli, Marc Audibet, Mariot Chane, Martin Margiela, Jean Paul Gaultier, Véronique Nichanian (current menswear designer), Christophe Lemaire (current womenswear designer).

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

Hermès sales are composed of about 30% leather goods, 15% clothes, 12% scarves, and 43% other wares. The company licenses no products and keeps tight control over the design and manufacture of its vast inventory

Contemporary Hermès scarves measure 90 cm × 90 cm, weigh 65 grams and are woven from the silk of 250 mulberry moth cocoons. All of the hems are hand-stitched. Scarf motifs are wide-ranging; Two silk-scarf collections per year are released, along with some reprints of older designs and limited editions. And two collections per year are introduced in a Cashmere/silk blend. Since 1937, Hermès has produced over 2,000 unique designs; the horse motif is particularly famous and popular.The seen-everywhere "Brides De Gala" version, introduced in 1957, has been produced more than 70,000 times. A Hermès scarf is sold somewhere in the world every 25 seconds; by the late 1970s more than 1.1 million scarves had been sold worldwide

HUBLOT Watches

Hublot - (French pronunciation: )- is a Swiss enterprise creating luxury watches and founded in 1980 by Italian Carlo Crocco. The company currently operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of France's LVMH. In 1980, it also marked the birth of 'Fusion' concept after a few months from its inception date.

HISTORY

A scion of the Italian Binda Group dynasty, best known for making Breil watches, Carlo Crocco left the company in 1976 to strike out on his own and create a new watch company. Moving to Switzerland he formed MDM Geneve and set about designing a watch that he named the Hublot after the French word for "porthole". The watch that he created featured the first natural rubber strap in the history of watch making. It took 3 years of research to create the strap. Despite failing to attract a single potential customer on the first day of its debut at the 1980 Basel Watch Fair, the watch quickly proved to be a commercial success with sales in excess of $2m in its first year.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

To date, Hublot has 50 Boutiques all over the world. In February 2007, Hublot opened its first mono-brand store in Paris, in the Rue Saint-Honoré. The second was opened in the summer of that year, in the Hôtel Byblos, Saint-Tropez. Today, Hublot has a flagship store on Bond Street, London. Stores in the United States are currently located in Atlanta, Bal Harbour, Beverly Hills, Boca Raton, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, New York City, and Palm Beach.

GUESS Watches

Guess Watches launched its collection in 1983 with a line of men’s and women’s fashion timepieces. Consistent with the Guess image, the ever evolving watches appeal to young, fashion-driven consumers around the world. Constant attention to new ideas and cutting-edge designs keep the brand exciting and relevant to today’s trends.

HISTORY

In 1981, the Marcianos founded a small fashion denim company in California which has grown to be one of the largest and most successful fashion brands in the world. Through their innovative design, marketing and distribution of fashion lifestyle products, GUESS has become one of the most widely recognised fashion leaders in the young contemporary women’s, men’s and kid’s markets.

 The Marciano brothers were raised in the south of France, a place rooted in passion and the essence of French style. Their love of the American West combined with a European sensibility became the driving force behind the creation of GUESS.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

Guess Watches offer a wide range of styles for both men and women. Timepieces for women feature styles that range from trendy-casual to sophisticated-chic. The collection for men encompasses the best of masculine design, materials, and technology.

GRUEN Watches

The Gruen Watch Company was formerly one of the largest watch manufacturers in the United States. It was in business from about 1894 to 1958 and was based in Cincinnati, Ohio.

HISTORY

In 1900 the corporate name became D. Gruen, Sons & Co. The new company became partially a Swiss company. The movements were no longer made in Glasshütte, Germany, but in Switzerland again. 1903, a subsidiary was formed, “The Gruen Watch Manufacturing Company”, located in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland.

Gruen was one of the first US watch companies to offer basic movements produced in Switzerland, in a wide variety of cases and prices, but adjusted, dialled and cased in U.S.A. Some of their finest movements were made by Jean Aegler (who became a business partner of Hans Wilsdorf, Rolex).

In 1904, the company introduced the VeriThin pocket watch movement, a new arrangement of components that allowed the movement to be made much thinner.

The first Gruen wristwatches were introduced in 1908. These found favor with women buyers, but were not popular with men at the time The company did not return to making wristwatches for men until World War I, when military use made wristwatches acceptable for men to wear.

Dietrich Gruen died in 1911, and control of the company passed to his son Frederick.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

M Gruen is owned worldwide by MZ Berger, Long Island City, and New-York, U.S.A. The China based company currently manufactures and distributes entry-level quartz wristwatches with Chinese cases mated to Chinese quartz movements into lower-end venues. Although the rights to the name "Gruen" were sold to MZ Berger, Gruen-branded watches produced after the 1970s have no other connection whatsoever to Gruen or the Gruen Watch Company.

GLYCINE Watches

Glycine is a Swiss wristwatch manufacturer. Glycine became a noteworthy watch maker in the early 1950s for the introduction of their Airman model, a 24 hour watch favored by both military and commercial pilots. The Airman was worn by many United States Air Force pilots during the Vietnam War. Glycine still makes several variants of the Airman. Other models in the Glycine line include the Incursore, Combat, and Lagunare series.

HISTORY

Since its founding by Eugène Meylan in 1914, Glycine has been producing watches at its factory in Bienne, Switzerland.

Meylan was an uncompromising watch engineer who strove for perfection and nothing less. He had a profound understanding of both the market demands and the possibilities offered by the technological advances of the time. Very soon, he succeeded in producing extremely precise, small movements for ladies watches, enabling Glycine to put on the market the finest miniature movements, clad in precious gold and platinum cases, often studded with diamonds.

Glycine became a supplier to the wealthy people who valued highly these works of fine craftsmanship. However, Meylan did not stop there. Around 1931, he presented to the world market a well-functioning self-winding watch, entirely of his own invention, a sensational performance that, for lack of capital, could not be exploited commercially. Some of these GLYCINE Eugène Meylan SA self-winding watches can still be found in the collectors' market.

The year 1934 saw the launch of a chronometer range, a line of watches passing the exacting tests of the Official Swiss Quality Control. The depression years of the 1930s and the approaching world war took a heavy toll on the company as Switzerland was cut off from nearly all its traditional export markets.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

The products that had earned Glycine such an excellent reputation, namely high-quality mechanical watches and above all automatic watches, were suddenly no longer in general demand. Customers everywhere were buying Japanese quartz watches or American digital LED watches. The lucrative business with highly regarded automatic watches was over, and these were now being sold off at give-away prices.

The market went through a turnaround in its values, a tendency which further intensified as the price for the initially exorbitantly expensive quartz watches consistently dropped to a level where it finally drove even the cheap pin-pallet mechanical movements out of the market. Many market shares were lost, the industry entered into a crisis that lasted six years and cost roughly 60,000 jobs.

LOUIS GEORGE Watches

LOUIS GEORGE is a German watch brand based at Berlin, GermanyHISTORYThe brand name refers to the Berlin master watchmaker Louis George who became the 'watchmaker to King' Frederick the Great of Prussia on 26 December 1769.

 Louis George provided clocks, watches and instruments to 3 generations of kings of Prussia and other sovereigns all over Europe including France. He had business relations to Swiss watchmakers like Pierre Jaquet-Droz and Jean-Frederick Leschot. At the end of the 18th century Berlin was considered a watch making hub - mostly for organ or flute clocks with complicated music works attached released by the clock movement itself. The Louis George workshops of the Baroque era produced further more odometer or watches with complications, i.e. dead seconds watches with Pouzait escapement and early chronometer.BRIEF DESCRIPTIONModern LOUIS GEORGE watches are genuine luxurious wristwatches made from precious metals only. Nearly all the applied crafts and techniques are more or less can be called antique techniques - like fire enameling, original guilloche engraving or manual master engraving, manual gem setting. A group of several specialists provides the necessary services. Louis George watches are aiming for classiness. The philosophy of the brand is blending luxury and a timeless design in order to create watches that can pass on from one generation to another.

GENEVA WATCHES

Arguably the most well-known Universal watch of the post-war era was the Polerouter. Designed by Gérald Genta, it was originally produced as the Polarouter in 1954, appearing with a Cal 138SS Bumper movement. The following year it was replaced with the innovative Cal 215 microtor movement which, with minor changes and a name change (from Polarouter to Polerouter, in 1958), was produced until late 1969

HISTORY

On September 4, 2008, the Binda Group entered an agreement with private equity firm Heritage Partners to acquire 100 percent of Advance Watch Group Ltd., the U.S. watch and clock manufacturer doing business as Geneva Watch. Geneva Watch Group began producing timepieces in 1974 and is headquartered in New York. The company has around 1800 employees worldwide, split between locations in the US (300 in New York and Michigan) and the Far East (1500 in Hong Kong and China). The company makes and distributes its own surfer brand Freestyle and also licenses brands from Kenneth Cole, Tommy Bahama, Betsey Johnson, BCBG, Ted Baker, Mexx, Speedo, Elgin, Thomas Kinkade and Mudd Jeans.

During the year ending March 2008, Geneva recorded net revenues of US$192 million, and sold around 25 million watches. With the acquisition, Binda expects 2008’s total sale revenues to reach €450 million euros ($665 million). The company will be headed by Jeff Gregg, who will report to Gianni Pieraccioni, Binda Group managing director.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

The original enabling statute, Loi sur le contrôle facultatif des montres (Law on the Voluntary Control of Watches), was enacted on November 6, 1886, and was amended on May 27, 1891, November 15, 1958, and December 9, 1959.

It established, in the canton of Geneva, an office for the voluntary inspection of the watches from Geneva at the School of Horology to examine and mark watch movements. In general, the watches may be marked if following an examination, they are recognized to have all qualities of good workmanship likely to ensure a uniform rate and durability and whose work, at a minimum was done on commission by workmen living the canton of Geneva.