Making watches today

Two words on a dial carry a legal test. The Swiss Federal Council’s ordinance on the use of “Swiss” for watches is dated 23 December 1971; what it requires of the watch and its movement, and how the Glashütte rule compares, is set out under origin labels.^1, 18

The rule has been revised more than once. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland records a revision of 1992 that still allowed foreign parts so long as Swiss parts made up at least half the movement’s value; the FH says the revision in force from 1 January 2017 sets 60 per cent Swiss value for the whole watch and raises the movement threshold from 50 to 60 per cent.^2, 18

The 2017 text also reaches electronics. From 1 January 2019, a watch that is not purely mechanical must have its printed circuits, display and software conceived in Switzerland, as well as its mechanical construction and prototype, to count as Swiss.¹

Precision is certified by separate bodies, told under chronometry. The Historical Dictionary dates the Swiss official chronometer testing association, COSC, to 1972 and its accreditation by the federal metrology office to 1994; COSC says its three laboratories can inspect more than two million movements and watches a year.^18, 33

The federal metrology institute, METAS, also certifies whole watches: a Master Chronometer must have a movement that passes the ISO 3159 chronometer test and must then pass tests of the cased watch, including resistance to a magnetic field of 1.5 tesla.¹⁹

The Historical Dictionary describes the industry of the early 21st century as mostly établisseurs: brands, many under groups such as the Swatch Group, Richemont and LVMH, that buy movements, cases, dials, hands and straps, some from Asia, and concentrate on marketing and distribution, while the few full manufactures stay at the top of the market.¹⁸

For decades the main supplier of mechanical movements to other Swiss brands was the Swatch Group’s ETA. In 2002 it set out to stop supplying outside firms; the Competition Commission (COMCO) held it to a phased exit, with deliveries falling to 55 per cent of their 2009–2011 average by 2019, and on 15 July 2020 imposed no new obligation, finding ETA still dominant but its customers less dependent on it. The eighteen years are told under The ETA supply dispute.^{4, 20, 34, 35}

Who led the market by 2019 depends on who is counting. The Swatch Group said that Sellita produced and supplied one million mechanical movements in 2019, roughly twice as many as ETA, and was the new market leader; COMCO found in 2020 that ETA, selling mostly inside its own group, was still by far the most important maker of Swiss made mechanical movements and still dominant.^4, 21

Sellita, founded in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1950, had assembled ETA movements; after 2003 it made its own versions of ETA calibres whose patents had expired, such as the SW200 matching ETA’s 2824. Monochrome reports 1.5 million movements in 2022 from 850 employees, with its own blank factory at Glashütte in Germany.^4, 5, 36

Most watches are not Swiss. The Historical Dictionary puts world production in 2010 at about 1.2 billion watches, 1.1 billion of them from China and Hong Kong, against 26.2 million finished Swiss watches; the FH counts 589.5 million watches exported from China in 2025 at an average export price of 4 dollars, and 14.6 million from Switzerland at 2,018 dollars.^12, 18

Much of that volume comes from Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta, where Hong Kong firms moved their assembly from the late 1980s while keeping headquarters, design and marketing in Hong Kong, as the business historian Pierre-Yves Donzé describes.^6, 7

A case study published by APEC in 2015 follows one Hong Kong maker, whose cases, bracelets, hands and buckles came from the Pearl River Delta, movements from Japan and dials from China or Thailand; it gives assembly costs of about 3 dollars a watch in China against up to 9 in Hong Kong.³⁷

Japan sells movements to the world. Miyota, Citizen’s movement business, began as a factory founded at Miyota in Nagano in 1959; it says its Caliber 20 quartz series of 1981 and Caliber 82 mechanical series of 1986 became de facto industry standards, and that it makes all its movements in Japan.^8, 27

In China, Sea-Gull of Tianjin, descended from the Tianjin Watch Factory of 1955, says it can make three million movements a year, enough by its account to supply a quarter of the world.²⁶

Behind the movement makers stand the component makers. The Swatch Group says it makes much of what goes into its watches, from ETA movements to hands, dials and cases; the Acrotec group calls itself the leading independent supplier of movement parts in Switzerland, with firms for shock absorbers, springs, jewels and LIGA parts.^{40, 41, 42}

The biggest change in the materials of the movement is silicon. Monochrome describes Ulysse Nardin’s Freak of 2001 as the watch that brought silicon into the movement: its escape wheels were first tried in aluminium, which wore too fast, and were then etched from silicon.^22, 43

In Neuchâtel, the research centre CSEM, heir of the industry’s quartz laboratory, filed a European patent on 25 November 2002 for a balance spring cut from monocrystalline silicon and coated with a layer of opposite thermal behaviour, so that its stiffness changes little with temperature.^9, 25

Patek Philippe, Rolex and the Swatch Group formed a consortium at CSEM that took up the patent and brought silicon balance springs into industrial production, as Europa Star and WorldTempus report.^10, 43

The members moved at different speeds: Patek Philippe dates its silicon escape wheel to 2005 and its Spiromax balance spring to 2006, and Europa Star dates Rolex’s silicon Syloxi spring to 2014. The core patent expired in November 2022, and Europa Star reports that a silicon balance spring that cost about 100 francs at first cost about 20 by then.^{9, 10, 44}

Silicon parts are cut by deep reactive ion etching, a process borrowed from microelectronics; LIGA, which grows metal parts in moulds made by lithography, is the other new method. Monochrome reports that Ulysse Nardin set up Sigatec with Mimotec in 2006 to make parts by both methods.^{22, 42, 43, 44}

Conventional parts are now machined on computer-controlled machines to fine tolerances. Bremont says it mills the plates and bridges of its ENG300 movement on a five-axis machine at Henley-on-Thames to within 3 microns, and RGM in Pennsylvania has its nickel-silver plates cut by water jet nearby before machining and finishing them itself.^{31, 45, 46}

The FH’s export statistics show Swiss watch exports falling from 28.1 million watches in 2015 to 13.8 million in 2020 and 14.6 million in 2025. Most of the fall was in electronic watches, down from 20.3 million to 9.4 million, while the value of mechanical watches exported rose from 16.3 to 20.9 billion francs.^11, 12

The FH warns that these are exports at export prices, not sales to consumers, and its world comparisons leave out connected watches altogether.^12, 47

The market researcher Strategy Analytics estimated that Apple shipped 30.7 million watches in 2019 against 21.1 million for all Swiss brands together, and said younger buyers were turning to smartwatches; MacRumors noted that Apple does not publish Apple Watch sales, so such figures are estimates.^{30, 48, 49}

How much of the Swiss decline the smartwatch explains is not settled. Strategy Analytics put it down to younger buyers choosing smartwatches; the FH, explaining its 2025 results, named American trade policy, the fall of the Chinese market, a record gold price and a strong franc, and noted that watches under 500 francs fell more sharply than those from 500 to 3,000 francs.^12, 30

Some Swiss makers answered with electronics of their own. CSEM says it developed the photovoltaic dial and a low-power operating system for Tissot’s T-Touch Connect Solar, and that it helped design a Bluetooth chip with the Swatch Group’s EM Microelectronic.²⁵

In the United States, RGM was founded in 1992 by the watchmaker Roland G. Murphy at Mount Joy, Pennsylvania; Quill & Pad reports that he began making his own movements in 2007, and RGM says its Caliber 801 is the first serial mechanical movement made in the country since Hamilton stopped its 992B in 1969.^{13, 46, 51}

Weiss Watch Company, founded in Los Angeles in 2013 by the WOSTEP-trained watchmaker Cameron Weiss, first cased Swiss movements and from 2016 made its own Calibre 1003; Monochrome reports that over 95 per cent is made by the firm, with jewels and mainsprings bought in.¹⁴

In Britain, Bremont opened a 35,000-square-foot manufacturing centre at Henley-on-Thames in 2021. Its ENG300 movement is developed from the K1 calibre of the Swiss firm THE+, with plates and bridges made in England, as Europa Star reports.^31, 45

When Britain last made movements at scale is told differently. Bremont says it was Smiths in 1971, and Europa Star says Smiths closed in the 1970s; the Antiquarian Horological Society’s James Nye dates the end of Smiths’ Cheltenham production to March 1971, but Smiths’ cheap-watch factory in Wales, run with Ingersoll, closed in 1980.^{31, 45, 52, 53, 54}

In Japan, Grand Seiko says its Shinshu Watch Studio, in a Seiko Epson facility at Shiojiri, descends from Suwa Seikosha, which made the original Grand Seiko of 1960, and that Spring Drive was conceived there.⁵⁵

In China, Shenzhen firms that began as assembly plants for foreign orders set up their own brands. China Daily wrote in 2012 that more than 150 Shenzhen watch companies had brands of their own and named Tian Wang, Fiyta, Ebohr and Rossini as the four biggest domestic brands.^7, 56

WOSTEP, a training centre supported by the Swiss industry, opened in Neuchâtel in 1966 with a one-year course for North American watchmakers. Its Worldwide Partnership, presented in 1994, carries its 3,000-hour watchmaker programme to schools abroad, and WOSTEP says Swiss federal authorities recognised that programme in 2009.¹⁵

Rolex opened a free school, the Lititz Watch Technicum, in Pennsylvania in 2001, after the closure of the Bulova School in New York, as JCK reported; Wikipedia says it closed in July 2025, its training moved to Dallas.^32, 57

Accounts differ on what Lititz taught. JCK reported at its opening that it would use WOSTEP’s two-year curriculum; Wikipedia describes a curriculum of the Swiss American Watchmaker’s Training Alliance, SAWTA, of more than 3,000 hours.^32, 57

Who may repair a watch became a legal question. In 2004 the European confederation of watch repairers’ associations complained to the European Commission that the Swatch Group, Richemont, LVMH, Rolex, Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe refused to supply spare parts to independent repairers; on 23 October 2017 the EU General Court dismissed its challenge to the Commission’s rejection.^16, 59

Osborne Clarke’s summary says the court accepted the makers’ selective repair systems, which supply parts only to authorised repairers, as justified by the complexity of the watches, the quality of service and the fight against counterfeiting.⁵⁹

The Swiss industry employed 65,237 people in 2023, 4,414 more than a year earlier, by the count of the employers’ Convention patronale; Neuchâtel, Bern and Geneva were the largest watch cantons, and the number of new apprentices rose by 14.5 per cent.^60, 61

In 2024 the workforce stayed above 65,000, with 46,493 people in production, as swissinfo reports the Convention patronale’s figures.⁶¹