A Short Intro To Swiss Army Watches

By Fausto Capello


The foremost maker of Swiss Army watches, International Watch Company, was put up in 1868 by Florentino Ariosoto Jones. His idea was to combine modern engineering with Switzerland's unquestionable craftsmanship, thus resulted in the modern Swiss Army watch.

Jones put up the company in Schaffhausen, a town in Switzerland, which was so backwards during the Industrial Revolution. Swiss people were not sure about Jones' abilities. They were believing that the product will not provide good results and they would end up losing a living.

During that time, a man named Johann Heinrich Moser came to this town and established a hydroelectric plant. He and Jones became acquaintances and ventured on a Swiss Army watch plant, the first in Schaffhausen.

With the hydroelectric power plant, electricity was introduced to the picture thus,improving Swiss Army watches' quality by year 1888. After the First World War, International Watch Company finally provided their workers proper compensation benefits, such as health insurance, pension, and housing plans for them and their families.

The International Watch Company has always been at the vanguard of Swiss Army watch technology. It was the first to introduce electronic batteries in their watches in the 1940's, and they invested heavily in quartz movement.

During the mid-70s, International Watch Company experienced down time due to a sudden increase of raw materials specifically gold. Another reason was that Japan produced cheap, low class quartz timepieces, a counterfeit of Swiss watches which made the IWC to ship lesser than the usual volume of their products.

International Watch Company responded by attracting outstanding designers and engineers with the likes of Porsche. This led to luxurious, high end fashion and jewellery watches which helped regain the consumers' trust and appeal towards Swiss Army watches.

International Watch Company records the details of every single watch they made since 1880. As a result, owners of Swiss Army watches can bring their pieces to the company to get it checked as well as repaired.

At present, their Swiss Army watches starts at US$100 to US$1000. They also do annual auctions for charity works with schools in Mali as beneficiaries.




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