Watch Insider’s 6 Most Underestimated Watch Manufacturers

Glashütte Original

Glashütte Original, as the name already tells us, does not manufacture in Switzerland but in Glashütte, Germany. As a result, Glashütte Original always stands in the shadow of Glashütte’s best-known brand, A. Lange & Söhne. Even though Glashütte Original is owned by the Swatch Group and has developed its own style, many still inaccurately classify it as a knockoff of Lange’s designs. However, Glashütte Original today is a highly innovative manufacture with a huge variety of calibers, including almost all small and big complications. The quality of its movements is truly flawless. This year Glashütte Original finally presented its big missing link: the integrated automatic chronograph Caliber 37-01. In my eyes, Caliber 37-01 belongs in the top tier of chronograph movements in Germany and Switzerland. Even more appealing to collectors and aficionados, Glashütte Original offers steel versions of most of its high-end watches, making them much more affordable and accessible. A. Lange & Söhne doesn’t have a single steel watch in its collection, so its entry price is much higher than that of Glashütte Original. With all these wonderful in-house movements and its own original design, this brand deserves much more attention in the world of high-end watchmaking. I’m still waiting for the rise of Glashütte Original.

Nomos Glashütte

Another brand from Glashütte that is absolutely underestimated. Most only know Nomos for its minimalist design. The saying is: less is more. But this is absolutely not true when it comes to the brand’s calibers! While many other design brands just buy any hand-wound and/or automatic movement to put into their cases, Nomos manufactures them in-house. The brand started its own movement manufacturing very early; since then it has extended its collection of calibers to include some small complications. By the way: Did you know that Nomos has even developed and manufactured a tourbillon? Yes, the brand sold it exclusively to Wempe to be used in the Wempe Chronometer Tonneau Tourbillon wristwatch. This year Nomos presented its own escapement including balance and balance spring. This giant step forward makes Nomos totally independent. While many in the industry struggle to secure suppliers for balance springs, Nomos has begun incorporating its new escapement into its first models and is on the way to integrating it into all its watches. This is a big deal, and now’s the time for Nomos to let the world know that its watches have more than a great minimalist exterior. The Nomos Metro was the very first watch the brand equipped with the in-house escapement.

Tissot

Why include Tissot here? Because Tissot was the pioneer of smartwatches! In 1999, the brand had already started to manufacture a so-called smartwatch. The Tissot T-Touch was the world’s first smartwatch and today still is one of the smartest quartz watches. The T-Touch also was the first tactile multi-function watch in the world. By touching the crystal at particular positions you could access its functions. Tissot has kept improving the T-Touch year after year; the 2014 edition includes a solar panel on the dial. The Tissot T-Touch Expert Solar offers a perpetual calendar with indication of day and week, two alarms (one for the week, the other for the weekend), two time-zone indicators for holiday trips, weather forecast with barometric pressure, an altimeter, a chronograph with lap and split times and a logbook, a compass, a timer, an azimuth and regatta function and a backlight. I am sure we can expect to see further smartwatches coming from Tissot. But also in the mechanical sector Tissot is very active and totally underestimated. The Powermatic 80 Automatic caliber is manufactured by ETA and is exclusively used by Tissot at the moment. This movement has the potential to kick Rolex from the COSC throne. Rolex is the leading company in terms of calibers sent to COSC for certification, but Tissot could easily send many more than 800,000 movements to COSC. The Powermatic 80 caliber is manufactured at a large scale and is of such outstanding quality that it can easily pass the COSC test. Tissot watches with the movement start at around $1,000. Since this Swatch Group brand already has turnover of more than $1 billion, it really belongs among the big players in Switzerland. Tissot still acts very quietly and therefore is totally underestimated. The demand for its watches has increased dramatically because of the attractive price point and exceptional quality. If this sleeping giant really wakes up, anything could happen. Here are the Powermatic 80 movement and the 2014 Tissot T-Touch Expert Solar mentioned above.