Watch Features

Welcome to WatchTime’s watch features section. Here you will find watch feature stories, watch reports, interesting watch technology coverage, interviews with watch brands, background articles about watches, watch brands and technical stories.

What’s the Most Valuable Watch Brand? And Just How Valuable Is It?

Each year the Millward Brown Optimor consulting firm issues a ranking of the world’s top brands. MBO uses a complex formula to estimate a brand’s worth. Only one brand whose primary product is watches made the list: Rolex. MBO estimates that Geneva-based Rolex is the world’s sixth most valuable luxury brand with a value of...

Read the article

May 9, 2010 by Joe Thompson

“Mad” About ’60s Watches

The fourth season of AMC TV’s Emmy-award-winning drama series Mad Men premieres in late July, and the show’s fans have the date circled. The series, which follows the lives and careers of Madison Avenue advertising executives in 1960s New York, has not only wowed critics and fueled revivals of that era’s fashions and classic cocktails...

Read the article

May 2, 2010 by Mark Bernardo

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Watch Company Financial Results for 2009

For the most part, the Great Recession of 2009 pretty much mugged corporate sales and profits. In the watch sector, for example, the Bulgari and Movado groups reported red ink for the year. But there were exceptions to the battered sales and profits syndrome. Fossil, for one, had its most profitable year ever. Here’s a...

Read the article

Apr 11, 2010 by Joe Thompson

PALACE COUP: Jean Dunand’s Newest Watch is a Tribute to the Industrial Revolution

What sets Jean Dunand apart from other luxury watch brands — aside from its extremely limited production and lofty price points — is the fact that each collection has a totally different look, with no “house style” and very few unifying brand characteristics. The only common principle behind each Jean Dunand model, as voiced by...

Read the article

Apr 4, 2010 by Mark Bernardo

Panerai: A Tribute to Galileo Galilei

It’s a short walk from Galileo’s Florence residence to the spot where, centuries later, Giovanni Panerai opened the city’s first watch workshop. During his life Galileo tackled several time-measurement problems, devising a system to calculate longitude at sea using Jupiter’s moons as a celestial clock and doing fundamental work on isochronism. Four centuries later,...

Read the article

Mar 14, 2010 by WatchTime

The Man Behind the Brand: George Graham

Sixteen years ago, two young men born and raised in the Swiss watch town of La Chaux-de-Fonds and working in the watch industry teamed up with the notion of getting their own watch brand. The question confronting Eric Loth and Pierre-André Finazzi was which brand? The Swiss names they wanted, they couldn’t afford. The French...

Read the article

Mar 1, 2010 by Joe Thompson

Geneva Unconventionals

Every year, Richemont Group’s luxury watch brands, plus a handful of large, independent brands, exhibit their new watches at SIHH in Geneva’s labyrinthine Palexpo Center. This year, 38 small, independent watch brands put on their own show called the Geneva Time Exhibition (GTE) at the International Geneva Conference Center, in the heart of downtown, near...

Read the article

Feb 21, 2010 by Mark Bernardo

Vacheron Constantin La Symbolique des Laques: 600 Years In The Making

At SIHH, Vacheron Constantin unveiled the new Métiers d’Art collection, La Symbolique des Laques. The collection combines two ancient arts: watchmaking and maki-e. Vacheron, which dates to 1755, joins with Japanese maki-e masters Zôhiko, founded in 1661 and together, their more than 600 years of history combine to produce these masterpieces of functional art.

Read the article

Feb 15, 2010 by WatchTime

BNB: RIP

Movement maker BNB Concept is out of business. But its founder, and many of its watchmakers, have found a new gig.

Read the article

Feb 1, 2010 by Norma Buchanan

THE MAN BEHIND THE BRAND: Daniel JeanRichard

(This is the first of a series of articles on historical watchmakers whose names have been revived as contemporary watch brands.) In 1986, Luigi (Gino) Macaluso, a Swiss watch distributor in Italy, bought the rights to the name Daniel JeanRichard from Lemania, the Swiss movement manufacturer. Daniel JeanRichard was not a watch brand. It is...

Read the article

Jan 16, 2010 by Joe Thompson

Beyond Tiger: Watches, Celebs, and Scandal

If, in the wake of the Tiger Woods scandal, you were wondering about the status of his endorsement deal with TAG Heuer, you need only check the company’s Web site for the answer. As this is written, the TAG Heuer home page features a statement from brand CEO Jean-Christophe Babin that “The partnership with Tiger...

Read the article

Dec 28, 2009 by Mark Bernardo

1969: Seiko’s Breakout Year

When it comes to anniversaries, the once generally ignored 40 is the new 50. This year has been marked by a parade of 40th anniversary bashes: Woodstock, the moon landing, and in watches, the legendary Zenith El Primero movement. Now, with two weeks left in the year, there is still one monster anniversary to go...

Read the article

Dec 20, 2009 by Joe Thompson

Collector to the Rescue: Hartmut Kraft Reboots Chronoswiss North America

Re-launching a brand that has stumbled is difficult in a good economy. Imagine starting the process in October, 2008. That prospect lay before new Chronoswiss North America president Hartmut Kraft. Facing the worst economic downturn in decades, Kraft devised a plan to turn the North American market around. WatchTime traces Kraft’s progression from young watch...

Read the article

Dec 7, 2009 by WatchTime

Omega President Stephen Urquhart: The WatchTime Interview

With its marketing blitz for the 40th anniversary Moon Watch, the opening of its own boutique on New York’s fashionable Fifth Avenue, and the long-term renewal of its official Olympic timing deal, 2009 has been a big year for Swiss-watch powerhouse Omega. WatchTime recently conducted an exclusive interview with the brand’s president, Stephen Urquhart, in...

Read the article

Nov 30, 2009 by Mark Bernardo

What Are These Guys Up To?

TechnoMarine made a big splash a decade ago. A new team is hoping to do it again. The image of (left to right) Christian Viros, Vincent Perriard, and Steven Cohen, nearly up to their necks in water, is designed to make us wonder what these three bobbing Pep Boys are up to. The image is...

Read the article

Nov 22, 2009 by Joe Thompson

Patek’s New In-House Chronograph

Paris is always a treat, but Paris paired with a new Patek Philippe movement: ooh-la-la. On November 5, scores of reporters from around the world got just that, as Patek Philippe held a party at its newly renovated Place Vendôme boutique to launch its new in-house manual-wind chronograph movement, the CH 29-535 PS.

Read the article

Nov 15, 2009 by Norma Buchanan

Patek Philippe’s Thierry Stern: Past, Present, Future

WatchTime’s last feature, titled “Executive Sweep”, looked at the number of top watch company executives being replaced as a result of the economic downturn. This new article focuses on a transfer of executive power of a different type altogether. At family-owned Patek Philippe, top executives do not come and go. This story is about the...

Read the article

Oct 25, 2009 by WatchTime

Executive Sweep

September was a tough month for watch executives, and not just because of the continuing slump in sales. A small army of top executives – three worldwide CEOs, and five U.S. ones – resigned or were fired.

Read the article

Oct 12, 2009 by Norma Buchanan

The Decade that Was

You can’t see us, but we’ve got our party hats on. This September, WatchTime magazine celebrates its 10th birthday. To mark the event, we’re publishing in our September-October issue (on newsstands now) a 38-page special section on the wild, wacky watch decade that just ended. The bulk of the section is a rundown of the...

Read the article

Sep 14, 2009 by Norma Buchanan

Thirty Minutes with Richard Mille

In 1999, Richard Mille left his position as CEO of the Mauboussin watch and jewelry house to launch his own watch brand. His first model, the groundbreaking RM 001 — with its ultramodern design and technically fascinating movement made by Renaud et Papi — set the stage for the line, which has since become one...

Read the article

Sep 7, 2009 by Mark Bernardo