Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Key Details About Swiss Army Watches

By Fausto Capello


International Watch Company is the world's premier maker of Swiss Army watches. It was established by Florentino Ariosoto Jones in 1868 who wanted to fuse craftsmanship of Swiss products and the breakthroughs of engineering thus producing the Swiss Army watch.

At first, the Swiss had little trust in Jones. They thought that his ideas would lead to poor quality watches and they were wary that their income might go down as a result. The town of Schaffhausen had been left behind in the Industrial Revolution and its' natives were searching for work.

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

Year 1888 made improvements to the Swiss Army watches' quality thanks to the introduction of electricity to the company. International Watch Company started giving additional worker's benefit like health insurance, pension, housing plans and the like, after World War I.

International Watch Company has been the foremost provider when it comes to Swiss Army Watches as they focused too much on quartz movement and were the first to introduce electric battery operated watches in 1940.

The company fell on hard times in the mid 1970's when gold prices soared. The result was that it was no longer beneficial to ship high quality Swiss Army watches to the US and the other parts of the world. Japan began to export cheap quartz clocks that were sad knock offs of the original Swiss Army watches.

As a reaction, the watch company employed the best designers and engineers which yielded high quality, stylish timepieces as well as jewellery watches made by Porsche and others. Through this, the reputation of Swiss Army watches was regained and even heightened the demands of customers.

Most important of all, the company has kept detailed logs of every Swiss Army watch it has produced since 1880. Users of a Swiss Army watch made by the International Watch Company can approach them and find out what components went into their watch and when the watch was manufactured. The company claims that they still maintain parts for all of their Swiss Army watches, and that even the old ones from the 1800's can be repaired.

Currently, 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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