Swiss watchmaker Oris releases 110th-anniversary watch

ORIS shows it still has power in reserve after 110 years of turbulence.

Oris’s 110th anniversary watch

ANNIVERSARIES are big in the watch industry, but then when you’re over 100 years old every year counts. This year the Holstein-based Oris celebrates its 110th anniversary and, looking back on the company’s history, the milestone is all the more remarkable considering its turbulent past — one that perfectly reflects the travails of the broader Swiss watch industry in the 20th century.

Oris was founded by watchmakers Paul Cattin and Georges Christian, who in 1904 bought a recently closed watch factory in Holstein and named their company after a nearby stream. Their goal was to produce quality watches at the best possible price. They grew fast and by 1910 were employing 300 people. In the late 1920s, the company was bought by a group of investors led by Jacques-David LeCoultre, grandson of Antoine LeCoultre and the man who merged with Edmond Jaeger to form Jaeger-LeCoultre in 1937. Oris continued to grow after World War II but then was hit hard in the quartz crisis of the 1970s. In 1970 Oris was sold to General Watch Company (which would eventually become the Swatch Group) and then in 1982 the company’s general manager, Rolf Portmann, and head of marketing, Ulrich Herzog, staged a management buyout. It was Herzog who decided to drop the quartz strategy and focus again on mechanical watches.

Oris’s 110th anniversary watch is the first in-house movement that the company has developed from the ground up in 35 years and is known as the calibre 110 movement. The hand-wound watch features a 10-day power reserve that is achieved by a mainspring that, if unwound, would measure 1.8m. The power reserve is indicated by a dial at 3 o’clock, which counts down from 10 days to zero. At the top of the scale the notches representing the days are closer together and get further apart closer to zero to give the wearer a clearer indication of how much power is left. The movement took 10 years to develop and is assembled in the company’s Holstein factory. oris.ch