It may only be 40 years ago, but a trip back in time to 1976 takes us to a different world in many respects. If you want Swiss watch export statistics for the time, you cannot just visit the Swiss Watch Industry Federation website and look them up. It was a time long before the Internet and even before mainstream computer use. Statistics were typed up and filed on paper in archives.
Luckily, the studious work of watch industry historian Pierre-Yves Donzé, Associate Professor of Business History at Osaka University in Japan, helps to shed light on this crucial moment in watchmaking history. In his paper entitled Swiss Made but global: From technology to fashion in the watch industry, 1950-2010, which is scheduled to appear as a chapter in a book entitled Industries and Global Competition: Business Beyond Borders to be published by Routledge next year, Mr Donzé talks of the start of a “decade of upheaval”. In the space of just ten years, the US watch industry, which was producing more watches and clocks by value than Switzerland at the time, would enter a terminal decline.
The Swiss industry was also hit by the “quartz crisis”, with exports dropping from 84.4 million units in 1974 to an annual average of just 31.3 million in 1982-1984. Its workforce almost halved from around 90,000 in 1970 to less than 47,000 in 1980. The country’s billion-dollar watch industry was on the brink of crisis and there are inevitable parallels with the current smart watch craze. Just like today, doom mongers no doubt predicted the imminent demise of the industry and journalists no doubt moaned that their repeated warnings of a crisis had gone unheeded...
And yet here we are, 40 years later, celebrating the anniversary of a company that was launched at the start of this crisis. Moreover, it is a company that has remained independent throughout its history, while others have gone bankrupt or been taken over by luxury groups or Chinese investors. The first Raymond Weil model was called the “Golden Eagle” and had an octagonal case with an integrated strap. Given current trends in the industry, it might have been almost too far ahead of its time. Starting with the Amadeus in 1983 the majority of the brand’s collections have had names that come from the world of music, reflecting a passion that runs throughout the family, from founder Raymond Weil to grandson Elie Bernheim, the current CEO.
The brand’s strong presence in the UK market probably explains why I was more familiar with the name than with the other big names in fine watchmaking before I moved to Switzerland nearly 20 years ago. Its presence in the country has included a partnership with the BRIT awards for the past 11 years, guaranteeing the brand a certain level of exposure. Fittingly, it is through music, as we will discover very soon on WorldTempus, that Raymond Weil will celebrate its 40th anniversary.
