Festina
| FESTINA-LOTUS SA
|
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|---|---|
 |
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| legal form | Sociedad Anónima |
| founding | 1980 |
| Seat | Madrid , Spain |
| management | Miguel Rodríguez |
| Number of employees | 2,000 (2015) |
| sales | 157 million euros (2004) |
| Branch | Watch manufacturer |
| Website | www.festinagroup.com |
The Festina Group is a Spain- based watch manufacturer with headquarters in Madrid and a logistics center in Barcelona . The Festina brand was founded in Switzerland in 1902 . The company with 2,000 employees worldwide sells around 5 million watches annually.
history
Festina
The history of the watch manufacturer Festina goes back to 1902. This year, for the first time, the motto “Festina Lente” was written on the face of a watch at a Swiss watch manufacturer in La Chaux-de-Fonds . This motto also became the manufacturer's brand name.
In 1935, the founding family handed over the Festina to the entrepreneur Willy Burkhard von Wilhelm, who managed the company until 1975 before it was taken over by George Uhlmann.
Festina Group
In 1980, the founding of the Lotus watch brand by the Spaniard Miguel Rodríguez laid the cornerstone of today's Festina Group. Rodríguez took over the Festina brand in 1984 and the Festina-Lotus Group was created. In 1989 the Swiss luxury brand Jaguar , founded in 1938, and in 2002 the Swiss watch brand Candino were taken over.
In 1996, Festina introduced watches with a combination of a quartz movement and a mechanical component used to generate electricity under the name Mecaquartz . A similar concept had previously been pursued by the Japanese watch manufacturer Seiko under the name Kinetic System .
The watch manufacturer entered the professional cycling business in 1988 and founded the Festina cycling team , which won the Tour de France team championship in 1994 . In 1998, however, there was a scandal when the cycling team was excluded from the tour due to positive doping tests. In the same year Festina became the official timekeeper of the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España . In 2015 the company was represented in 91 countries. According to its own statements, Festina was one of the ten most successful watch brands in Germany in 2004.
In the 2005/06 season, the watch manufacturer was the main sponsor of the German soccer club TSV 1860 Munich .
Brands
In addition to two jewelry brands ( Lotus Style and Lotus Silver ), the Festina Group includes the following watch brands:
- Festina
- Candino
- lotus
- jaguar
- Calypso
- Kronaby
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b http://www.festinagroup.com/de/the-group/
- ↑ http://www.sponsoringextra.ch/File/archiv/Interviews_Unternehmen/Festina-06-2005.pdf
- ↑ Presentation of the company history on the company website , accessed on January 11, 2019
- ↑ Information on the history of Festina , accessed on January 11, 2019