International Watch Company

IWC International Watch Co. AG
legal form	Corporation
founding	1868
Seat	Schaffhausen , Switzerland
management	Chris Grainger-Herr ; ( CEO )
Number of employees	1200
sales	CHF 400 - 500 million ; (2005, NZZ estimate)
Branch	Watch manufacture
Website	www.iwc.com

The IWC International Watch Co. AG is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer . The Schaffhausen- based company has belonged to the Swiss luxury goods group Richemont since 2000 and employs around 1200 people. IWC is the abbreviation for International Watch Company .

Some watch models offer functions such as power reserve display , moon phase , minute repeater , tourbillon and a perpetual calendar .

history

Main building of IWC Schaffhausen

Florentine Ariosto Jones

IWC Schaffhausen. Manufactory Center

The company was founded in 1868 by the American watchmaker and engineer Florentine Ariosto Jones (1841–1916).

In 1856 Jones worked as a watchmaker in Boston . He made the decision to manufacture high-quality watches in Switzerland for the American market. From his point of view, Switzerland was a particularly attractive location because there were qualified watchmakers available and the wage level was below that of the USA. In 1875 the IWC employed 196 people.

In 1874 IWC was converted into a stock corporation. The founding of the company and, above all, the purchase of machines and the construction of a new building for production in 1875 devoured more money than planned, so that Jones resigned as managing director and went back to the USA. Even his successor Frederick F. Seeland (* 1843) did not manage to bring IWC into the black. The economic crisis in Europe and the high import duties in the USA had a negative impact on IWC's business. Zealand left the company in 1879.

After two American managing directors had steered the IWC, the Schaffhausen industrialist Johannes Rauschenbach-Vogel (1815–1881) bought the IWC in 1879. The economic breakthrough came in the following decades under his leadership and later under that of his son Johannes Rauschenbach-Schenk (1856–1905).

He had two daughters, the older one, Emma Rauschenbach (1882–1955), married the psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) in 1903 , who thereby became a partner in the watch factory. The younger daughter, Bertha Margaretha (1883–1932) married the Schaffhausen industrialist Ernst Jakob Homberger (1869–1955) in the same year. Her husband was the director of Georg Fischer AG Industriebetriebe, he bought the company shares of his brother-in-law CG Jung from 1929 and became the sole owner of IWC. From 1955 his son Hans Ernst Homberger took over the sole management of the flourishing company.

While market shares were lost due to the quartz watch boom in the 1970s and 1980s, an economic success followed under Günter Blümlein , as the company specialized again in classic mechanical complications .

For the image campaign (eg: "Almost as complicated as a woman. But on time.") The company received a complaint to the Swiss Unfairness Commission ; and the Zurich advertising agency Wirz won the Swiss EFFIE in 2001 .

Pellaton automatic

A special technical feature is the construction of the automatic elevator by Albert Pellaton with an eccentric and two large pawls. IWC has used this automatic in the series of the "Caliber 85" series. When the watch wearer moves , the semicircular rotor rotates and thus moves a rocker, which was constructed with two ruby wheels and two large pawls. By moving the rocker, the two pawls open the gear train connected to the spring core.

Collections

The Portugieser collection from IWC Schaffhausen

IWC Vintage Collection
Grande Complication
Portuguese
Da Vinci
Aquatimer
engineer
Pilot's watches Classics
Spitfire pilot's watches
Portofino

IWC watch museum

In the in-house watch museum, which opened in Schaffhausen in June 2007 , over 230 exhibits from the IWC collections from over 140 years are on display. The collection ranges from the first IWC pocket watches with the Jones caliber, pocket watches with digital displays , richly decorated tailcoat and ladies' jewelry watches as well as the earliest IWC wristwatches to the watch families of more recent history. The exhibition is complemented by the multimedia presentation of the company's history.

Manufactory Center

In 2018 IWC opened its new manufacturing center in Schaffhausen. The 139 meter long and 62 meter wide, altogether 13,500 square meter building was designed by the architecture office ATP and offers space for around 240 employees. For the new glass building, they were inspired by "car factories".

Film funding

Since 2012 Commends Dubai in connection with the Dubai International Film Festival DIFF the 100,000 US dollars doped IWC Filmmaker Award from the feature-length movies Independent to be financed. Previous winners have been Matt Ruskin, Des Shovel, Jay Dockendorf and Jeff Malmberg.

Since 2016, IWC has been presenting the IWC Filmmaker Bursary Award in cooperation with the BFI on the occasion of the London Film Festival . The award is endowed with £ 50,000 and is intended to support early career directors and screenwriters.

literature

Reinhard Meis : IWC watches. The "Schaffhausers" and their history. Carinthia, Klagenfurt 1985, ISBN 978-3-85378-253-8 .
Hans-F. Tölke, Jürgen King: IWC. International Watch Co. Schaffhausen . Ineichen, Zurich 1986, ISBN 978-3-906500-133 ; 2nd edition ibid 1987, ISBN 3-906500-15-2 .
Manfred Fritz: Grande Complication. The Grande Complication from IWC. Edition Stemmle, Schaffhausen 1991, ISBN 3-7231-0412-6 .
Christian Pfeiffer-Belli, Rüdiger Bucher: The pilot's watches from IWC. Ebner, Ulm 2006, ISBN 978-3-87188-070-4 .
IWC Schaffhausen (Ed.): Engineering time since 1868 - Historical selection. Self-published by IWC, Schaffhausen 2011, ISBN 978-3-9523898-0-5 .
Alan Meyers, Thomas König and David Seyffer: FA Jones - his life, his legacy, his watches. Ebner, Ulm 2013, ISBN 978-3-9523898-8-1
David Seyffer: The company history of IWC Schaffhausen - A Swiss watch manufacturer between innovation and tradition. Athena, Oberhausen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89896-539-2 .