I was happy to organize a private visit for my clients to the otherwise closed-to-public Zenith Watches Manufacture. Together we discovered numerous watch departments, met watchmakers and observed the process of creating Swiss timepieces. It was very interesting to see what exactly in-house movement stands for, to have a look behind just the aesthetics of the watches and to see the level of concentration needed by watchmakers to implement just one tiny part of a whole piece. There are many, many great Garmin watches to consider as well though, some of these look good, if you’re both a fitness fan and a smartwatch enthusiast, you might be familiar with Garmin, which designs a variety of wearables that cater to both the smartwatch and fitness crowds.
Zenith Manufacture in located in the region of Le Locle, the cradle of Swiss watchmaking. It houses 80 professions exercised by its 250 employees and produces around 25-30 000 watches per year.
For more than 150 years, Swiss watchmaker Zenith has been producing precise, reliable and complex timepieces with unusual mechanisms, constantly challenging the existing boundaries of time measurement. It was founded in 1865 when the craft of watchmaking was widespread throughout the area. The founder of Zenith, Georges Favre-Jacot, came up with the revolutionary approach to bring all of the watchmaking professions under one roof. The beautiful red-bricked historic facade of the Manufacture Zenith still bears the initials of its founder. One of the Favre-Jacot’s visions was to maintain timepieces as long as possible so that they can serve for generations to come. That is why even now Zenith is capable of repairing watches with over 150 years of history.
The Zenith manufacture visit allowed us to go through the full production process of a watch, from raw material to the actual final product, to see the link between human ingenuity and technology, and to be inspired by the history of Swiss watchmaking.
