Omega watches for men and women

Omega brand history

In 1848, at the age of 23, Louis Brandt founded a modest establishment counter which in 1880, after the death of the founder, became a factory established in Bienne. It was in 1894, with the design and production of a completely new movement for the time: the Omega caliber, that the manufacture now run by the sons of Louis (César and Louis-Paul) that the name that would become the Patronymic of the Manufacture will see the light of day.
This remarkable movement owes its success to its ability to reset the hands by pressing the winding stem, an adjustment method that was to become a standard. But the originality of the Omega caliber also lies in its mounting in broken parts which allows the interchangeability of each component of the movement…. A major step towards the Taylorization of the watch industry.

Firmly established among the great names in watchmaking, the First World War forced the Manufacture to undergo a major transformation with the advent of the wristwatch, which gradually shifted the production quantities of watches from pocket towards the new use in force: watches worn on the wrist. A use that will allow this everyday object, generally worn and used by men, to be used by women thanks to the miniaturization of movements and also by the evolution of the distribution of the professional activity of men and women in the West. after the First World War.

t is therefore quite natural that Omega will impose itself in the various professional uses of the first part of the twentieth century with the advent of the automobile, rail and aviation. A pioneer and holder of numerous patents, Omega will produce multiple timepieces such as station clocks, clocks and clocks or multiple time-measuring instruments that will spread the brand in a society that is beginning to globalize.

The crisis that shook the watchmaking world following the financial crisis of 1929 led to the creation of the SSIH (Swiss Society for the Watch Industry) which, with the absorption of Tissot and the movement manufacturer Lémania into the Omega sphere, was to expand the range of what will become one of the most important watchmaking groups of the first half of the twentieth century.

The Second World War enabled Omega to significantly increase its production capacity with the supply of large quantities of military watches for the attention of the Allied armed forces, With Longines, Hamilton, Waltham and Benrus there will be more than a million Pilot, Infantryman or Sailor watches that will be produced for the Second World War. At the end of the conflict, the manufacture will undergo a vast and ambitious development plan in order to meet a demand that will grow exponentially during the 1950s.

It is the arrival and the creation of models that will become part of the timeless heritage of the Manufacture de Bienne. The uses of the modern world and the need for waterproofing quickly imposed themselves. With the Seamaster model, an evolution of the DeVille model, Omega undertook a patent race which would later lead it to produce the Seamaster Ploprof model, a model used by Comex long before the Rolex submariners or sea-dwellers. The Omega Constellation model won over civilian society, which traveled more and more, but it was with its chronographs that Omega won its letters of nobility: in 1957, the Omega Speedmaster chronograph arrived on the market, twelve years before accompanying Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon.

    Omega Flightmaster                   Speedmaster MK II                      Speedmaster Mark 4

n 1970, the second major watchmaking crisis signaled a change of direction. Japanese quartz swept across the world and the brand revisited its emblematic models, such as the arrival of the modern-looking Speedmaster Mark II, which revisited the Moonwatch model with a seventies fairing. This resolutely professional model will be combined with different glasses in order to address the health, sport, industry and outdoor sectors (tachymeter, pulsometer, decimal or rangefinder glasses) But it is on the structural level that the SSIH company managed in 1970 by Pierre Waltz will profoundly evolve throughout the following decade:

With the acquisition of the American watchmaker Hamilton in 1971, and the acquisition of more than fifty blank and component companies, the group will be able to produce more than thirteen million watches annually on different brands. The group becomes the first manufacturer of Swiss watches and the world number 3.

One thousand nine hundred and eighty-five marks another period in the life of the brand with the arrival of Nicolas Hayek and the integration into SMH (Swiss Microelectronics and Watchmaking Society, which later became The Swatch Group) Omega will join within the new group a set of prestigious brands such as Blancpain, Breguet, Longines and Rado and will develop rapidly.

For Omega, the arrival at its head of Jean Claude Biver at the end of the 90s was manifested by the focus on the two emblematic models of the Brand: The Speedmaster with the NASA Apollo limited series which delight collectors and which celebrate and commemorate the American space and lunar odyssey and the Seamaster which will become the exclusive watch of James Bond 007 instead of the Rolex Submariner. This was followed by the relaunch of the Omega Constellation highlighted by Cindy Crawford and the reissue of the models that made the brand famous, such as the Seamaster Plopro or the Speedmaster Mark II equipped with a co-axial movement.

In recent years, Omega, retaining its pioneering spirit, has experimented with a new marketing method: The Speedy-Tuesday, which consists of selling a limited-edition model on the internet for a very brief moment: the Ultraman model, in homage to the Japanese robot of the 1980s. is a particularly successful and highly prized Speedmaster in the world of collecting….