Omega SA is a Swiss luxury watchmaker based in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. Founded by Louis Brandt in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1848, the company formerly operated as Louis Brandt et Fils until incorporating the name Omega in 1903, becoming Louis Brandt et Frère-Omega Watch & Co. In 1984, the company officially changed its name to Omega SA and opened its museum in Biel/Bienne to the public. Omega is a subsidiary of the Swatch Group.
Britain's Royal Flying Corps used Omega watches in 1917 for its combat units, followed by the U.S. Army in 1918, and NASA in 1969 for Apollo 11. The Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch is marketed as the first watch worn on the Moon, becoming one of the watchmaker's most iconic models.
Omega is the current official timekeeper of the Olympics, having first done so in 1932, in addition to being the timekeeper of the America's Cup yacht race. Omega is frequently considered to be a direct competitor of fellow Swiss brand Rolex, and the new models from each brand are often directly compared by many publications and watch enthusiasts.
History
Early history
In 1848, Louis Brandt founded the company that would become Omega in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. He assembled key-wound precision pocket watches from parts supplied by local craftsmen. He sold his watches from Italy to Scandinavia by way of England, his chief market. In 1877, his sons Louis-Paul and César joined him, and the company name was changed to Louis Brandt & Fils. In 1894, his two sons Louis-Paul and César developed their own in-house manufacturing and total production control system that allowed component parts to be interchangeable. Watches developed with these techniques were marketed under the Omega brand of Louis Brandt & Frere. By 1903, the success of the Omega brand led Louis Brandt & Frere to rename their company to the Omega Watch Co.
Re-organization
Louis-Paul and César Brandt both died in 1903, leaving one of Switzerland's largest watch companies — with 240,000 watches produced annually and employing 800 people — in the hands of four young people, the oldest of whom, Paul-Emile Brandt, was not yet 24.Richon, Marco. 2007 Omega: A Journey through Time. The economic difficulties brought on by the First World War led Paul-Emile Brandt to work in 1925 towards the union of Omega and Tissot, then to their merger in 1930 into the group SSIH, Geneva.
Under Brandt's leadership and Joseph Reiser's from 1955, the SSIH Group continued to grow and multiply, absorbing or creating some fifty companies, including Lanco and Lemania, manufacturer of the most famous Omega chronograph movements. By the 1970s, SSIH had become Switzerland's top producer of finished watches and third in the world. Up to this time, Omega outsold Rolex, its main Swiss rival in the luxury watch segment, in the race for "King of Swiss Watch brands", although Rolex sold at a higher price point. Omega tended to be more revolutionary and more professionally focused, while Rolex watches were more ‘evolutionary’ and famous for their mechanical pieces and branding.
While Omega and Rolex had dominated in the pre-quartz era, this changed in the 1970s during the quartz crisis, when Japanese watch manufacturers, such as Seiko and Citizen, rose to dominance due to their use of quartz movements. In response, Rolex continued concentrating on its expensive mechanical chronometers where its expertise lay (though it did have some experimentation in quartz), while Omega tried to compete in the quartz watch market with its own quartz movements.
Recent development
Weakened by the severe monetary crisis and recession of 1975 to 1980, SSIH was bailed out by banks in 1981. During this period, Seiko expressed interest in acquiring Omega, but nothing came of the talks.
Switzerland's other watch making giant Allgemeine Schweizerische Uhrenindustrie AG (ASUAG), supplier of a large range of Swiss movements and watch assemblies, was in economic difficulty. It was the principal manufacturer of Ébauche (unfinished movements) and owner, through their sub-holding company General Watch Co (GWC), of various other Swiss watch brands including Longines, Rado, Certina, Hamilton Watch Company and Mido. After drastic financial restructuring, the R&D departments of ASUAG and SSIH merged production operations at the ETA complex in Granges. The two companies completely merged forming ASUAG-SSIH, a holding company, in 1983.
Two years later, the holding company was taken over by a group of private investors led by Nicolas Hayek. Renamed Société de Microélectronique et d'Horlogerie (SMH), the new group over the next decade proceeded to become one of the top watch producers in the world.According to the DowJones Market Bulletin of January 18, 2008. In 1998 it became The Swatch Group, which now manufactures Omega and other brands such as Blancpain, Swatch, and Breguet.
Omega experienced a resurgence with advertisements that focused on product placement strategies, such as in the James Bond 007 films; the character had previously worn a Rolex Submariner but switched to the Omega Seamaster Diver 300M with GoldenEye (1995), and later an Omega Planet Ocean and Aqua Terra. Omega adopted many elements of Rolex's business model (i.e. premium pricing, tighter controls of dealer pricing, increasing advertising, etc.), which succeeded in increasing Omega's market share and name recognition to become a direct competitor to Rolex.
In 2019, Omega licensed its name and branding to Marcolin for a collection of men's and women's optical frames and sunglasses.
In March 2022, Omega collaborated with sibling company Swatch, both of which are owned by The Swatch Group, to release a budget version of its iconic Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch. The so-called "MoonSwatch", available in 11 colors, is made of bioceramic (a mixture of ceramic and castor oil) and priced at $260 / £207, well below the $5,250 price (as of March 2022) of the least expensive Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch.
As of 2024, Omega's boutique network includes more than 350 stores across the World.
Watch manufacturing
Notable inventions and patents
In 1892, Louis Brandt, the founder of Omega, manufactured the world's first minute repeating wristwatch in collaboration with Audemars Piguet, which provided the minute-repeating movement. The 18K-gold watch is now kept in the Omega Museum in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. In 1947, Omega created the first tourbillon wristwatch calibre in the world with the 30I. Twelve of these movements were made, intended for inclusion in the observatory trials in Geneva, Neuchâtel and Kew-Teddington, and they were known as the Omega Observatory Tourbillons. Unlike conventional Tourbillon movements whose cages rotate once per minute, the 30I's cage rotated one time each seven and a half minutes. In 1949, one of these delivered the best results ever recorded by a wristwatch up to that time. A year later, Omega broke its own record in the Geneva Observatory Trials of 1950. In 1999, after the successful development of Calibre 2500, Omega made history by introducing the first mass-produced watch incorporating the coaxial escapement — invented by English watchmaker George Daniels. Considered by many to be one of the more significant horological advances since the invention of the lever escapement, the coaxial escapement functions with virtually no lubrication, thereby eliminating one of the shortcomings of the traditional lever escapement.See Europa Star technical notes . Through using radial friction instead of sliding friction at the impulse surfaces the coaxial escapement significantly reduces friction, theoretically resulting in longer service intervals and greater accuracy over time. (archived August 7, 2004) On January 24, 2007, Omega unveiled its new Calibres 8500 and 8501, two coaxial (25,200 bph) movements created exclusively from inception by Omega. On January 17, 2013, Omega announced the creation of the world's first movement that is resistant to magnetic fields greater than 1.5 tesla (15,000 Gauss), far exceeding the levels of magnetic resistance achieved by any previous movement - a similar movement was used by Daniel Craig as James Bond, though the official collectors watch was labelled as resistant to 15,007 Gauss in honor of the fictional secret agent's codename. Most anti-magnetic watches utilize a soft iron - Faraday cage which distributes electromagnetism in such a way that it cancels the effect on the movement contained within. This type of anti-magnetic case required de-magnetizing procedures of the case. Omega has instead built a movement of non-ferrous materials eliminating the need for such a cage and providing a far greater resistance to magnetic fields eliminating necessity of additional maintenance. In 2015, they introduced the Master Chronometer Certification, which denotes that along with a COSC (Official Swiss Chronometer Testing Institute) certification, a movement has also passed a series of eight tests set out by METAS (The Federal Institute of Metrology). Master Chronometer watches have a minimum water-resistance rating of (the 2022 Speedmaster '57 is a Master Chronometer with water-resistance), a minimum power reserve rating of 60 hours, an accuracy rating of 0/+5 seconds per day, and are resistant to magnetic fields of 15,000 gauss. The Master Chronometer Certification debuted on the Globemaster but they now offer it across many more of its watch collections.
Observatory trials
Observatory trials focused on the science of Chronometry and the ability to make chronometers measure time precisely. Only Patek Philippe and Omega participated every year in the trials. Omega's performances at these competitions garnered the company a reputation of precision and innovation.
For more than a decade (1958–1969), Omega was the largest manufacturer of COSC chronometers. Omega developed the slogan "Omega – Exact time for life" in 1931 based on its historical performance at the Observatory trials. Omega's early prowess in designing and regulating timing movements was made possible by the company's incorporation of new chronometric innovations.
Notable dates for the Omega precision records: 1894: Creation of the 19 caliber named Omega. The company is renamed Omega from Louis Brandt et Frères in 1903 Omega participates for the first time at observatory trials in Neuenburg, Albert Willemin, Omega's first "regleur de précision", regulated the movement 1919: 1st Prize at observatory trials in Neuenburg with a 21 caliber, this caliber was slightly modified to become the Cal. 47.7 1922: Omega participates for the first time at observatory trials in Kew-Teddington, achieves 3rd place 1925: 1st place at observatory trials in Kew-Teddington with a Cal. 47.7 (95.9 of 100 points ex aequo with Ulysse Nardin), movement regulated by Gottlob Ith 1930: 1st place at observatory trials in Kew-Teddington (96.3 of 100 points ex aequo with Movado), movement regulated by Alfred Jaccard 1931: Omega achieves 1st place in all 6 categories at observatory trials in Geneva, movements, regulated by Alfred Jaccard 1933: A Cal. 47.7 regulated by Alfred Jaccard achieved the precision record at observatory trials at Kew-Teddington, achieved 97.4/100 points 1936: Another Cal. 47.7 regulated by Alfred Jaccard achieved the precision record of 97.8/100 points at Kew-Teddington, record not broken until 1965 1937: 1st place at Kew-Teddington with 97.3 points 1938: 1st place at Kew-Teddington with 97.7 points 1940: 1st place with Cal. 30mm at Kew Teddington, movement regulated by Alfred Jaccard 1945: 1st place with 30mm caliber at the observatory in Geneva, movement regulated by Alfred Jaccard 1948: 1st place at observatory trial in Neuenburg for 30mm caliber 1950: 1st place for tourbillon Cal. 30I at Geneva Trials, regulated by Alfred Jaccard 1951: 1st place at the observatory trials in Geneva 1952: 1st place at the observatory trials in Geneva 1954: New record in Geneva by Gottlob Ith