180 YEARS OF

By the end of 2014, five mechanical
movements EXCLUSIVE TO
LONGINES will be in production.
Elegant look:
Indian actress and
Longines ambassador
Aishwarya
Rai-Bachchan
late Swatch Group founder and chairman Nicolas G.
Hayek, Sr., manufacturing was transferred from the individual
brands to ETA S.A. in Grenchen, Switzerland,
which became the production center for the entire
group. Von Känel, then the number two man at
Longines, opposed the move. “I fought it,” he says. He
acknowledges he was wrong. “We are what we are today
thanks to that decision.”
Longines still does not make its own movements.
More and more, however, in a signicant shi, ETA is
producing mechanical movements for Longines that are
not available to any other brand within or outside of the
Swatch Group. By the end of 2014, ve ETA-made movements
exclusive to Longines will be in production, with a
sixth in the pipeline. e development, which requires
heavy investment from Longines, is yet another sign of
its new clout. Says von Känel with a smile, “We are beginning
to be a major factor in this business.”
e policy shi began a few years ago when Longines
wanted a watch with four retrograde hands for its
Watchmaking Tradition family. Nothing like that was
available from ETA. So Longines applied for a special
movement through the Swatch Group’s standard procedures.
To von Känel’s delight, the application was
approved. “It was an important decision,” he says. “It
meant the door was open within the group to have exclusive
Longines movements.” When the door opened,
von Känel and company charged through, nancing the
development of the Calibers L697 and L698, which
power the Longines Master Collection Retrograde
power reserve and moonphase watches respectively.
e base movements were ETA’s A07.L11 and L21. e
retrograde watch was introduced in 2007.
Soon aerwards, the Swatch Group decided that ETA’s
rst ever column-wheel chronograph movement should
be a Longines exclusive, in recognition of the column
wheel’s place in Longines’s history. (“We started making
column-wheel chronograph movements in 1878,” von
Känel says.) e Longines Column-Wheel Chronograph,
containing Caliber L688.2 (ETA A08.231) was
presented in 2009.
Longines’s third exclusive movement, Caliber L707
(A07.L31), arrived in the Longines Master Collection
Retrograde Moon Phases watch of 2011. Longines unveiled
the fourth exclusive movement in its 180 th anniversary
year in the Longines Column-Wheel Single
Push-Piece Chronograph 180 th Anniversary, with all
the functions controlled by the crown.
So far, Longines’s exclusive movements have been restricted
to the top tier of Longines’ mechanical watches.
Says von Känel, “Retrograde and column wheel are prestige
and pleasure. ey are not volume.” But that will
change. e latest Longines-ETA collaboration on exclusive
mechanical movements involves movements for
Longines’s high-volume mechanical models. Today,
Longines is ETA’s top customer for the ETA 2000, a
three-hand ladies’ automatic movement with calendar
that Longines uses, under the designation L595, in its
ladies’ mechanical watches. Longines is also a heavy user
of the ETA 2892 (L619), a men’s version of the threehand
automatic with calendar. Longines will soon unveil
new ETA base movements, one for ladies’ watches, the
other for gents, that will be exclusive to the rm and, over
time, replace the two standard ETA movements that
Longines uses for the bulk of its business. e ladies’
movement, which does not yet have a Longines caliber
designation, could come as early as 2013. e men’s
movement is expected one year later. e shi gives
Longines signicant advantages. One is that it will secure
its supply of ETA movements since it will be the sole user
of the base movements. Another is that, since Longines is
nancing the development of the movement, it can be
sure that the movement is state of the art.
“We will have a more up-to-date and even more reliable
movement, according to today’s technology,” von
Känel says. “Because even in mechanical technology a few
things have changed. And we will have a very competitive
price. So it means that, while always using an ETA movement,
we will have our own exclusive baby.”
LONGINES SPECIAL WatchTime | 13