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