Independence and innovation—admirable attributes that may be challenging to attain by virtue of the two being seemingly contradictory.
That’s because for many, innovation—especially on a global scale—may require cooperation and collaboration with one’s peers or, on occasion, one’s competitors.
But not for Swiss watchmaker, Oris.
This year, Oris celebrates 120 years of independence, innovation and going its own way. Oris remains one of the few independently owned and operated Swiss watch companies, and is the only one based in the Waldenburg Valley, 25 kilometers south of Basel in Switzerland’s Swiss- German-speaking north.
Oris’s location has shaped the company these past 120 years. For 12 decades, Oris has been defined by its mechanical innovations, delivering inspired timepieces while remaining ever more relevant and responsive to the changing needs of our planet.
Solid foundations—ahead of its time
Oris was founded in Hölstein on 1 June 1904, when Paul Cattin and Georges Christian arrived in the Waldenburg Valley to establish a new kind of watch company. The enterprising, forward-thinking of watchmakers had a simple vision: to ally the traditions of mechanical watchmaking and the most advanced industrial processes of the time to produce high-quality watches that made sense.
Theirs would also be a company of people. Oris pioneered employee welfare and diversity in the workplace, building houses for workers and their families, laying on transport for those who lived in Basel to the northand running canteens to make sure everyone was happy and healthy. The workshops were staffed by men and women, putting Oris decades ahead of its time.
Hölstein would remain Oris’s home. The company was named after a nearby brook, the first of the many decisions that would tie Oris to nature and to the beauty of the valley that surrounded it. In time, the original factory was replaced, but Oris would remain on the same site, always deepening its roots in the village and the community around it. Over the course of 120 years, Oris and Hölstein have sustained each other.
The joy of mechanics
From the outset, Cattin and Christian emphasized the joy of mechanics. Theirs would be watches that kept time accurately and performed their function reliably, but also that brough joy to their owners.
Through the decades, this powerful ethos would drive the company forward to countless milestones. By the 1960s, Oris was one of the largest watch companies in Switzerland. Oris designed movements, produced its own tools and employed more than a thousand people, bringing global attention to Hölstein and properity to its residents. By the end of the 1970s, Oris had developed and produced 279 unique calibres and enjoyed a worldwide reputation for high-quality, beautifully designed mechanical watches.
Timely design
Housing these precision movements were watches designed to serve and excite their owners, even those who placed high demands on them. Oris began making pilot’s watches in the early 1910s at the dawn of aviation and, come the Second World War, was recognized as the producer of preeminent tool watches that could withstand the intensity of military action. With its oversized crown, pointer date function and lucid dial design, the Big Crown of 1938 would become an industry benchmark, landing on the wrists of brave aviators in search of reliable, practical, highly legible timekeeping instruments as they took to the skies. More than 85 years later, the Big Crown is still in production—Oris’s signature design and an industy icon.
In the same way, Oris would come to develop countless dive watches, beginning in the 1960s as the popularization of recreational scuba-diving took hold. These hard-wearing designs would prove a testbed for a series of innovations that made dive watches safer, more reliable and more desirable to the people who wore them. Patents were awarded to Oris for inventions such as the bezel-locking Rotation Safety System and various devices that made straps and bracelets more easily adjustable and more secure on the wrist.
A mechanical renaissance
The 1980s brought a season of great change to the Swiss watch industry as a new generation of entrepreneurs took hold of Switzerland’s greatest dial names. Oris’s story was reborn in 1982 when two its employees, Dr Rolf Portmann and Ulrich W. Herzog, led a management buyout of the company. Together, the duo would take Oris into a new mechanical age, placing their faith in the joy of mechanics at the same time when many abandoned it in favor of electronics.
This would prove hugely prescient as the Swiss watch industry was revitalized heading into the 1990s, when watch buyers began looking for tangible products that surpassed the sort of transient consumerism embodied by mass-produced quartz watches. Oris, fully independent and fully mechanical, would be at the heart of the Swiss mechanical watchmaking renaissance that continued to accelerate into the 21st century.
Come the 2010s, and the Oris Movement Creation Programmewas reborn with the release of the Calibre 100 Series for the company’s 110th anniversary. This in-house developed family of calibres featured a 10-day power reserve and a non-linear power reserve indicator, a unique pairing of complications that reestablished Oris as a creative inventor of practical yet elegant mechanical movements that brought joy to watchbuyers.
The story of modern watchmaking
Today, Oris is enjoying one of the most productive seasons in its 120-year history, led by a collection of entirely mechanical watches (we don’t make quartz watches). Out in front, the Aquis toolwatch, the Divers Sixty-Five retro sports watch, the avant garde ProPilot X, and the evergreen Big Crown. Each a beautiful mechanical watch, designed according to the traditions of Swiss mechanical watchmaking and produced using the most advanced industrial processes of our time.
As important as these designs is the continuing momentum in the Oris Movement Creation Programme, which most recently produced the Calibre 400 Series. This game-changing series of movements offers five-day power reserves, elevated levels of anti-magnetism, better-than-chronometer accuracy, 10-year recommended service intervals and 10-year warranties. They are innovative movements born of Oris’s independence.
Through these watches and their stories, we have developed a global network of Oris people. Some are ambassadors or partners, while others are simply fans. The Oris Social Club network now counts almost 50 chapters in cities across the globe and more than 17,000 members. These are people who love watches, but more, they are people doing life together and looking out for the world around them as they bring ‘Change for the Better.’
Change for the Better
Behind Oris’s contemporary campaign slogan is a 120-year-old story. Their founders weren’t just talented watchmakers and businessmen, they were people who cared about their local community and environment. The fabric of the company is built on this.
Some years ago, Oris formalized this attitude under the banner ‘Change for the Better,’ a phrase that describes Oris’s global program of activities to conserve and protect our planet, cleanup the world’s water, and build happy and healthy communities. It brings the company great joy to work alongside some of the world’s most pioneering community-focused businesses and environmental organizations. From the New York Yankees and France’s Ligue de Football Professionnel, to social and environmental advocates such as Yusra Mardini and Anna von Boetticher, Oris is proud to stand with some of today’s most powerful agents of change.
In 2021, Oris was independently awarded climate neutral status by ClimatePartner following years of research and change. This included an emissions off-setting program, and more importantly, it also kickstarted a new schedule of carbon-reduction initiatives. As part of the Oris Emissions Reduction Programme, the company has pledged to reduce its total global carbon emissions by 10 percent a year for three years, starting in 2022. The self-imposed conditions of this pledge are extremely demanding, but Oris is making great progress, epitomized by the introduction of its new radically sustainable packaging this year.
At Oris, sustainability is a company-wide attitude. With its ambassadors, partners and the global community, Oris operates under one mantra: ‘Together we can bring Change for the Better.’
Charting a path to an independent, innovative future
On its 120th anniversary, Oris is fortunate to be able to look back on the many successes and to have a well established purpose. This gives the company a solid platform for the future, as well as the confidence to continue going its own way to chase ideas that it believes are right for its customers, for the planet and for the Oris legacy inherited from generations of visionary leaders.
