Swiss Made is not a compliment a brand pays itself. It is a legal term, and for a quartz watch it means four specific things at once: the movement is Swiss, the movement is cased up in Switzerland, the final inspection happens in Switzerland, and at least 60 percent of the manufacturing cost is incurred in Switzerland.
That last number is the one most people have never heard of. It came into force in January 2017 and it is the reason the label still means something.
Why quartz, and why we say so
The Severius and the Meryem run on a Swiss Ronda quartz movement. We are not going to bury that in the small print, because the movement is the reason the watch looks the way it does.
The Severius case is five millimetres tall. An automatic movement of comparable quality would have made it roughly twice that, and the watch would have sat on the wrist like a different object. We wanted a dial you read, not a rotor you show people. Ronda has been building movements in Switzerland since 1946, and its calibres keep time to a few seconds a month and survive being knocked against a door frame.
The Athro is the other answer. It carries the ETA Valjoux 7750, the automatic chronograph calibre in production since 1974 and found inside a long list of watches costing considerably more than ours. Eleven millimetres of case, 25 jewels, a 44 hour power reserve. Two different ideas, honestly labelled, at two different prices.
If a brand hides which movement is in which watch, ask why.
What we do not claim
We do not manufacture movements. Almost nobody does. We design the watch, we specify the components, and we have it built to that specification in Switzerland. Calling that in-house manufacturing would be a lie, and the people we most want as customers would spot it immediately.
Want the detail?
If you want to know exactly which calibre is in your watch, where the dial is printed or where the final inspection happens, write to info@acm-swiss.com and you get a straight answer.
