Rolex SA is a Swiss manufacturer of high-quality, luxury wristwatches. Rolex watches are popularly regarded as status symbols and BusinessWeek magazine ranks Rolex #71 on its 2007 annual list of the 100 most valuable global brands. Rolex is also the largest single luxury watch brand, producing about 2,000 watches per day, with estimated revenues of around US$3 billion (2003 figures).

The first self-winding Rolex wristwatch was offered to the public in 1931, preceded to the market by Harwood which patented the design in 1923 and produced the first self-winding watch in 1928, powered by an internal mechanism that used the movement of the wearer's arm. This not only made watch-winding unnecessary, but kept the power from the mainspring more consistent resulting in more reliable time keeping. Rolex participated in the development of the original quartz watch movements.

Although Rolex has made very few quartz models for its Oyster line, the company's engineers were instrumental in design and implementation of the technology during the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1968, Rolex collaborated with a consortium of 16 Swiss watch manufacturers to develop the Beta 21 quartz movement used in their Rolex Quartz Date 5100. Within about five years of research, design, and development, Rolex created the "clean-slate" 5035/5055 movement that would eventually power the Rolex Oysterquartz.

It's in their workshops in La Chaux de Fonds in Switzerland at the very heart of Swiss watch-making that Chanel produces their watches. The creative spark is transformed into innovative products, thanks to the latest digital machines and tools, combined with traditional watch-making know-how. This ensures the totality of the operations, from assembling the watchcases and the bracelets to the casing of the movements produced by specialized Swiss companies.

The forerunner of Omega was founded at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland in 1848 by 23-year-old Louis Brandt, who 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.

After Louis Brandt's death in 1879, his two sons Louis-Paul and César, troubled by irregular deliveries of questionable quality, abandoned the unsatisfactory assembly workshop system in favour of in-house manufacturing and total production control.

Longines is a Swiss luxury watchmaker based in Saint-Imier, Switzerland. The company was originally founded by Auguste Agassiz in 1832 and it currently holds the oldest registered logo for a watch company (a winged hourglass). Longines is currently owned by the Swatch Group.

Longines is known for its 'Aviators' watches. One director of Longines was a friend of Charles Lindbergh; after his transatlantic flight, Lindbergh designed a pilot watch to help with air navigation. The watch was built to his specifications, and is still produced today.

Famous aviators, explorers and pioneers have consulted Longines. Longines provided timers used at the first modern day Olympics in 1892. In 1899, Longines went to the North Pole with Arctic Louis Amédée de Savoie. It was the first to use automatic timekeeping for the Federal Gymnastics, at Basel in 1912. Today, Longines remains a widely recognized name in sport watches and chronographs.

The first in-house Longines movement was created in 1867. Francillon was the first watchmaker to introduce the winding crown. (All watches before that were wound with a key.) The same year Ernest Francillon returned from the World's Fair in Paris with a bronze medal for this watch. From the 1870s on, Longines’ industrial options proved judicious and the company grew steadily until the first third of the 20th century. The buildings themselves regularly had to be adapted to the needs of a flourishing enterprise which, by 1911, employed over 1,100 people and sold its timepieces worldwide.