While Breitling sits near the top of the luxury watch landscape these days, consistently ranking among the top ten in market share among Swiss brands, that wasn’t the case 50 years ago.
In the midst of the 1970s – 1980s period now known as the Quartz Crisis, cheap, quartz-powered watches from Japan decimated the Swiss watch industry, driving countless brands out of business. Many big names fell on hard times and were forced to find new ownership in order to survive.
One such brand was Breitling, which was purchased by fellow Swiss brand Sicura in 1979. As an early adopter of quartz technology, Sicura, which was founded in 1939, was able to weather the Japanese storm better than most.
Still, Breitling was a far bigger name, so after Sicura moved Breitling’s operation under its own roof, the brand began phasing out its own watches, though they remained in production through the 1980s. Finally, in 1993, the Sicura name went away for good, with the company renaming itself Breitling after its most famous acquisition.
Now, more than 30 years later, Sicura is back with a new owner and its first new watch collection in decades.
