7 stores · curated ORBIS register
This plate collects watchmakers founded between 1900 and 1945, and Switzerland supplies most of the names. Rolex dates from 1905 in Geneva and is listed here for the Daytona and the Submariner. Tudor, its sibling since 1926, makes the Black Bay and the Pelagos as tool watches at a lower price. Mido Watches of Le Locle has worked since 1918 and now belongs to the Swatch Group, with the Ocean Star divers as its signature. Germany answers from Pforzheim, where Laco began in 1925 as Lacher and Co. and where Stowa settled in 1935 after Walter Storz founded it in Hornberg in 1927. Both were among the five makers of the B-Uhr navigation watch for pilots from 1939, and both still make Flieger reissues. Two shops round out the plate rather than brands. Kirchhofer in Interlaken has sold Swiss watches since Fritz Kirchhofer opened in 1944, and Gargiulo Inlaid in Sorrento has made marquetry boxes and watches by hand since 1936.
Sorrento / Italy
Gargiulo Inlaid is a three-generation Sorrento marquetry workshop founded in 1936, still hand-producing inlaid boxes, trays, and watches from its small shop on Via Fuoro. The family sells directly from the workshop and takes custom orders for wedding favors and bomboniere.
Best for Hand-inlaid marquetry boxes, trays, and watches from a three-generation Sorrento workshop
Interlaken, Switzerland
Fritz Kirchhofer opened the first Kirchhofer watch shop in Interlaken in 1944, and the business passed to his children in 1982 while keeping its base between the Aare and the Jungfrau. It now represents more than 60 Swiss watch brands from its Interlaken, Grindelwald and Jungfraujoch stores, still run as one family company rather than a franchise network.
Best for Swiss watches and fine jewelry
Germany
German watchmaker founded 1925 in Pforzheim as Lacher and Co.; one of five manufacturers selected to produce Luftwaffe B-Uhr navigation pilot watches, and still makes pilot-watch reissues today.
Best for Original B-Uhr, pilot; Original B-Uhr Flieger; Navy diver Cuxhaven
Laco was founded in 1925 in Pforzheim, Germany, by Frieda Lacher and Ludwig Hummel under the name Lacher and Co. - the shortened 'Laco' derives from the founders' surnames. The company's defining historical chapter came during the Second World War, when it was one of only five German watchmakers selected to produce the Beobachtungsuhr, or B-Uhr, the oversized navigation pilot watch used by Luftwaffe aircrews. After a period of restructuring, Laco refocused specifically on pilot-watch production, and today makes modern reissues and updated versions of its historic B-Uhr models. It remains headquartered in Pforzheim, a town with a long watch- and jewelry-making tradition.
Le Locle
Swiss watch brand since 1918, now part of the Swatch Group. Known for the Ocean Star dive watches and Commander collection. Exceptional value for Swiss automatic movements.
Best for Known for the Ocean Star dive watches and Commander collection
Geneva / Switzerland / Online
The crown — Swiss watchmaking icon since 1905. Daytona, Submariner, GMT-Master, and the most recognized luxury brand on earth. Status, precision, and timeless design.
Best for Daytona, Submariner, and the ultimate status watch
No object on earth communicates faster. A Rolex crosses a room, a border, a language barrier in under a second — the crown, the case, the bracelet, understood everywhere from Geneva to places that have never seen a boutique. Since 1905 the house has built toward exactly this: not the most complicated watch, but the most legible one, precision and status fused into a single unmistakable signal.
The catalogue is a map of the twentieth century's ambitions, each reference born for a frontier and domesticated into an icon. The Submariner went to the deep with divers and surfaced on every wrist that admires capability. The GMT-Master was built for the jet age's pilots, its two time zones a souvenir of when crossing the Atlantic was glamorous. The Daytona took its name from a racetrack and became the most coveted chronograph ever made — the watch whose waiting lists have waiting lists.
Rolex's genius is the refusal to age. The designs evolve by millimeters per decade; a Submariner from decades ago is recognizably the sibling of this year's. That continuity is the product beneath the product: buy one and you buy into an object whose meaning the house has spent a century keeping stable — a currency, in steel and gold, whose exchange rate never crashes. There are more complicated watches, more exclusive ones, more avant-garde ones. There is no more fluent one. A Rolex says exactly one thing, in every language at once, and has never once been misunderstood.
Germany
German watchmaker founded 1927 in Hornberg by Walter Storz (the name is his own initials); moved to Pforzheim in 1935, became one of only five makers of Luftwaffe B-Uhr pilot watches from 1939, and returned to Pforzheim as HQ in 2023.
Best for B-Uhr pilot watches, Flieger; Antea Bauhaus minimalist; Flieger Type A Type B
Stowa was founded in 1927 in Hornberg, in Germany's Kinzigtal valley, by Walter Storz — the brand name is formed from his own initials, STOrz WAlter. The company relocated to Pforzheim in 1935 and, in 1937, adopted the pared-back Bauhaus-influenced design language that still defines its watches. From 1939, Stowa became one of only five manufacturers — alongside A. Lange & Söhne, Laco, Wempe and IWC — authorized to build the Beobachtungsuhr (B-Uhr), the large 55mm navigation watch issued to Luftwaffe pilots. The Pforzheim facility on Bismarckstrasse was destroyed during the bombing of the city on 23 February 1945, and production moved to Rheinfelden, where a new headquarters was built in 1951 and expanded in 1954 and 1966. Stowa's modern lineup centers on its Flieger collection, a continuation of the historic B-Uhr design, alongside Bauhaus-styled pieces such as the Antea. The company came under the Tempus Arte group in July 2021, and in 2023 returned its operations to Pforzheim — the city where it spent most of its history — with a manufacturing site and small company museum established in nearby Engelsbrand in 2009.
Geneva / Switzerland / Online
Rolex's sibling since 1926 — the Black Bay and Pelagos offer Rolex quality at half the price. The watch enthusiast's choice for tool-watch excellence.
Best for Black Bay and accessible Rolex-quality tool watches
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