The future of Swiss movements

[southcoast68]

I was just reading through the August edition of International Watch magazine and read an article covering the eventual exit of ETA from the movement supply end of things. The article by Elizabeth Doerr spotlights the company Sellita and thier plans to pick up where ETA leaves off and reports on thier development of 4 movements of thier own. These would be a date model and two different day-date models (26 jewel) as well as a 25 jewel GMT model with 42 hours of power reserve. These movements are reported to be designed around the existing standard ETA sizes, no complications are reportedly planned. A quote from company president Miquel Garcia in the article; "we work to do our job, to continue doing our work" and "I'm not involved in watch politics and wars. I treat all customers equally". Its a nice article with some pictures and exploded diagrams, if you can get access to this magazine, its worth a read.

I'm thinking that Sellita movements may be available through the same channels as ETA's are avaiable now. Don't know how or if Sellita will play in the rep market in the future, but its good to know that for us hobbiests, the supply of good quality swiss movements should continue.

Cheers

[dadog13]

there is already a similar thread with this topic....sellita discussion...

[Watchmeister]

Great to hear. It makes sense that someone would step in to fill the void. And by now any patents that originally existed must be long gone so it should be a relatively simple exercise to copy virtually all of the ETA movements. Oh wait a minute, they already have.