Business, Economics & Law
July 2024
The business of time
A global history of the watch industry
by Pierre-Yves Donzé
The business of time presents a comprehensive history of the global watch industry from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Watch production in the twenty-first century is concentrated in three countries: Switzerland, Japan and China. The industry is dominated by a dozen or so large companies, including the Swatch Group, Richemont, LVMH, Seiko and Fossil. But a hundred years ago the picture was dramatically different. Over the course of a century, Great Britain, France, the United States and Russia saw the manufacture of watches disappear from their territory. At the same time, Hong Kong went from being a subcontractor of watch components to an intermediary between Chinese factories and the world market. Revealing the conditions that drove the spread of watch production around the globe, The business of time explains how multinationals emerged to dominate the industry and highlights how Swiss companies were able to establish themselves as the undisputed leader in luxury watches.
