Cyma

Cyma's roots go back to 1862, when brothers Théodore and Joseph Schwob founded Schwob Frères in La Chaux-de-Fonds, an "établisseur" firm that assembled and sold watches by buying movements, cases and dials from third parties. In 1895 the two Schwob brothers' family companies took part in the capital of the newly founded Tavannes Watch Co., led by engineer and entrepreneur Henri-Frédéric Sandoz, a prolific inventor with dozens of patents to his name. It is from this industrial interweaving of Schwob Frères and Tavannes that Cyma was born, a brand officially registered in 1903 and destined, over time, to become better known than the two houses that had given rise to it.

In the early decades of the twentieth century Cyma grew rapidly, developing its own movement production — a "manufacture" in the full sense of the term, not a mere assembler — and building, from the 1910s onward, a reputation for rugged waterproof watches. In the 1920s and 1930s the company claimed to be the largest watchmaker in Switzerland. It was during this period of industrial strength that, during the Second World War, the British Ministry of Defence chose Cyma among the twelve Swiss manufacturers tasked with supplying field watches to the "W.W.W." (Watch, Wrist, Waterproof) specification — the group collectors would, many decades later, nickname the "Dirty Dozen".

In the postwar years Cyma introduced its first automatic movements (1943) and developed the Cymaflex, its own patented shock-resistant system, which became the distinguishing trait of much of its production in the 1950s and 1960s. In-house production ceased in 1966, however; the brand changed hands several times — first to Chronos Holding and the Synchron group, then through further corporate changes — before relocating to Le Locle, where Cyma continues to exist today as an independent brand, with a catalogue that looks above all to its own historical heritage.