Laco

Laco was founded in 1925 in Pforzheim, Germany, under the original name Lacher & Co., on the initiative of Frieda Lacher and Ludwig Hummel: the brand's current name is in fact an acronym of that first trade name. Pforzheim was at the time a key center of the German watchmaking and jewelry industry, and in this context the company gradually established itself as a maker of complete watches, after an initial phase in which the two partners split their respective business ventures.

During the 1940s Laco was one of five suppliers tasked by the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (the German air ministry) with producing the Beobachtungsuhren, the observation watches intended for Luftwaffe navigators, alongside IWC, Stowa, Wempe and A. Lange & Söhne. These instruments, built to strict military specifications, had to guarantee high reading precision and reliability under extreme operating conditions, and it is from this production that the type A and type B dial layouts still associated today with the "Flieger" aesthetic originate.

After the Pforzheim plant was destroyed in Allied bombing, operations resumed in 1949 with support from the Marshall Plan, and in the following years the company went through several changes of ownership, including acquisition by Timex in 1959 and sale to Ebauches S.A. in 1965, until 1988, when Horst Günther took over the rights to the brand and logo, beginning the phase that brought Laco back to focus mainly on its pilot-watch heritage.