Mido
Brand History
Mido was founded on November 11, 1918 in Biel, in the heart of Swiss Jura watchmaking, by watchmaker Georges Schaeren. The brand's name comes from the Spanish "yo mido", meaning "I measure": an unusual choice for a Swiss company, conceived as a declared synonym for precision and technical innovation from its very founding. In the early 1920s the manufacture made its name with women's watches in colorfully enameled cases and Art Déco-style men's models, moving comfortably between functionality and the taste of the times.
The motto "the eternity of movement" defines the brand's contemporary identity, a concept that since 2017 Mido has explicitly tied to architecture through the "Inspired by Architecture" project: the dials, cases and communication of its collections evoke monuments that have withstood the test of time, from the Colosseum in Rome to the Great Wall of China to the Guggenheim Museum in New York, as a metaphor for an eternity shared by architecture and precision watchmaking alike.
On the technical side, starting in 1930 Mido developed a crown sealing system based on a natural cork gasket, patented and used from 1934 and officially named "Aquadura" only in 1959: one of the first solutions for ensuring case water resistance without having to open it from the back. Having joined the ASUAG group in the 1970s, Mido is today a Swatch Group brand, headquartered in Le Locle, positioned in the accessible but technically well-equipped tier of Swiss watchmaking.
