Tissot
Brand history
Tissot was born in 1853 in Le Locle, in the heart of the Swiss Jura Arc, from the partnership between Charles-Félicien Tissot, a craftsman specialising in making watch cases, and his son Charles-Émile Tissot, a watchmaker: the two turned part of their home into a small workshop and, according to the brand's historical sources, in their very first year of business they delivered between 1,100 and 1,200 watch cases to the Le Locle region. The commercial breakthrough came in 1858, when Charles-Émile moved to Russia to sell the manufacture's "savonnette" pocket watches: for decades the Russian Empire became the company's main export market, so much so that in 1885 another family member, Charles Tissot, settled in Moscow to run what was by then a well-established branch.
In the 20th century Tissot went through the same transformations that reshaped the entire Swiss watch industry: after the financial crisis of 1929 the brand merged with Omega to form the Société Suisse pour l'Industrie Horlogère (SSIH). It was in these decades that Tissot claimed some of its most frequently cited technical firsts — including, in 1930, what the brand describes as the first antimagnetic wristwatch in history, a claim repeated by several industry sources but which some historical accounts indicate is not always backed by independent documentary evidence — along with the 1953 Navigator, presented as the first mass-produced watch able to show 24 time zones, and the 1971 Idea 2001/Astrolon, the first mechanical watch with a plastic case and components.
Subsequent industry mergers (SSIH-ASUAG in 1983, then SMH between 1983 and 1985) finally led, in 1998, to the creation of the Swatch Group, of which Tissot has since been one of the mid-range brands. In 1999 the brand presented the T-Touch, a watch with a touch-sensitive sapphire crystal that Tissot claims as the first multifunction tactile watch in history, confirming a commitment to technical innovation applied to traditionally minded watchmaking that the brand still sums up today in its motto "Innovators by Tradition".
