Can This Quartz Movement Save the American Watch Industry?

The goal here is not just to make it easier for North American watch brands to compete in a global market, but to produce a competitive new movement product that could one day potentially disrupt the Swiss and Asian stranglehold on the market and establish a proud new home for the American watchmaker Much has already been written about the demise of large-scale manufacturing in the American watch industry, but if you look closely enough, there's a clear groundswell of activity around smaller U.S.-based brands looking to challenge the industry's currently held norms in the not-so-distant future What we witnessed back in early February might not yet be on a scale large enough to be considered a shot across ETA or Ronda's bow, but it is certainly a small spark that could very well catch fire if enough American watch companies sign on.

The convenience for U.S.-based watch manufacturers is certainly a big draw for brands like Abingdon, which currently relies on turnkey movement solutions on the other side of the world, where long lead times, confusing laws, taxes, and multiple languages all compound the challenge of trying to innovate and bring new products to market It's no secret that movement manufacturing doesn't come quickly or inexpensively, so to get things off the ground, the brunt of the FTS facility intellectual capital comes from its technology partner, Titan Co If the name doesn't immediately sound familiar, it probably should: Titan is India's largest watchmaker, and a key player in the Tata Group, a massive Indian brand conglomerate with $100 billion in annual revenue.

As a fully vertically integrated manufacturer with over 30 years developing its own watches, Titan now makes its own movements, produces its own steel, has its own gold foundries, and owns scores of manufacturing and design patents - dozens of which belong to watch cases and movements, and are already being supplied for other brands around the watch world, including the Swiss Even with that level of influence, outside of FTS, Titan currently has no retail or manufacturing presence in the U.S for watches, so helping kickstart the infrastructure behind a movement manufacture in the United States feels like a win for both American industry and Titan's own global watch-growth strategy. Source