How IWC, the dark horse of Swiss watches, plans to take on Rolex

It’s shaping up to be a busy 2018 for watchmaker IWC, not least because the Swiss brand turns 150 this year A raft of special editions are imminent, as well as a lot of talk about the Schaffhausen-based company’s storied history: how it was the first in Switzerland to industrialise the production of mechanical timepieces; and how it broke new ground with the use of titanium in its designs But Christoph Grainger-Herr – who, after a decade at the company became CEO last year – is concentrating on the future.

Indeed, 2018 will see the opening in Schaffhausen of a new 13,000-square-metre production facility, one of the few in which visitors will be able to see, under one roof, watches make their journey from a block of raw metal to the finished product. “IWC defines itself as the engineers of the Swiss-watch industry, as opposed to the more artisinal approach that . Source