Timex Group History: Founding, Timeline, and Milestones - Zippia (2024)

Waterbury Clock Company was legally incorporated on March 27, 1857 as an independent business with $60,000 in capital.

The company itself garnered a decent level of success and by 1877 began a sister brand—the Waterbury Watch Co.. Waterbury Watch Co. was where Waterbury began to build steam with watch manufacturing.

In 1877, a new prototype was introduced to Benedict and Burnham for an inexpensive pocket watch made of 58 parts, mostly punched sheet brass.

Finding an inexpensive way to bring their brassworks into pocket watches, the first Timex predecessor was put into full production by 1878 (boasting 200 built a day). Within one decade, Waterbury Watch Co. was the largest volume producer of watches in the world.

They immediately set aside an unused portion of their machine shop and began producing the Long Wind at a rate of 200 per day by 1878.

The department quickly outgrew its space in the plant, so Benedict & Burnham incorporated Waterbury Clock's sister company Waterbury Watch Company in 1880 with a capital of $400,000 to manufacture and sell inexpensive watches and other timepieces.

In 1887, WCC started doing intensive research and development in order to expand its product range.

In 1887, they introduced the large Jumbo pocket watch, invented by Archibald Bannatyne and named after the famous P. T. Barnum elephant.

Waterbury Watch started out very successfully in its early days, employing hundreds of women for their "slender fingers" and "delicate manipulation", and it became the largest-volume producer of watches in the world by 1888.

In 1896, Ingersoll introduced the Ingersoll Yankee, a dollar pocket watch supplied by Waterbury Clock Company.

The company was finally reorganized as the New England Watch Company in 1898, as its London sales office was placed into liquidation.

So, by 1912, Ingersoll purchased the Waterbury watch manufacturing plant from the Waterbury Clock Co..

Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. bought the Waterbury plant and began manufacturing Ingersoll Watches there in 1914.

In 1922, Waterbury Clock Company purchased the Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. company for $1.5 million.

They reached a license agreement with Walt Disney in 1930 to produce the famous Mickey Mouse watches and clocks under the Ingersoll brand name.

Launched during the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, the iconic watch became Waterbury Clock Company’s first multi-million-dollar product line.

They were also a best-selling item from the 1933 Sears Christmas catalog.

Olsen Shipping Co., and he fled Norway in 1940 together with Joakim Lehmkuhl and their families because of the Nazi invasion.

Olsen and Lehmkuhl purchased controlling interest in Waterbury Clock Company in 1941, and Olsen became chairman.

They built a new concrete plant in nearby Middlebury, Connecticut in 88 days in 1942 for the high-volume production of precision timers.

In August 1943, the Under-Secretary of War awarded the Waterbury Clock Company the Army-Navy "E" Award for excellence for their "Anglo-American fuse", and shareholders voted the following December to rename the company United States Time Corporation.

Edwin H. Land, co-founder of Polaroid Corporation, contacted United States Time Corporation in 1948 in search of a manufacturer for his cameras.

The first Timex watches rolled off the assembly line in 1949 and soon became known for their dependability.

However, after the Korean War ended in 1953, defense needs declined sharply, and watchmakers started targeting the consumer market again.

AG in Pforzheim, Germany (the Laco brand) on February 1, 1959, in order to acquire the electric watch technology which that company had developed.

By 1961, sales were up to $71 million, with after tax profits of $2.9 million.

By 1962, the Timex watch accounted for one in every three watch sales in the United States.

By 1962, the Timex brand held the number one market share position in the United States, where one out of every three watches sold was a Timex.

Timex sold Durowe to the Swiss movement manufacturer ETA SA on September 1, 1965.

United States Time Corporation was renamed Timex Corporation on July 1, 1969.

By 1970 Timex had record profits of $27 million on sales of $200 million.

Timex began producing digital watches in 1972, but it had not moved as fast as its competition.

Lehmkuhl had reportedly become increasingly eccentric and difficult to work with, and in 1973 Olsen's son Fred had the 78-year-old founder and chairperson removed from office.

In 1974 the company's net income fell by one-third to $8.7 million on sales of $348 million.

By 1976 digital watch prices had fallen into the price range of the company's mechanical watches, and Timex began losing market share.

A price war ensued, and by 1977 Texas Instruments had slashed the price of one of its most popular watches to $10.

Timex lost $4.7 million on sales of $600 million in 1979.

In 1980 Commodore Computers explored the possibility of a merger or other working relationship with Timex, but Olsen declined.

By 1980 Timex ended up having to pare down to primarily manufacturing watches—due to market demand.

Created by British inventor Clive Sinclair, the Timex computer was brought out at the end of 1982 and quickly sold 500,000 units.

In 1983 Timex brought its first home health care products to market.

Watches still accounted for 90 percent of Timex's business in 1983.

In the spring of 1983 the company launched a $20 million television advertising campaign focusing on its new technological sophistication and style.

They faced declining sales amid a price war with Commodore Business Machines in 1984 and decided not to compete in that market any longer.

The resulting Ironman Triathalon became the USA’s best-selling watch in less than a year after its 1986 launch.

Sales for 1988 topped $500 million, and Timex was still the largest company in the $1.5 billion United States watch market, despite the fact that all of its watches were priced at under $75.

In 1990, with its market share under continual pressure, Timex spent $7 million on a unique two-month print ad campaign.

Sales for 1992 totaled $400 million, giving Timex one-third of the United States watch market.

Timex introduced the Indiglo night light during the Christmas shopping season in 1992.

Indiglo made headlines as a result of the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing, in which an office worker wearing a Timex with an Indiglo night light used its light to guide a group of evacuees down 40 dark flights of stairs.

In 1994, Timex acquired the Nautica Watches license and introduced Timex Data Link.

Placing ahead of Nike and Levis, Timex ranked second in Fairchild Publications as the overall favorite fashion brand in the country in 1995.

In 1995, for example, it introduced the Timex Data Link, a watch employing wireless transfer technology so that watch and personal computer could communicate.

The company also created a subsidiary dedicated to the design and marketing of its Nautica watch in 1996.

While the Ironman watch was geared toward triathlon participants, the watch's memory feature and rugged styling proved so popular that Timex was soon able to claim that it was the best-selling watch in the United States through 1997, if not the leader among watch sales worldwide.

Timex also began manufacturing a watch presented as an entry in the company's Bright Idea Contest in 1997.

They introduced the Timex Expedition brand in 1997, designed for rugged outdoor sports.

Timex and Motorola introduced Beepwear in 1998, a watch with an integrated pager.

In 2000, Timex Corporation purchased the French fashion watch brand Opex.

Under its Callanen subsidiary, Timex acquired the watch license for urban fashion designer Marc Eckō in 2002.

A few months later, Timex Group USA purchased the Marc Eckō watch trademark which it had licensed since 2002.

The company entered the luxury market in 2005 when Timex's parent company acquired Swiss-based Vertime SA. Vertime is responsible for the design, manufacturing, and distribution of Swiss-made watches and jewelry for the Versace and Versus brands.

Timex USA's international holding company the Timex Group launched the TX Watch Company in late 2006.

In 2007, Timex Group B.V. established Sequel AG as a separate company devoted to the design, manufacture, and distribution of the Guess and the Swiss-made Gc watch brands.

Timex Group B.V. purchased the Italian design studio Giorgio Galli Design Lab in 2007.

Timex Group's Sequel division houses the Guess collections and had grown tremendously to rival Timex as the firm's top earner, but the signature brand had been flat as of August 2008.

Nowadays the Timex Group B.V. runs the show—acquiring the brand in 2008.

The company was restructured in early 2008, establishing the Timex Business Unit as a separate business function for the Timex brand with its own president.

In 2008, Timex Group USA signed a four-year agreement making Timex the first official timekeeper of the New York City Marathon.

Thomas Olsen