Fossil, which is publicly owned, was founded in 1984 at the start of the fashion-watch boom, and grew to its current formidable size largely on the strength of fashion watches made in southern China. Now Fossil is moving on a second front: Switzerland. STP, purchased in 2012, is the latest step in the company’s campaign to increase its portfolio of Swiss-made products, which until recently contained only the Burberry and Zodiac brands. The Fossil Group now has Swiss movement-assembly, case-making, design and prototyping facilities. It also has a big building in Basel
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The Fossil Group’s Swiss-made story began in 2001. That year, the company bought for $4.3 million the then-recently bankrupt Swiss brand Zodiac, founded in 1882, best known for its Sea Wolf dive watches. In announcing the acquisition, Fossil said it was the first step in building a Swiss-made business. Fossil revamped and updated the brand, which now consists of chunky, very masculine-looking quartz chronographs and automatic divers’ watches priced from about $700 to $1,000. At nearly the same time, Fossil bought for $2.3 million three subcontracting companies, all in Bienne. They were Montres Antima, which assembled watches for its own Antima brand (now defunct) and for other brands; Meliga Habillement Horloger, which sourced components; and Synergies Horlogères, which designed and made prototypes. Fossil put all these companies under the Antima umbrella.
Within a few years, Burberry was selling between 400,000 and 450,000 watches,
STP makes a single movement: a three-handed, 11½-ligne automatic much like the ETA 2824 (but with a longer power reserve – 46 hours, Fossil says). The movement is called the STP1-11
Fossil also sells STP movements to brands outside the group, including the Swiss brand Roamer, maker of mid-priced automatic and quartz watches.
