Your Time is Now! – this is the brand motto of the watch company Maurice_Lacroix. And the time of this brand itself, that is, its history, officially began in 1975, when this trademark was registered in Switzerland.
However, the real history of Maurice_Lacroix is almost a century longer. In 1889, the company Desco von Schulthess was founded in Zurich, engaged in the production of silk and silk products. In the 20th century, the company, in accordance with the requirements of the era, began to diversify. Switzerland is Switzerland: the choice fell on watches. Since 1946, Desco has been a distributor of a number of luxury watch brands, and in 1961 the company acquired the Tiara assembly plant in Saignelégier. Watches were manufactured here for other companies. And in 1975, it was decided to create a separate watch brand.
For several more years, the company continued to work “on the side”. But in 1989, another watchmaking company was absorbed – Queloz SA in the same Saignelégier. And in 1990, the creation of Maurice_Lacroix’s own watch collection – Callypso – began. Made in full compliance with high Swiss quality standards and distinguished by a recognizable appearance with six pairs of fang-shaped links, as if pressing the bezel to the case, the Callypso models quickly gained great popularity. The choice of the target audience for Maurice_Lacroix watches was also important and accurate: the focus was on young people striving for success, so the price segment was defined as medium-luxury – mid-level luxury, affordable luxury. At the same time, the watches were quartz, as was fashionable at the time.
However, the brand did not swear off the heights of luxury watches. On the contrary: striving to reach as many potential buyers as possible, it boldly stormed these heights. And already in 1992, the first Maurice_Lacroix mechanical watch was released, and it had a rather complex configuration: Les Mecaniques, with as many as five central hands – hours, minutes, seconds, date and day of the week. Soon this collection received the name under which it lives and develops to this day as a flagship – Masterpiece.
Important dates of the Maurice Lacroix brand
The management of Maurice_Lacroix managed to create an extraordinary creative team. The search for something new, professional imagination, even audacity were and are encouraged. The results are obvious:
- 1999 – creation of Calendier Retrograde, the first “retrograde” for the brand, that is, a watch in which the arrow indication of any function reaches the end of the scale and quickly returns to the zero mark;
- 2003 – release of Double Retrograde;
- 2006 – the first manufacture mechanical caliber ML-106, that is, manufactured entirely within the walls of the company;
- 2010 – Masterpiece Square Wheel watch with a square wheel, which was included in the list of the most important inventions of the industry; 2014 – introduction of silicon technology, Masterpiece Gravity model.
