Oris

Paul Cattin and Georges Christian took over an empty factory in Hölstein in 1904 and named the company after a nearby gorge. It stayed independent, and stayed in that valley, for its entire history.

Oris built its reputation on volume mechanical watches made properly. By the 1960s it was among the largest Swiss employers in the sector, producing hundreds of thousands of movements a year. Its most curious historical footnote is regulatory: Swiss law restricted the number of jewels a watch could contain under certain classifications, and Oris fought a decade-long legal battle to be permitted to fit lever escapements — winning in 1968.

The quartz crisis nearly ended it. The company was bought out of the ASUAG conglomerate in 1982 by two managers, Rolf Portmann and Ulrich Herzog, who took it back to mechanical watches exclusively at precisely the moment the rest of the industry was abandoning them.

That independence remains the point. Oris is one of the few Swiss houses of any scale with no group ownership, and it competes on value rather than prestige — dive watches, pilot's watches, and the Big Crown line descended from its 1938 pointer calendar. The house developed its own Calibre 400 family from 2020, offering five-day power reserves and ten-year service intervals at prices well below the norm for in-house movements.

Oris holds 57 models, from £1,400 to £5,350. Half cost less than £2,200, and a quarter less than £1,900. 57 of 57 are automatic. 32 are stocked by more than one retailer, giving 89 offers in total. Prices are checked nightly against the retailers’ own feeds.

1904

Paul Cattin and Georges Christian found Oris in Hölstein.

1938

The Big Crown pointer calendar is introduced.

1968

Wins the legal fight to use lever escapements.

1982

A management buyout returns the company to independence.

2020

The in-house Calibre 400 launches.