Last few decades Swatch was the main supplier of parts for the most of Swiss watchmakers. This year the company announced that it will cut the supply and so the other producers have to find an alternative supplier. Tag Heuer signed a contract with Seiko, the Japanese top watch producer. Actually this is one of the best options that Tag Heuer had; as Seiko are well know with their quality automatic chronographs. Furthermore, the president of Tag Heuer said that Japanese parts won’t have any effect over the Swiss quality of the final product.
Tag Heuer and Seiko
An interesting fact is that at the moment the regulation in Switzerland allow up to 50% of the parts to be produced outside the country in order the timepiece to be called Swiss one. However, the lower parliament recently agreed to decrease that level to 40%. That will have a significant effect over the local watchmakers and will force them to produce most of the parts by itself. Tag Heuer and Swatch already announced that they will open up to 600 new jobs in order to start making bigger part of their products in the country of origin, instead of importing them.
