The rising popularity of vintage watches spawned the most popular trend in the watch industry today – neo-vintage timepieces inspired by historical watches from the company’s past catalogues. Now entire companies, some of which that went bust during the Quartz Revolution of the 1970s, are being resuscitated to cater to an insatiable consumer appetite for vintage-inspired watches.
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Nivada Grenchen, a Swiss brand that made affordable chronographs in the 1960s, is now set to make a comeback thanks to two French entrepreneurs. Established in 1879 in the Swiss town of Grenchen, Nivada had a good run in the post-War years before winding up operations in the aftermath of the Quartz Revolution that swept the Swiss watch industry in the 1970s. Interestingly, Nivada had to change its name to Nivada Grenchen during the 1960s and 70s because of its phonetic similarity with Movado. The company’s most famous model is the Chronomaster Aviator Sea Diver, a manual-winding chronograph introduced in 1961 and produced for the next 10 odd years. It was important enough for publishers Anthony Marquié and Grégoire Rossier to produce a book “Chronomaster Only” which is now considered the go-to reference for Chronomaster collectors.
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The revival of Nivada Grenchen is the handiwork of Guillaume Laidet, the founder of homage brand William. L 1985, and Remi Chabrat, owner of private label watchmaker Montrichard Group. The duo bought the rights to Nivada Grenchen off Holzer Y Company, the Mexican jewelry and watch retailer who have owned the trademark since 2001. It helped that Chabrat’s company was already in business with the Mexican firm. Nivada Grenchen will return with the re-release of much-loved Chronomaster and the Antarctic, a three-hander that was introduced to mark the International Geophysical Year in 1957. Nivada Grenchen supplied the Antarctic wristwatch to Admiral Richard Bryd who commanded the United States Navy’s Operation Deep Freeze I expedition to Antarctica in 1957.
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According to Guillaume Laidet, the idea is to respect, as much as possible, the original designs and stick to authentic specifications while offering “affordable” prices. The company has harnessed the power of the collector community on Instagram and has acted actively on feedback it received to the initial designs it shared on the social platform. Clearly, the objective is to create what Nivada and vintage watches aficionados are looking for.
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“We will only focus on vintage re-editions,” says Laidet, who has previously worked with brands like Jaeger-LeCoultre and Zenith. “There is everything we need in the past collections of Nivada Grenchen; we have demands for the Depthmaster, Datomaster, Antarctic diver, and Chronoking.”
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All the watches will run off-the-shelf Sellita movements and will be assembled in Switzerland, though not in their spiritual home of Grenchen. The Chronometer Aviator Sea Diver manual winding chronograph will cost around €1,600 with a leather or tropic strap. The automatic chronograph costs €1,800 while the Antarctic is priced at €650 on a leather and €850 when paired with a steel jubilee bracelet. The watches will be sold via the brand’s website up until they figure out a retail network.
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