OFFICIAL TIMEKEEPER
Tudor Watches is an Official Sponsor of Men’s Fashion Week.
“For some years now I have been considering the idea of making a watch that our agents could sell at a more modest price than our Rolex watches, and yet one that would attain the standards of dependability for which Rolex is famous. I decided to form a separate company, with the object of making and marketing this new watch. It is called the Tudor Watch Company.”
This announcement was made on 6 March 1946 by Hans Wilsdorf who, having created Rolex in the ?rst decade of the 20th century, was already a leading figure in the upmarket Swiss watchmaking world. It marked the birth of both the TUDOR brand and its production and communications strategy.
Hans Wilsdorf’s intuition was as simple as it was ingenious. At that time, the development of wristwatches was in full swing and today’s widespread drive to optimize resources, which is currently behind so many major financial and brand mergers, was still in the far-distant future. The public was ready to recognize and appreciate a moderately priced product whose technical, aesthetic and functional qualities, as well as its distribution, were guaranteed not by a newcomer on the market but by the Rolex brand,which had already earned worldwide renown for its high-quality production.
This announcement was not merely words said for effect. It was Wilsdorf’s genuine commitment to a programme. Between 1947 and 1952, therefore, TUDOR devoted itself to launching ?rst the TUDOR Oyster model, followed by the TUDOR Oyster Prince collection, reflecting the successful marriage of precision and reliability, style and technique and high-quality production.
This role is reflected in the Grantour collection, shown for the ?rst time at Baselworld 2009, the year that saw a complete rethinking of the TUDOR brand, resulting in the new series of watches and the advertising campaign: “Designed for Performance. Engineered for Elegance.”
TUDOR’s communication has evolved since the advertising campaigns of the 1980s featuring distinctive details from knightly armour to communicate resistance, also achieved in the change of logo from rose to shield. This repositioning of the brand, yet again emphasizing the marriage of performance and style, continues to be evident in the new designs for 2010.
For more information, go to http://tudorwatches.com/