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The name Maurice Lacroix stands for decades of experience in the production
of attractive high-quality mechnical watches watches with surprising additional
functions. Despite the fact that it is a comparatively young Swiss watch brand,
Maurice Lacroix watches are already known for their intricacies and attention
to detail (in both watch movements and design) and also that many of their watches
are hand made by skilled watchmakers. The quality is so outstanding that Maurice
Lacroix watches have already made some breakthrough innovative developments
in the world of time.
In 1961, Zurich-based Desco von Schulthess AG acquired an assembly facility in Saignelegier,
a town in the Canton of Jura, where it produced private label watches for the national
and international market. In 1975, the company laid initial foundations for its
successful corporate history by introducing its first watch under the name of Maurice
Lacroix in Austria. The brand was launched on the Spanish market a year
later and, after another four years, the company founded its own sales organization
in Germany.
Over the years, Maurice Lacroix has made significant investments to expand
Queloz SA, a case manufacturer that it acquired in 1989, and its assembly facility
in Saignelegier, and has made every effort to continuously keep the technology up-to-date.
Investments were not restricted to infrastructure but were also made to optimize
all internal processes. The assembly facility - together with the training and information
centre opened in 2001 and the extension completed in January 2002 - is currently
one of the most modern in the industry. The company thus put itself in an ideal
position to use these state-of-the-art ateliers to design and put together its watches
with a great deal of passion and precision. Around 150,000 top-quality timepieces
now leave the Saignelegier facility each year and are distributed to customers all
over the world.
Then, two decades after launching its first watch, the company successfully entered
the US market in 1995. In the fall of 2001, Maurice Lacroix S.A., previously
a division of Desco von Schulthess AG, became an independent legal entity, thus
generating ideal conditions in which to achieve its ambitious international growth
targets.
Maurice Lacroix has elevated itself to the high ranks of Swiss watch manufacturers,
by both maintaining traditional "Swiss watch making art" and by creating
their own unique and highly complicated movements for its Masterpiece Collection.
Maurice Lacroix has demonstrated its outstanding expertise primarily in the
area of retrograde displays as well as chronographs and moon phase indications.
This is instantiated not least by the ML 106 manufacture movement, an exclusive
chronograph calibre, but above all by the Memoire 1: With the Memory function, which
found its initial application in this strictly limited chronograph, Maurice Lacroix
has, in the year 2008, officially presented an entirely new Grande Complication.
Since the end of October 2006, Maurice Lacroix has been producing also complex
movement components for mechanical calibres in its own workshops near Saignelegier.
By that, the brand has taken its place in the exclusive club of Swiss manufacture
brands in a very short period of time.
In spite of the rapid change and growth, one thing has always remained the same
- the company?s love of design, perfection, and fine materials. Maurice Lacroix
is particularly proud of the crown jewels of its collections - the classic, mechanical
"Masterpiece" watches. The experience Maurice Lacroix has gained
from this precise art of watch-making is also incorporated into the "Milestone",
"Intuition", and "Sphere" collections. At the same time, the
company is continuing to promote its proven classics, "Miros" and "Pontos".
At the beginning of the new millennium, Maurice Lacroix has established a
milestone with its diverse product portfolio and its new, independent communications
campaign. The watches from Maurice Lacroix, which are set to be the classics
of tomorrow, epitomize progressive, innovative technology, high-quality materials,
and a design characterized by pure simplicity.
Today, Maurice Lacroix brand is represented in around 4,000 shops in more
than 60 countries all over the world. Maurice Lacroix is one of the last
few independent Swiss watch manufacturers, is an established market leader in Germany
in the upper middle-price segment, while in the USA the brand is one of the most
dynamic in the industry.
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