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A Brief History of
the Orient Watch Company
Orient
Watch was formally established in July 13th, 1950 in Tokyo.
However, the history of Orient Watch really dates back to 1901,
when Shogoro Yoshida, the founder of Orient, opened a wholesale
watch store in Ueno, Japan.
Orient
has specialized in mechanical and self-winding watches since its
inception. Orient makes its own automatic movements
in-house. Once part of the big three watch manufactures (Seiko
and Citizen being the other two)in Japan, things took a turn for
the worse in the 1970’s when quartz watches were the rage.
Orient stuck to is guns and continued to produce mechanical
watches while Seiko and Citizen primarily switched to quartz
movements.
Today,
Seiko owns a controlling interest (52%)in Orient. Orient
continues to manufacture and design their own mechanical
movements. Orient has manufacturing facilities in Japan,
Singapore, and Brazil. They offer a wide range of watch
designs and styles, including quartz, mechanical, and light
powered (similar to Citizen’s Eco-Drive line).
What
differentiates Orient from other watch companies is really the
fact that Orient has always been focusing on making its
mechanical movements better and more reliable. And, they are
very affordable. To find a watch company that uses in-house
movements selling its watches at prices that well within the
budgets of most people is truly amazing. |
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Until
recently, it has been difficult to find and purchase Orient
watches in the United States. Many models are still only
available in Asia. Now there is an official U.S. distributor for
Orient handling a somewhat limited supply of models.
Orient Watch Co. today is
recognized as one of the best mechanical watchmakers in the
world. They play second fiddle to no one when it comes to
quality mechanical movements. They are perfectly poised to
again win the hearts of American watch lovers with their
extraordinary line of self-winding automatic watches.
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