Montres Cimier SA is an independent Swiss watch manufacturer whose headquarters is in Biel,

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

. Cimier produces

mechanical watches A mechanical watch is a watch that uses a clockwork mechanism to measure the passage of time, as opposed to quartz watches which function using the vibration modes of a piezoelectric quartz tuning fork, or radio watches, which are quartz watches ...

as well as

quartz watch Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, ...

es.

History

Cimier Watch Seven Seas Sextant Chronograph mechanical

The origin of Cimier goes back in 1924 when the mukesh watchmaker Joseph Lapanouse founded his company Lapanouse SA in

Hölstein Hölstein is a municipality in the district of Waldenburg in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland. History Hölstein is first mentioned around 1101-03 as ''Hulestein''. Geography Hölstein has an area, , of . Of this area, or 43.3% is ...

and sold his watches first under the brand Rego and later Cimier. Since the beginning, Joseph Lapanouse specialised in manufacturing pin-pallet watches, called Roskopf. In the 1950s, the company, that became in the meantime Lapoanouse-Cimier SA, industrialized the first pin-pallet escapement

chronograph A chronograph is a specific type of watch that is used as a stopwatch combined with a display watch. A basic chronograph has an independent sweep second hand and a minute sub-dial; it can be started, stopped, and returned to zero by successive ...

sold at 21 million pieces during its lifetime. At the end of the 1960s the annual production reached 1.5 million pieces and the company employed over 500 people in

Bubendorf Bubendorf is a municipality in the district of Liestal in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland. History Bubendorf is first mentioned in 1152 as ''Bouenonowe''. Geography Bubendorf has an area, , of . Of this area, or 38.1% is used fo ...

. In the 1970s, the watch industry experienced the

quartz crisis The quartz crisis was the upheaval in the watchmaking industry caused by the advent of quartz watches in the 1970s and early 1980s, that largely replaced mechanical watches around the world.

. The number of mechanical watches sold was drastically reduced. Cimier developed and industrialized its own quartz movement. However, the number of pieces produced did not reach the threshold of profitability. As a result, in 1985, the Swiss manufacturer decided to temporarily cease production. In 2003, the brand Cimier was reborn through the company which has the same name. In 2010, Cimier opened the Watch Academy. The concept allowed customers to create and build their own watch in Cimier's workshop. The customer can choose between several manual movements and an automatic movement.

References

External links

{{Official website, http://www.cimier.com/home.html Watch manufacturing companies of Switzerland Design companies established in 1924 Manufacturing companies established in 1924 Swiss watch brands Swiss companies established in 1924