The watch industry is controlled by a handful of luxury conglomerates. Between them, they own nearly every name you know. This is a guide to the brands they don't own.
Most major Swiss watch brands belong to three groups.
Swatch Group — Omega, Breguet, Blancpain, Longines, Tissot, Hamilton, Harry Winston, Glashütte Original, Rado, Mido, Certina. They also own ETA, which supplies movements to most of the industry.
Richemont — Cartier, Vacheron Constantin, A. Lange & Söhne, Jaeger-LeCoultre, IWC, Panerai, Piaget, Roger Dubuis, Baume & Mercier.
LVMH — TAG Heuer, Hublot, Zenith, Bulgari, Tiffany & Co., Chaumet, plus Louis Vuitton and Dior.
This is most of what you'll find in airport boutiques and magazine ads. Great watches, many of them. But not the whole picture.
In 1975, Zenith's owners ordered the destruction of all tooling for the El Primero, the first automatic chronograph. Quartz was the future. A foreman named Charles Vermot hid the equipment in an attic instead.
Ten years later, when mechanical watches came back, Zenith resumed production using those hidden tools.
Ownership changes things. Not always for worse, not always for better. But the person deciding what gets made is rarely the person who made it.
This is a directory of the people who still decide for themselves.