The Company That Saved Affordable Swiss Watchmaking (And You've Probably Never Heard of It)

Every affordable Swiss-movement watch you've ever enjoyed — every Baltic, every Farer, every Christopher Ward, every microbrand that put a reliable automatic calibre on your wrist for under a thousand pounds — exists because of a company most people couldn't name.

Sellita. Founded in 1950 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Currently producing over 1.5 million movements a year. Supplier to TAG Heuer, Oris, Sinn, Tudor, Hublot, IWC, and hundreds of independents. And twenty years ago, it nearly lost everything.

The Monopoly

To understand why Sellita matters, you need to understand ETA. Through decades of mergers and acquisitions, ETA — a subsidiary of the Swatch Group — consolidated virtually all of Switzerland's movement production under one roof. The ETA 2824-2, introduced in its current form in 1982, became the workhorse of the industry — a reliable, affordable automatic that found its way into everything from entry-level Tissots to mid-range TAG Heuers.

For most of this period, Sellita was part of that machine. It wasn't a competitor; it was a subcontractor. ETA produced movement kits — unfinished components — and Sellita assembled them into completed calibres. Millions of ETA 2824-2 movements passed through Sellita's factory. The company had deep expertise in one specific thing: building and finishing the most important movement in Swiss watchmaking.

Then, in 2002, Swatch Group CEO Nicolas Hayek made an announcement that sent shockwaves through the industry: ETA would stop supplying movements to brands outside the Swatch Group.

The logic, from Hayek's perspective, was straightforward. Why should ETA supply the same movements to competitors that his own brands — Tissot, Longines, Hamilton, Certina — were using? By cutting off external supply, Swatch Group could force competitors to either develop their own movements (expensive and slow) or collapse (convenient).

The result was panic. Brands that had built their entire business on the assumption of reliable ETA supply suddenly faced an existential crisis. If you couldn't get movements, you couldn't make watches. It was that simple.

The Investigation

The announcement triggered an investigation by the Swiss Competition Commission (COMCO). ETA's position was close to a monopoly — by some industry estimates, as many as 80% of Swiss watches were powered by ETA movements — and simply switching off supply to an entire industry raised obvious antitrust concerns.

The case dragged on for years. In 2013, COMCO and Swatch Group reached a compromise: ETA would gradually reduce third-party supply rather than cutting it off immediately. The numbers were specific — 75% of the 2009-2011 supply volume in 2014-2015, dropping to 65% in 2016-2017, then 55% in 2018-2019. The deadline was later extended to July 2020, after which ETA would no longer be obligated to supply anyone outside the Swatch Group.

For the rest of the industry, the writing was on the wall. The supply was shrinking year by year, and the clock was ticking.

The Pivot

Here's where Sellita's story turns from corporate history into something more significant.

When Hayek made his announcement in 2002, another shift was underway: ETA's patent on the 2824-2 movement design was expiring. The original patent had been filed in the early 1980s, and by the early 2000s the design was entering the public domain.

Sellita had spent decades assembling that exact movement. No other company on earth had more hands-on experience with the 2824-2. As Sellita's head of innovation Dr Sébastien Chaulmontet later explained to Chrono24: "We lost our major kit supplier, but we still had the clients and knowledge of the industry, which helped us to change our business model fundamentally."

By 2003, Sellita had released the SW200-1 — a movement functionally identical to the ETA 2824-2, with one additional jewel in the automatic winding system. It fit the same cases, accepted the same dials and hands, and performed to the same specifications. For any brand already using the 2824-2, switching to the SW200 required zero redesign.

That interchangeability was critical. It meant brands didn't have to start from scratch. They just had to change supplier. And as ETA's supply gradually decreased through the 2010s, Sellita's production scaled up to fill the gap.

Under CEO Miguel García — who started as a production employee in 1987 and became a director in 1995 — Sellita expanded its range to mirror ETA's key offerings: the SW300 (equivalent to ETA 2892), the SW500 (equivalent to ETA 7750 chronograph), and various complications including GMTs, moon phases, and flyback chronographs. The company also vertically integrated, manufacturing its own balance wheels, ball bearings, and escapements, and even designing the machines that produce its components. A subsidiary, Technicor, handles electroplating and movement decoration.

By 2024, Sellita was selling 800,000 units of the SW200 alone. Total annual production is estimated at over 1.5 million movements. It's now the largest independent Swiss movement supplier outside the Swatch Group.

Why This Matters for Every Watch You Buy

The microbrand revolution — the explosion of small, independent watch companies selling directly to consumers over the last decade — could not have happened without Sellita.

Here's why: ETA, even when it was supplying externally, required large minimum orders. If you were a startup brand wanting to produce a few hundred watches, you were at the back of a very long queue behind the established names. Sellita operates differently. It supplies quantities as small as a few dozen pieces. That policy opened the door for exactly the kind of small-batch, design-led brands that now dominate the enthusiast conversation.

When Baltic needs movements for a limited-edition run of 300 watches, Sellita can supply them. When Farer develops a new GMT, it builds it around a Sellita SW330-2. When Christopher Ward puts a COSC-certified automatic in a sub-£1,000 watch, it's a Sellita SW200. The entire ecosystem of accessible, well-made mechanical watches that has flourished since the mid-2010s sits on Sellita's production capacity and its willingness to work with brands of every size.

If Sellita hadn't made that pivot in 2003 — if the company had simply folded when ETA pulled the rug — the supply vacuum would have been catastrophic. Some larger brands might have eventually developed in-house movements (as Oris and others have begun doing). But the hundreds of smaller brands that rely on affordable, proven, available Swiss movements? They'd have had nowhere to turn. The microbrand movement as we know it would not exist.

The Company That Stays Quiet

There's something telling about Sellita's culture. Unlike the brands it supplies, Sellita doesn't seek attention. It doesn't market itself to consumers. It doesn't sponsor events or run Instagram campaigns. As Farer noted in a profile on their journal, Sellita "humbly believes in staying out of the limelight, and letting the brands it supplies take the credit."

That humility masks an extraordinary position of influence. When Tudor released the Royal with a calibre based on a Sellita movement, it was a quiet acknowledgment that Sellita's quality had reached a level where even Rolex's sister brand trusted it. When TAG Heuer uses Sellita's SW1000 in its Calibre 9 watches, or when Hublot and IWC source movements from La Chaux-de-Fonds, the message is the same: Sellita isn't a budget alternative. It's the industry's backbone.

And the company continues to innovate. Its flyback column-wheel chronograph allows watchmakers to regulate smoothness after the movement is cased — a technical innovation that Sellita developed independently, not as a clone of anything ETA ever made. The higher-end subsidiary, Manufacture AMT, supplies more sophisticated movements to select clients, pushing the company further from its origins as a pure ébauche assembler.

The Real Story

The next time you look at the movement powering your watch — whether it says SW200, SW300, or any Sellita calibre — you're looking at the product of a company that was forced to reinvent itself or die, and chose to reinvent itself so effectively that it now underpins an entire tier of the watch industry.

Sellita didn't just survive the Swatch Group's attempt to consolidate control over Swiss movement supply. It turned a crisis into an opportunity that democratised mechanical watchmaking. Before Sellita's pivot, the movement market was a monopoly. After it, any watchmaker with a good design and a small production run could access Swiss-made automatic movements at a fair price.

Every microbrand you've ever admired. Every independent that sells directly to you at a transparent price. Every affordable Swiss watch that proves you don't need to spend five figures to wear genuine mechanical engineering on your wrist.

Sellita made that possible. And almost nobody knows its name.

The watches in the CalderoneWatchCo collection are powered by movements from Sellita, Miyota, and other suppliers who keep independent watchmaking alive. Browse our range and see what's possible when the supply chain works for everyone.