Watch why the U.S. once glorious dead

Once upon a time, the U.S. watch industry was once the best in the world, no kidding! To know the early production of Swiss watches are very "hand" of the nineteenth century, the Swiss watch factory began leading U.S. companies like E. Howard (IWC's distant relative) and so the introduction of advanced modern manufacturing processes and technology watches, and then further to improve. Today, the U.S. watch industry but gradually decline and disappear, and this all happened in just a few decades of the twentieth century.

There have been many, many American watch manufacturers, some of them very common, some are world class (such as Hamilton, Howard, also Illinois). Even to the twentieth century, the fifties, Elgin were still the world's largest watch factory, until it declared bankruptcy a sudden accident, because its production scale is too large, the cost is too high, alas! ...

To sum up, since the 20th century since, the following factors has shaken the U.S. watch industry's strong fundamentals:

(1) pocket watch to watch the transition from

A lot of very good American watch manufacturers were not able to adapt to this change, the watch can not grasp the "fashion" and correctly adjust their design approach. The weaker of them soon collapse (such as Hampton) or other acquisition.
Luxury watches
(2) brutal competition in the market

Slightly stronger than the strength of some plants (such as Illinois) While trying to complete this transition, but eventually disappeared. Illinois was Hamilton disappear after annexation, the reason is that Hamilton bought it the most direct competitor, and then deliberately let him close down, thereby enabling their products to benefit.

(3) economic crisis

30s of last century to the Great Depression seriously weakened purchasing power, to watch Commercial worse. Mass producer of cheap table (such as Timex) are still capable of luck to survive, while the other residues had been eliminated, of course, high-grade form of individual producers (like Hamilton) is doing quite well, and does not therefore reduce the quality to adapt to the public purse withered, but did not last long ...

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