Longines

Compagnie des Montres Longines
Type	Member of the Swatch group
Industry	Watch manufacturing
Founded	1832
Headquarters	Saint-Imier, Switzerland
Key people	Walter von KГ¤nel, President
Products	Wristwatches, timing devices/systems
Revenue	в‚¬70.3 million (2009)
Number of employees	340 (2009)
Parent	The Swatch Group Ltd.
Website	www.longines.com

A Longines self-winding watch with several horology complicationsвЂ”chronograph, moon phase, day, date and month display.

Longines (French pronunciation: вЂ‹[lЙ”МѓК’in], LAWN-zheen) is a luxury watch company based in Saint-Imier, Switzerland. Founded by Auguste Agassiz in 1832, it is currently owned by the Swatch Group. Its winged hourglass logo is the oldest registered trademark for a watchmaker.^{[citation needed]}

History[edit]

Vintage Longines box.

Based in Saint-Imier since 1832, the Compagnie des Montres Longines Francillon S.A. was among the worldвЂ™s leading watch companies. In 2007, Longines had its 175th anniversary. The brand evolved from a comptoir^{[n 1]} to a full-fledged manufacturing^{[n 2]} operation and then back down to an Г©tablisseur^{[n 3]} today, since the early 1980s, as a Swatch Group company.

References[edit]

^ In a business system based on an agreement between producers or salesmen, the comptoir acts as the intermediary between them and their customers.
^ A manufacture is a watch factory which produces the components (particularly the Г©bauche) needed for the manufacture of its products. The Г©bauche is an incomplete watch movement sold as a set of loose parts, comprising the main plate, the bridges, the train, the winding and setting mechanism and the regulator.
^ An Г©tablisseur is a watch factory which only assembles watches, without itself producing the components, which it buys from specialist suppliers.