European watch buyers value something that American watch

IWC has a really interesting history, and I won’t try to sum it up here. The brand was actually started by an American, and occurred at the time when Swiss labor was actually cheaper than American labor — at least this is my understanding. Since that time (a long time ago), the brand has transformed a lot, and currently under Richemont Group ownership, thrives as one of the most well-respected luxury watch brands around. The exact details of when the brand started to current day IWC apparently were unknown to any one person. So IWC decided to put together a book to document its history. Which is what this new (and massive) IWC book is all about - and it is called "IWC: Engineering Time Since 1868."

The synthesis of this new book is actually really interesting, and kind of unusual. Most books are created with very specific purposes in mind — to sell copies, and make money. This book is a little different. While IWC of course wants to sell as many copies as possible, the book has other value. First, I think that IWC simply wanted to have a good grasp on its own history. I don’t know whose idea it was to make the book, but CEO George Kern but the ball in motion a while ago to chronicle the history and story of IWC. In cooperation of current and former IWC employees, as well as many historical documents, the task was given to German writer and journalist Manfred Fritz. It took him a few years to finish the job, but the result was a quite competent collection of the history and activities that made up the International Watch Company. The book would serve as a base, for while all future brand history could be added to. The value to Kern was that IWC could finally have a detailed and relatively precise authority on its history, values, and tradition. A very Germanic thing to do yes, but IWC is located in Schaffhausen which is quite close to Germany, and in the German speaking part of Switzerland.