Glossary
Manufacture
Definition
A watch company that designs and makes its own movements rather than buying them in, though the word has no legal definition and is applied with a good deal of latitude.
On this page (5 sections)
In French, "manufacture d'horlogerie" describes a house that makes its own movements. The word carries prestige, so it gets used freely, and it has no legal definition and no certifying body behind it.
Where the word comes from
The distinction it draws was once structural rather than promotional. Through the nineteenth century most Swiss watches were built by an etablisseur, a firm that bought blanks and parts from the workshops of the Jura valleys and assembled, adjusted and sold the finished watch. A manufacture was the rarer arrangement: a single house that made the movement parts as well. The two words described two business models, and everyone in the trade knew which was which.
What changed is that the trade vocabulary escaped into advertising, where only one of the two words is flattering. Today it is applied to companies that machine their own plates, to companies that assemble a caliber somebody else developed for them, and occasionally to companies that do neither.
What it does not tell you
It does not tell you the company makes its own hairsprings, which almost nobody does. It does not tell you the company makes its own cases, dials, crystals or bracelets. It does not tell you the movement is better than a well-executed ebauche. And it does not tell you that the caliber in the watch you are looking at is the in-house one, because most manufactures also sell watches built on bought-in movements lower down the range.
What actually varies
Vertical integration is a spectrum. At one end, a handful of companies make their own regulating components, cases and dials: Rolex, Seiko and Grand Seiko are the clearest examples. In the middle sit houses that design and assemble complete movements while buying escapement parts from a specialist. At the other end sit brands that specify a supplier movement and put their name on the rotor.
Two data points fix the ends of that range. NOMOS introduced its own swing system in 2014, comprising escape wheel, pallet lever, balance and balance spring, which is the part of a movement that is genuinely difficult to make. Tudor's MT calibers, by contrast, are built by Kenissi in Le Locle, a movement company founded in 2016 that also supplies Breitling, Norqain and Fortis. Both arrangements produce watches sold with the word manufacture nearby, and only one of them means the factory is not shared.
The claims that do have definitions
Manufacture has no threshold to meet. Several neighboring claims do, and they are the ones worth reading on a dial or a certificate.
| Claim | Who defines it, and what it requires |
|---|---|
| Manufacture | Nobody. No ordinance, no auditor, no threshold. |
| Swiss made | A Swiss federal ordinance. Since January 1, 2017, at least 60 percent of the watch's manufacturing costs must arise in Switzerland, technical development must be Swiss, and the watch must be cased and finally inspected there. |
| Glashütte | German protection of the place name. At least 50 percent of a caliber's value must be created in the town. |
| Poinçon de Genève | Geneva cantonal law dating from 1886, administered independently. Assembly, adjustment and casing in the canton, detailed construction and finishing rules, and since the revision of the early 2010s functional testing of the complete watch. |
| Chronometer, Master Chronometer | COSC certifies a bare movement to minus 4 to plus 6 seconds a day. METAS certifies the cased watch to 0 to plus 5 seconds a day and 15,000 gauss. |
Note what that list implies. A watch can be a manufacture caliber and meet none of the tested standards, or a bought-in caliber and meet all of them. Our guide to Swiss made and origin marks sets out the ordinance in full.
How to check it
Ask which caliber, made by whom, and what the brand buys in. Ask where the movement is assembled and where the watch is cased, because those can be different countries. Ask who supplies the regulating parts, which is the question that separates the strict end of the range from the loose one. And ask who services it, because a proprietary caliber usually means the brand's own network for the life of the watch. Our brand assessments answer that question for each brand rather than repeating the marketing, and the entry on in-house movements covers the same claim from the movement's side.
Last reviewed 4 September 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will fix it in public.