Sea-Gull

Sea-Gull traces its origins to the Tianjin Watch Factory, established in January 1955 in Tianjin, China, where a small team of craftsmen assembled the Wuxing (Five Star), regarded as the first Chinese-made mechanical wristwatch. The factory produced under several names before adopting Seagull (Haiou) in 1974. In 1963 it developed the D304, an aviation chronograph built for military use, and a descendant of that design survives today as the manually wound ST19 chronograph calibre, one of the few affordable column-wheel chronograph movements in production.

The company kept faith with mechanical watchmaking through the quartz era and in the 2000s moved into complications, developing its own tourbillon, minute repeater and perpetual calendar calibres, combined in the ST9250 of 2009. Today Tianjin Seagull Watch Group is a state-owned company and one of the largest producers of mechanical movements in the world, supplying other brands as well as selling watches under its own name, from the 1963 chronograph reissue to orbital tourbillons.