Ulysse Nardin

Ulysse Nardin founded his workshop in Le Locle in 1846, at the age of 23, and the company is still based in the town. Its name was made by marine chronometers: from the late nineteenth century to the 1950s, the firm supplied deck watches and chronometers to more than fifty navies and collected thousands of observatory rating certificates.

The modern chapter began in 1983, when the businessman Rolf Schnyder bought the company and began working with the watchmaker and scholar Ludwig Oechslin. Their astronomical trilogy of 1985 to 1992 and the Freak of 2001, a carousel-tourbillon with no dial or hands whose escapement used silicon components, among the first in a series-produced movement, gave the brand its present reputation for unconventional mechanics. The brand belonged to Kering from 2014 until 2022, when it returned to independent ownership through a management buyout that formed the Sowind Group together with Girard-Perregaux. Current collections include Marine, Diver, Blast and Freak.