#history
Favre Leuba Watch.
An advertisement from 60 years ago took me back in memory.
My mother’s Favre Leuba watch, which she had received as a gift from her father at her wedding in 1951, was a prized possession.
Owning a watch those days was the privilege reserved for the well heeled. Watches were considered as jewellery and were sold in jewellery shops.
Ordinary villagers however, needed no watches and were able to tell the precise time by looking at the sun.
Those were the days when only foreign brands of watches were available. In my childhood there was only one watch repair shop in the entire district, Jojo watch company at Kottayam.
HMT was the first Indian company to manufacture watches. I remember how proud I was, when my father gifted an HMT Sona watch after I passed SSLC in first class in 1970.
The first watch I bought with my own salary was a Seiko watch smuggled into the country, while working in Malappuram in 1978.
I own half a dozen watches now, including a Rolex, a Ever Swiss , a Titan and a Timex from among the Tata brands. Still I am sad that I forgot my favourite watch in a room on a ship cruise in Italy during a tour in April 2023.
Favre Leuba has an illustrious history dating back 287 years when Abraham Leuba set up only the second watch manufacturing unit in Switzerland, in La Lock.
The company became Favre Leuba in 1815 after Leuba married from the Favre family.
Favre Leuba became a leading international brand from 1869.
Fierce competition saw a decline in the fortunes of the iconic watch manufacturer.
However the company returned to the watch business in 2007 with two basic watches.
The wheels of fortune turned when India’s Titan group took over the company, head quartered in Zug, Switzerland , in 2011. Several new watches have been introduced since 2016, including some which cost several lacks of rupees.
Young people of the present generation have the choice of a huge number of brands in watches, but Favre Leuba is sure to evoke nostlagic memories in the older generations.
– Joy Kallivayalil.
