Swiss Watch Guru Nicholas Hayek Dies at 82

Nicholas Hayek the Swiss Watches Guru Died yesterday aged 82


Nicholas Hayek, the driving force behind Swatch and Breguet watches died yesterday aged 82.
Working as an independent engineer, Mr Hayek was instructed by banks to shut down several Swiss mechanical watch manufacturers and component suppliers that were having financial difficulty in the early 1980s in what was later dubbed as the "quartz crisis". At this time watch manufacturers could start mass producing quartz watches at incredibly cheap prices thus many low cost watches began appearing on the market and the knock on effect saw watch prices tumble. But instead of following the banks instructions Mr. Hayek actually did the opposite and together with his business partners they decided to invest more into the future. He was often many times seen to be criticizing the banks and their fat cat and greedy business practices.

In 1983 he launched Swatch Watches which soon became a household name hailed for their unique designs and innovation, which lead to Swatch watches becoming a worldwide fashion watch.
By 1998 the Swatch Group had many big name watches in their stable including Breguet and Omega and yearly sales in excess of £3 billion worldwide.

It is said that Mr. Hayek always wore at least 2 watches on each wrist !!!!
He also played a big part in the design and manufacture and development of the Smart Car and also had projects in the pipeline to develop a small electronic car.
The Swiss president Doris Leuthard was quoted as saying "We owe Mr. Hayek a lot".

Goodbye England - Wear Bigger Watches Next Time

England are out of the world cup after a 4-1 drubbing by Germany !

Was it down to the wrong formation ? The altitude ? The Ball ? The players not performing after a long season ? Fabio Capella's inability to handle the players ? no

Hmm no...it was all down to the size of their watches !!!!

This week Ghana footballer Samuel Inkoom was spotted wearing a huge watch...according to the Daily Telegraph is was the size of Big Ben.

Could the size of his watch be a sign of his confidence...?

If so then there will be no surprise to see the England team boarding the coach home all wearing a Timex Nail Watch

Watches - A Great Idea for Fathers Day Gift

Fathers Day has just passed for another year and yet again millions of us all spent an average of £18.57 (down from £21.21 last year) on a treat for our Father, of which an average of £2.11 was spent on a card with the remainder being mostly spent on aftershave, slippers, socks and ties and around 2.7% was spent on watches, up from last years 1.4%.

With little budget to spend and because of low prices available recently in the watches industry then a wrist watch was many peoples choice of the ideal gift for their father on Fathers Day.

Top brands chosen for Fathers were Casio, Timex, Adidas, Rotary and Nixon, closely followed by Black Dice, Obaku, Police Swatch and Ben Sherman.

Rotary were the number one choice brand of watches for the ideal gift, however this was for people with a vastly above average spend with the Rotary Gold watches range, crafted in solid 9ct Gold, being a best seller at this time of year.

Running Watches

Many professional athletes and in particular long distance runners have hailed digital watches as one of the reasons why man could progress so rapidly in athletics during the last few decades.

Runners especially take advantage of the technology incorporated into digital watches to give great functions and features for their sport.

Features such as lap times, counters, stopwatch and interval alarms were the first basic functions to be used but more recently features such as session data which can then be downloaded onto a computer for analysis, heart rate monitor, pulse rate monitor, calorie burn information and even GPS have been added to certain models of watches making runners have a vast array of information at their disposal.

Runners can then use this information to analyse their training or competition patterns and find parts of the race or areas that can be improved upon or to monitor their fitness levels or progress over time.

Having all this information available has helped many runners to improve their performances and especially for long distance runners, many of whom now rely on such technology with the Timex Triathlon range of watches being the favourites of many athletes.