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| Mido Watches |
Within the brand conglomerate resulting in the gigantic number of watches available from the Swatch Group,
Mido has seemed to live an unfortunate life in the shadows until only recently when it stepped out into the sunshine. This brand has shared a close relationship with sister brands Tissot and Certina regarding production, component purchasing, distribution, and logistics, and measured against the number of watches produced, this little brand has obviously had a hard time holding its own until now. Quite unjustly.
Today's watches with their pleasing design, high practical value, and above all fair price/performance ratio represent a welcome alternative for watch fans whose timekeepers don't need to be displayed on the wrist of a celebrity "testimonial" or need to be manufactured "by hand." This is especially true for the timepieces featuring mechanical movements that are more than suitable for watch fans with a shallow wallet: Mido timekeepers are welcome entry-level models for
the average consumer enamored of cases and dials in simple, clean design.
This history of this brand began after its founding in 1918 with a few somewhat comical-looking models. Company founder Georges Schaeren was reacting to an era of increasing motorization and created the shape of his watches based on hoods of famous automobiles.
From 1934 onward, Mido used the patented crown seal made of natural cork that was first used in the Multifort models (later known as the Aquadura) and has since been incorporated into the current Ocean Star and Commander
models. These two historic watches brought Mido world fame from 1959.
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The watches sealed in this way were tested extensively. They were placed in fresh and salt water for days on end, had to withstand simulated altitudes of more than 10 miles (16,600 meters), were subjected to water pressure of 13 bar, and were finally alternately placed in hot and cold chambers for environmental testing. Amazingly, virtually all of
the watches survived this punishment, including even the torture of the manual winding simulator, which subjected the crown seal to an equivalent of 34 years of winding and timeŽsetting, remaining 100 percent tight. The watches were accordingly robust and
impervious to all types of stress encountered in daily use, and only very rarely did a watchmaker see a Mido again once it was sold.
These quality standards exist yet today, and there are still Mido watches bearing the names of Multifort and Commander that carry a small piece of natural cork fitted around their winding stems.
In the summer of 2003 Mido extended its line of historic models with the Multifort Automatic chronograph. Its conspicuously blue tachymetric scale is oriented on a Mido model from the 1950s
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Mido Swiss Watches
800 South Pacific Coast Highway
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
Tel: 310-212-6436
Fax: 310-212-5764
www.midowatches.com
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