Tudor

Hans Wilsdorf had already established Rolex when he set out to sell a less expensive watch with a comparable promise of reliability. Tudor was the answer. Its early watches could use Rolex cases and the same distribution and service network, while their movements came from specialist suppliers.

The name preceded the company. In 1926, the watchmaking business Veuve de Philippe Hüther registered “The Tudor” for Wilsdorf; he took over the rights in 1936 and established Montres Tudor SA in 1946. Early advertising made the Rolex connection explicit. This was a new name being introduced with an existing company's backing.

Diving gave Tudor a demanding application for that arrangement. Its first Submariner arrived in 1954. Two years later, the French Navy's underwater research group in Toulon received Tudor watches for evaluation. Those trials began a relationship that produced documented naval watches over the following decades. The case had to keep water out, but a diver also had to distinguish the hands and read elapsed minutes. Changes to the face and hands were practical matters, not just a way of updating a catalogue photograph.

Much later, Tudor changed the part of the watch it had traditionally bought from others. It introduced its first manufacture movement in 2015, then established the movement-producing company Kenissi in 2016. In 2023 it inaugurated a red-clad factory in Le Locle, physically connected to the Kenissi building next door. Watch assembly and movement production now occupied adjoining facilities.

That is a substantial change from Wilsdorf's original arrangement. The relationship with Rolex explains where Tudor started; it does not describe everything the company now makes for itself.