Tissot – Brand Profile

But if it continues to produce a number of classically styled watches that reveal that lineage, its identity is more closely associated these days with the sporting world that it has courted for so long.

Over the years, Tissot has been responsible for innovations from the impressive to the downright quixotic. They range from the first antimagnetic watch in 1930 to the first plastic mechanical watch in 1971 to a string of oddities in the 1980s, when it turned out watches in rock, wood and mother-of pearl. Its highly successful T-Touch touch-screen watches, which debuted in 1999 and are still among its big sellers, have maintained that tradition of creativity.

It has kept a firm hold on the qualities that made its name in the first place, witness its numerous modern takes on antique classics, such as the Classic Prince first released in 2002, a modern version of its famous 1916 “Banana Watch”. The Tissot Heritage collection, of which it is a part, is almost a living history of the brand.

Yet Tissot’s present and future seems wedded to an altogether more high-adrenaline world. It has been working with motor sports since the 1930s, for instance. It sponsored Porsche racing cars in the 1960s and the Lotus Formula 1 team in the 1970s, and it is still the official timekeeper of the MotoGP motorbike circuit.

It is an involvement that feeds steadily into the design of its watches, starting with the “dust-free” Tissot in a close-up of a racing driver’s wrist in a famous 1934 advertising poster. By the 1960s, it was putting out watches with the broad hands and chronograph style of a racecar dashboard, holed straps that mimicked the steering wheel, and arabic numerals styled like the numbers on the sides of racing cars.

Those features are still to be found in combination across the Tissot collection, which is studded with high-performance watches with an aggressively sporty design. This is a conscious part of brand positioning for Tissot, which is now owned by Swatch, and which has also established a position in a range of sports from fencing and cycling to ice hockey and basketball.

Its brand ambassadors reflect that focus: with the exception of several actors from markets of the future like China and India, Tissot is represented by sports figures as diverse as football’s Michael Owen and NASCAR driver Danica Patrick.