Timex Group B.V. is the parent of Timex Group USA, Inc. The latter is located in Middlebury, Connecticut, and began in 1854 as WaterburyClock in Connecticut's Naugatuck Valley, known during the nineteenth century as the "Switzerland of America." Sister company Waterbury Watch manufactured the first inexpensive mechanical pocket watch in 1880. During World War I, Waterbury began making wristwatches, which had only just become popular, and in 1933 it made history by creating the first Mickey Mouse clock under license from Walt Disney, with Mickey's hands pointing the time. This was made under the Ingersoll brand. In 1879 the company introduced a wristwatch called the [Timex] for the UK market.
Watches were not sold under the name Timex in the U.S until 1950. Over the next three decades, Timex watches were sold through a series of advertisements which emphasised durability by putting watches through "torture tests", such as falling over the Grand Coulee Dam or being strapped to the propeller of an outboard motor, with the slogan "It takes a licking and keeps on ticking." With the help of TV newscaster-turned-spokesman John Cameron Swayze, sales took off. The company later became Timex Corporation, then Timex Group USA, Inc., and, to date, has sold over one billion watches worldwide.
In the 1970s, the American watch and clock industry was devastated by the arrival of cheap mechanical watches from the Far East, as well as the development of digital quartz watches pioneered by Japanese companies. In the 1980s, in a joint venture with Sinclair Research Ltd, the company entered the home computer business, selling such computers as the Timex Sinclair 1000 and succeeding machines, modeled on the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum. After a reasonably good sales performance to begin with, the Timex Group decided it couldn't compete with the low-end market's eventual saturation and so the company withdrew.
The Timex Group survived the 1970s and 1980s and came back strongly. The group remains profitable and competitive and the Timex brand remains strong. The primary market remains the United States and Canada for the Timex brand, although Timex watches are sold worldwide due to a strong brand image and reputation for quality. In addition, Timex Group sells many other brands addressing all segments of the watch market, such as Guess, Nautica, Eckō, Opex and, in a successful foray into the luxury watch market, Versace, Valentino, andFerragamo. In addition to its regular watch lines Timex also manufactures the well received Timex Datalink series of PDA-type watches that has attained cult-like status among computergadget aficionados. Timex also manufactures GPS enabled watches, heart rate monitor exercise watches and similar high tech devices.
Today, Timex group's products are manufactured in the Far East and in Switzerland, often based on technology that continues to be developed in the United States and in Germany. The group has operations in a number of countries in Europe, the Americas, and Asia.
As of 2006, it had 5,500 employees on four continents. It is privately held and does not have a published annual report.
