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About O&W
The story begins 1956 when, together with a partner, I founded the Ollech & Wajs Watch Company. Right from the beginning, we concentrated on manufacturing rugged, good looking sports watches at affordable prices. One day, a young American student on visit in Switzerland, bought
one of our watches. He said to us: Why don't you sell your watches in the US. Everyone there needs a timepiece like that, that can stand it's man. To keep quality high and prices low, we decided to try something new... To sell by mail to US customers directly from Switzerland and eliminate the middleman's profit. This approach proved very successful, for our company, and also for the many happy US owners of our watches. Our company received many letters from satisfied customers. You can view some of these Customer letters on my homepage.
All our watches were equipped with mechanical movements with at least 17 jewels. When the first quartz watches made their appearance, in the early 80ties, mechanical watches came temporarily out of fashion. We stopped production. Today, Swiss mechanical watches of good workmanship are very much sought after again. Quite frequently I was approached by former customers in need of a solid, sturdy timepiece. The models shown here are 100% Swiss, of very good quality, and prices are affordable.
Thank you for your interest. Please use the Order form to e-mail your order. Payment should be by credit card or via bank transfer. Shipments are usualy made within 5 days after receipt of payment via registered postal priority mail.
A. Wajs - Swiss made Army Watches
Wikipedia - The free encyclopedia about O&W:
Ollech & Wajs started business in the 1950s when Albert Wajs began making and supplying stainless steel bracelets for wristwatches. In 1956, a partnership was formed with Joseph Ollech, and they soon began manufacturing wristwatches. Business was done from their retail premises in Zurich. They soon began to expand into world wide markets, more notably the US and UK markets by advertising in magazines that were popular with aviatos, soldiers, divers and sportsmen, selling direct to the end user by mail order from Switzerland.
In the 1960s O&W sold a variety of professional automatic and manual-wind mechanical military and dive watches for an average of US $12. The Ollech & Wajs M 65 military watch was often sold at PX's on US military bases. These watches became very popular with US soldiers who bought them privately as a replacement for their government issued disposable watches. Sales reached an all time high during the Vietnam War era when they were selling thousands of watches via direct mail order.