The watch company Longines is founded by Ernest Francillon at Saint-Imier in Switzerland. Its origins can be traced back to the 1830s and it currently holds the oldest registered logo for a watch company, a winged hourglass.
Based in Saint-Imier since 1832, the Compagnie des Montres Longines Francillon S.A. is historically among the world’s leading horological houses.
The story of Longines began in 1832, when Auguste Agassiz found a job in the hamlet of Saint-Imier. Agassiz entered the trade by joining with an existing “comptoir”, a business system based on an agreement between producers or salesmen where the comptoir acts as the intermediary between them.
He worked at Comptoir Horloger Raiguel Jeune, a trader of watch parts, and was soon taking over the business when in 1833 he and two of his associates set up a company named Comptoir Raiguel Jeue & Cie.
At the time, the venture was run on the then-prevailing business model based on piecework by people making or processing watch parts in their own homes for the account of a jobber who delivered the blanks, or rough parts, and picked up and paid for the finished ones.
The brand evolved from a “comptoir” to a full-fledged manufacturing and then back down to an “établisseur” today, as a Swatch Group company.
The name is derived from the location in which the company’s first factory was built: “On the right bank of the Suze river near a place called Les Longines, which means “long and narrow fields” in the dialectal French of this area in Switzerland.
