WALDAN WATCHES
Based in New York, Waldan Watches (Waldan International) was founded by in 1979 Oscar Waldan (1923-2018). Today, his son Andrew L Waldan runs the watchmaking company that has remained a private, family owned business throughout its history.
Oscar Waldan was born in Poland. A passionate horology enthusiastic since his young age, Oscar Waldan studied horology in Germany. Crafting the most elegant mechanical timepieces became a vision he longed to make a reality. His years of experience beforehand in the watch industry helped cultivate that dream into a reality and allowed him to develop his mindset regarding the mastery and reign of mechanical watches.
His first job in the watch industry was at Charles Tissot in Le Locle, Switzerland where he was submitting his own designs. He continued on an uphill climb with a new position as a Sales Executive and Vice President of Merchandising and Styling at Universal Geneve, where he worked alongside master designer, Gerald Genta.
With access to the famous Rolex/Wilsdorf collection, he cultivated an even greater interest in antique watches and complicated mechanisms and further developed his talent for designing intricate mechanical timepieces. With his profound knowledge, he set out to establish his own brand and company. Finally, in 1979, Oscar Waldan founded Waldan International, with a watch factory in Bienne, Switzerland and a corporate office and repair center in New York City.
During this time, very few chronograph watches were being produced in Switzerland. Universal Geneve even liquidated all of their gold chronographs. Oscar Waldan grabbed this opportunity to revive this legendary movement. He subsequently managed to purchase 100 retro Valjoux 88 movements and produce 100 watches for Tiffany & Co and Tourneau. With this newfound success, he soon went on to produce another 100 watches with the famous El Primero 3019PHF chronograph movement under the Ulysse Nardin name.
These watches were a phenomenal success as well. At the time, Ulysse Nardin was not a fully registered name. Oscar Waldan had a contractual arrangement with Mr. Schmidt, from Ogival, who also owned the name Ulysse Nardin, to buy this name for a one year period with an option to buy the company afterwards. Upon learning of the success of these mechanical watches, they associated the success to their brand name and refused to sell the company to Oscar Waldan. However, the success of these watches was in fact due to the classic design of the watch and the quality of the cases and dials.
Soon after, Oscar Waldan learned that Zenith Movado had thousands of Zenith 2522PC automatic chronograph movements, which they were unable to market. He decided to purchase all of their moonphase chronograph movements and launched a campaign to promote chronographs in Switzerland and the United States.
This promotion successfully aroused curiosity and interest from the audience. As a result Mr. Pierre Blum, the former owner of Ebel, purchased all of Zeniths chronograph movements without moonphase. In 1982, Oscar Waldan met Mr. Kubel Wilsdorf, a member of the family of the owners of Rolex. Upon enthusiastically showing him his watch, Mr. Wilsdorf expressed a great deal of interest in it, which in turn led to Rolex undertaking the project of marketing chronographs and purchasing perpetual movements from Zenith. Ultimately, chronograph watches made a notable return into the watch market.
Along with his perseverance towards the reign of chronograph watches, Waldan International produced fine gold quartz watches for men and ladies. In the 1980’s, Waldan International supplied Tiffany & Co with 80% of their Tiffany label gold quartz watches. At this time the company also supplied 30% of Cartier’s gold quartz watches and continued to produce quartz watches for a few jewellers in Brazil, England and the United States.
Now Andrew Lloyd Waldan, the son of Oscar Waldan, continues the legacy of the brand.
