Sicura by Breitling - no!

[retroleds]

I keep seeing "Sicura by Breitling". That's kind of funny, sellers are trying to draft off the Breitling name, which is what the CEO of Sicura thought in 1978, My understanding from several sources is that Breitling went bankrupt and the smaller Sicura bought them and ditched the Sicura name and moved all manufacturing to Breitlings factories and methods. Sicura management thought the Breitling name had more cache - I agree.
What say yee?

*Sicura Memomaster coming up - incredible, with a few items I've never seen with it. Like a custom Sicura stamped case wrench.

[cybr]

Hi Ed,

You are perfectly right...there is NO evidence of a "Sicura by Breitling" watch...PERIOD!
On the other hand, one cannot categorize Sicura watch company as "small" in the 70s - it sold about 1 million watches/year, or even "smaller" than Breitling in the same timeline, at least not in the terms of income and profit in the mid-late 70s (we are not talking here about the past fame of those brands - but how they were financially "big or small" in the mid-late 70s - most probably also because Breitling had invested a lot and finally loose a lot financially by supporting the R&D on the 1969 Chronomatic/Calibre 11 Automatic Chronograph, which was not a high commercial success, being somehow "technically" inferior to the 36000 vph famous Zenith El Primero Automatic Chronograph - and even the Zenith Company had big financial problems in mid-late 70s! ).
https://www.timeandwatches.com/p/the-history-of-zenith-el-primero.html

In some ways, the Sicura's CEO Ernest Schneider was a small genius of marketing and very well prepared to survive in the "quartz crisis" that hit all Swiss Watchmakers in the 70s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_crisis

For example: "Sicura in the mid-70s were sitting pretty, selling about 1 million units a year and still mainly using mechanical movements." which was not the case for many Swiss watchmakers
https://thenorthernwatchco.com/2020/01/08/are-sicura-watches-worth-collecting-will-they-rise-in-value/
Not to mention that Sicura brand have had developed - IN THE SAME TIME - for example, some "innovative and revolutionary" watches, such as the Solar LCD watches - and now I am citing from the outstanding book of Pieter Doensen - WATCH. History of the modern wrist watch.
i) 1976 - A few months later the Sicura Watch Co. Grenchen, Switzerland, produces the 'Solar-Star Quartz'.
ii) 1977- At the Basle Fair of 1977, Sicura shows a curious solar watch the 'VIP 2000', also known under the name 'Sikato', with solar cells on the right side of the watch. In 1978 Sicura marketed a similar 'Chrono Alarm' model.
https://doensen.home.xs4all.nl/n2.html
So - in my humble opinion - pure and simply and so fortunate for all current watch lovers and collectors, Sicura's CEO Ernest Schneider had enough money - and as a "former pilot" knowing what Breitling brand means - also had the will to save the famous Breitling brand from extinction in late 70s!
And also, as you mentioned above, he had the ability to see that "the Breitling name had more cache" in it...so - in the end - he finally dropped the (otherwise very lucrative) Sicura brand in favour of Breitling brand in the 80s !

Best regards and many thanks for all your very significant contributions for the watch collecting community and history,


PS. And to not mention the ultra rare SICURA keyring watch Ernest Schneider made in 1969 (a very smart "marketing" approach in my opinion!) - to celebrate de MOONLANDING - as a gift for the Apollo 11 Astronauts and the USA president Richard Nixon in 1969; one may read more about it on my recent NewDWF post:
http://www.newdwf.com/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=8079&start=110#p55818