American watch brand Welsbro brings an extraordinary color to the haute horology with new models that produced with vintage movements and cases after 50 years.
If something excites a watch enthusiast more than a vintage watch, it should be a yummy vintage watch. Yes, I wrote “a yummy vintage watch” because in the following line I will talk about a heritage watch brand that again started to produce timepieces inspired by culinary almost half a century later.
The watch brand that I have mentioned is Welsbro; the chances are you haven’t heard of it until now, because it has not been produced since 1970’s. The story of this US-based watch brand goes back almost a century: the brand was founded in 1926 with the Weissman Watch Company, a family company in New York, combines watch parts imported from Switzerland at that time and assembled the watches in the USA. (Weissman is still quite known for its vintage watches produced with modern techniques.) In the 1930s, they began to watch under the name of “Welsbro”. It is said that the original name of the brand was “Weisbro” for “Weissman” plus “Brothers”. However, the name “Weisbro” was often misread on the watch dial as “Welsbro”.
In the lead up to Second World War, pocket watches were starting to give way to wrist watches; of course, the popular watches of this period were the military-style wristwatches. Despite being a small brand, Welsbro was also starting to produce wristwatches by keeping up with this trend. Ultimately, it managed to survive among the major watch manufacturers of the time, like Hamilton, Elgin, Bulova and Ilınois.
During these 20 years, Welsbro became popular throughout the country by producing various timepieces, creating fashionable watches as well as military style watches in the 1950s when both gentle’s and lady’s watches were part of fashion. The brand achieves success by offering these watches with an advertising moot “For those who want to a lot of quality and style without spending a lot”. By the 70s, it succeeded with the diving watches when sport watches became more fashionable.
The interesting point in this story is that the 1970s, which is the last years of Welsbro, were a turning point for the watchmaking world, just like the years when the brand was born. This period, the “Quartz Criss”, resulted in the collapse of many small mechanical watch brands with the introduction of battery-powered watches entered the industry. Just like many other small mechanical watch companies, the Welsbro also disappeared on the market. Until Rich and Katie re-established the brand 50 years later.
