More Swiss watch companies closed than opened in the past year
Swiss law puts every company birth and death in an official gazette. We read every notice that mentions watches. Over these twelve months, 84 new watch companies were registered and 150 began to leave: wound up, made bankrupt or struck off.
This page counts only the companies our software is confident are in the watch trade: right 14 times in 15 on a checked sample. , with the caveat that the rest are guesses.
Updated every Monday from the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce. Last read 12 October 2026.
founded
left
Each square is one company, in date order. Point at a square to see which.
Month by month
Running total: companies gained minus companies lost
Who
Each company is sorted by the trade in its registered purpose. Retailers include jewellers who list watches among their goods. Suppliers make parts, cases, dials and straps for others.
How they left
The first notice we saw for each company that left. A company struck off this year may have started winding up earlier; one placed in liquidation this year may still be on the register.
Where
Each tile is a canton, placed roughly where it sits on the map. The number is companies founded minus companies that left.
Net change
Names in the gazette
Familiar names among this year's notices
Each entry states only what the notice says. A company name is not always the brand: a historic name can sit in an old company that is being wound up while the brand trades elsewhere.
Every notice
Search the full list
Every notice, newest first. A company can appear more than once as its case moves on. Rows marked “unsure” are the software's guess and have not been checked by a person.
| Date | Event | Company | Trade | Canton | Registered purpose (English) | Notice |
|---|
Method
Source
The Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (SOGC), read through its public API every week. Commercial-register notices of foundings, liquidations and deletions, and bankruptcy notices. Every row links to its notice.
What counts as a watch company
Any company whose name or registered purpose mentions watches or watchmaking in French, German, Italian or English. Sole proprietorships are left out because they name a private person.
Counting
Each company is counted once on each side: on its first founding notice, and on its first notice of leaving. The page shows the twelve months to the latest notice, so the first and last months are usually part months.
Translation
Purposes are published in French, German or Italian. The English beside each is a machine translation by Claude, made for this page; the original, which is the legal text, opens beneath it and on the notice itself.
Limits
Trade sorting is automatic. On a checked sample it was right 7 times in 10 overall, 14 in 15 for confident rows and 7 in 15 for unsure ones. The gazette carries no industry code, so a jeweller and a manufacture can only be told apart by their wording.