Kienzle Uhren
Kienzle watches has emerged from a German company and now the oldest German watch brand with headquarters in Meggen and Hamburg.
History
Kienzle was founded in 1822 in Schwenningen am Neckar as a German watch factory by the clock master Johannes Schlenker. At the start of sales Schlenker peddling handcrafted Black Forest Clocks. Under his grandson Charles Johannes Schlenker and its 1883 in-married brother Jakob Kienzle a standard fabrication of alarm clocks and Regulateurwerken under the signature Schlenker & Kienzle was born. The produced annually 20,000 pendant and wall clocks were made exclusively by hand. 1893 162.000 watches and clocks per year have already been made .
From 1894 onwards were using the industrialized production of prefabricated, standardized items and broken boards used to reduce inter alia, the amount of material used and thus the costs of alarm clocks and wall clocks. This process optimization in production was innovative at the time.
From 1897 Jakob Kienzle became the sole owner, and the name of the company was converted into its present form Kienzle after some time. The watch manufacturing has been extended and modernized, expanded the international activities. In the following years, in addition to a factory in Bohemia also has offices in Milan, Paris and London were founded.
1900, the company introduced the time clock on the market, followed by inexpensive pocket watches, alarm clocks, travel and watches for ladies. And the first clocks for automobiles were manufactured.
After the First World War, the German watch industry went through a permanent crisis. Consequences of War, inflation and foreign competition threatened the German supplier. As of 1926, the major watch manufacturers therefore negotiated on collaboration and mergers, as a result, the Kienzle clock factories in 1928 merged with the Thomas Ernst Haller AG Schwenningen to Kienzle Haller AG. Discussions with the company also located in Schwenningen Friedrich Mauthe GmbH broke down. During this time, the Kienzle Taxamter and Apparate AG (later Kienzle apparatus) of the Kienzle watch factories split off and led the entire program continues to instruments and control equipment for factories and vehicles (especially Taxamter and work shop watches ) under his own responsibility.
1931 brought the hard-wearing Kienzle wristwatch on the market. By construction, this clock was very resilient and has sold well over 25 million copies. In the late 1930s, the company began with the production of two table clock types that were classified in the higher price category: the Star sign clock, and world clock. Starting in 1936, the products have been presented in Germany in specially converted buses. As a further development of the car clock was developed in the 1930s, the 8-day aviation clock, which was installed in the dashboard of the aircraft cockpit.
The history of the company sat down immediately proceeds after the Second World War. Starting in 1956, the so-called People's automatic was used for production. It supplied a rotor reared in both directions of rotation, the mechanism of energy. The armature is equipped with steel pins.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the company became the market leader in Germany. In 1963, the first solar watch ( " Heliomat " ), 1972, the first battery-operated clock and the first quartz movement was produced. In the following years, Kienzle presented first company to manufacture a quartz - LED Wrist Watch and introduced the first quartz- powered travel alarm clock.
The developed solar watch in 1986 with its lower light requirements and polycrystalline solar generator was a novelty. At the beginning of the 1990s, the company developed a to 12,000 meters depth waterproof clock and presented the first Funkweckuhr the world with analog alarm setting.
In 1996 the company launched a new spark movement on the market. The small twin-engine installation work, which was controlled by radio, it turned a faster than other works and was a world first.
Presence
Kienzle 1997 was acquired by the group Highway Holdings. 2002, the company returned with the founding of the Kienzle AG back to Germany. Since then, there is the company headquarters in Hamburg. So the company bought, among other things, the trademark and started the development and production of three new watch collections in different price ranges. In 2008 the company moved its headquarters in an old merchant's house in Hamburg Hamburg- Harvestehude ..
Early 2010 had to file for bankruptcy again Kienzle, followed by a restructuring followed. Since 2011, the brand is being rebuilt under a new overall management and with a new strategy and aims to build on earlier successes.