DOXA

Georges Ducommun began his watchmaking apprenticeship at age 12 in 1880 in Le Locle, Switzerland. In 1889, at just 21 years old, he founded 'Georges Ducommun, Fabriques DOXA'. The brand quickly gained recognition, winning gold medals at World's Fairs in Liège (1905) and Milan (1906). In 1907, DOXA patented the '8-Day Caliber' dashboard clock that became standard equipment on Bugatti racing cars. After Georges' death in 1936, his son-in-law Jacques Nardin (grandson of Ulysse Nardin) took over. The brand continued innovating with alarm watches, ring-watches, and the Bauhaus-inspired 'Grafic' dress watch collection in 1957. The pivotal year was 1967 when DOXA unveiled the SUB 300 at Baselworld - the first professional-grade dive watch accessible to recreational divers. Developed in partnership with diving legend Jacques-Yves Cousteau (then chairman of US Divers), it featured the revolutionary orange dial for underwater visibility and the patented no-decompression bezel. The Swiss Army equipped its elite combat divers with DOXA SUB 300T Professional watches from 1968-1975. In 1968, DOXA introduced the SUB 300T Conquistador, one of the first dive watches with a helium escape valve for saturation diving. That same year, DOXA became part of Synchron S.A. The quartz crisis devastated the brand; in 1978 it was acquired by Aubrey Frères S.A. and ceased operations around 1980. The brand was revived in 1997 when the Jenny family of Bienne - active in watchmaking for four generations - acquired DOXA and moved headquarters to Biel/Bienne. They reintroduced the SUB series in 2002. In 2019, Romeo F. Jenny was appointed President of the Board of Directors of Walca Group, with Jan Edöcs as CEO of DOXA Watches.