Swatch is a brand name for a line of non-luxury wrist watches introduced in 1983. Its parent company is now known as The Swatch Group, a Swiss conglomerate with vertical control of the production of Swiss watches and related products. This concept was realised in the early 1980s, under the leadership of the then ETA SA's CEO, Ernst Thomke with a small team of enthusiastic watch engineers led by Elmar Mock and Jacques Müller, who had had the idea to use the case back as a movement main plate , as it had been done to realise the thinnest watch in the world, the Delirium which made it to... market in 1979. It was also designed for easy assembling. Conceived at the beginning as a standard timekeeper in plastic, Franz Sprecher, a marketing consultant hired by Thomke to give the project an outsider's consideration, soon led the project into what it has become: a fun "Brand" with a full brand identity and marketing concept, instead of developing just another watch collection, which could have soon been matched by the competition.
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