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Law Enforcement, Athletic, Riding Goggles, Sunglasses and Prescriptions
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and Shipping Address
email: sales@selfdefensearmory.com
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Phone Orders/Order Status: 800-690-9813
Toll Free
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Fax:
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Who is Orient Watch Co.?
GI's, Marines, Sailors and Airmen brought
home a couple of very important items in the late 1960s when returning
from a tour of duty in the
Far East. First was a stereo, with the
obligatory reel-to-reel tape deck. For those too young to know,
reel-to-reel was before 8-track tapes, which was before cassettes,
which
was before CDs, which was before MP3. The second item they
brought home was a watch. More often
than not, the watch was either an Orient or Seiko watch. Good
deals were to be had with the American dollar from the Far East.
While Seiko embraced quartz technology a few years later and become a
household name worldwide, Orient Watch Company went about their
business of refining mechanical and automatic self-winding
watches. They manufacture a few quartz watch movements, but the
heart and
soul of
the Orient Watch Co's management team in Japan was in perfecting
mechanical wind up watches, followed by automatic self-winding watches
in the early seventies.
Orient Watch Co. Ltd started business in Japan in 1950. Orient
Watch is one of Japan's big
three watchmakers along with Seiko and Citizen. Seiko and Citizen
actively pursued the U.S. market, particularly with the advent of
quartz watch technology, while Orient primarily pursued parts of
Europe, Russia, its Far East markets close to home, and to a lesser
degree South and Central America. They have warranty repair
facilities worldwide including here in the U.S.
Today, Orient watches remain very popular in the Far East, parts of
Europe and
Russia. But in the U.S. they have what can only be characterized
as a cult following. Let's face it, when was the last time you
saw an advertisement for an Orient watch or seen them in a department
store somewhere? Most Americans have never heard of Orient
watches. Despite not pursuing the American market like
their competitors, their staying power from the sixties has remained
strong in the U.S. with those familiar with Orient's extraordinary
reliability and clean design lines. There are folks to this day
who still have the same Orient mechanical watch they brought home
almost
40 years ago, and they're still working as well as the day they
purchased them. That has built a loyal core of long time fans of
Orient watches which is evidenced on the internet today at Orient
online groups where fans of Orient talk about the latest product news
or their
favorite Orient watch.
Lately there has been a resurgence of interest in automatic
self-winding watches by the general public. More Americans are
being reintroduced to the mechanical watch and its unique and exquisite
craftsmanship. The Swiss have been producing more and more
in recent years and we are beginning to see some of them show up in
some of the major department stores, albeit rare. In other
parts of the world, mechanical watches never lost their allure and
remain very popular.
Orient Watch Co. today is recognized as one of the best
mechanical watchmakers in the world. They play second fiddle to
no one when it comes to
quality mechanical movements. They are perfectly poised to
again win the hearts of American watch lovers with their extraordinary
line of self-winding automatic watches.
Over the last two decades, like Seiko, Orient's skills in producing
very small mechanical parts lead them into the computer sector in the
1980s producing small parts for printers and the computer
industry. Today, Orient's business has transformed into a
multi-industry corporation. There is a good chance some
mechanical parts manufactured by Orient are in your printers at your
place of work. But, the watch division remains true to producing
fine mechanical watches. Some of the most prized watches in the
world are Orient Star and Orient Royal watches, which are very high-end
timepieces. They are a favorite of
collectors and those who have enough financial resources to buy them
like the rest of us by Citizens or Timex watches.
Orient's self-winding
mechanical watches represent fine
craftsmanship that somehow has gotten lost in recent years to
electronics manufacturers trying to stuff everything from a
computer to a cell phone on our wrists. But we think Americans
are ready for a change to the concept
of a watch telling us the time and doing nothing more than that, but
doing it far more eloquently than a quartz watch.
There is something magical about a second hand sweeping around the dial
instead of quartz watch ticking once every second. That sweep of
the second
hand is what quality
watch making is all about. When someone else notices the sweep of
the second hand, more often than not, they'll ask about your
watch. A mechanical vs. quartz watch is like the difference in
sound
between a V-8 and a four cylinder. It's like the difference
between the sound a single action revolver makes while being cocked vs.
a slide being pulled back on a semi-auto pistol. Both types are
like fine music to the ears of an aficionado. Some marvel at
the electronics stuffed into a wristwatch, while others marvel at the
mechanical genius of a self-winding automatic.
We think a lot of
Americans are once again ready to appreciate the allure, beauty, and
reliability of a mechanical
watch by Orient Watch Co. We hope you are one of them. You
will not be disappointed with your purchase.
Self
Defense Armory
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