Rado (watchmaker)
_logo.svg.png){kind=logo} | |
| Privately held company (belongs to Swatch Group) | |
| Industry | Luxury goods, Watch manufacturer |
| Founded | 1917 as Schlup Co by Fritz, Ernst and Werner Schlup |
| Headquarters | Lengnau, Switzerland |
Key people | Matthias Breschan (CEO) |
| Products | Watches |
Number of employees | 470+ (worldwide) |
| Parent | The Swatch Group |
| Website | www.rado.com |
Rado is a Swiss luxury watchmaking company, with headquarters in Lengnau, Switzerland.[1] The company that was founded in 1917 was able to launch the first scratch-resistant watch – the 1962 DiaStar. The company received awards including the Red Dot Award, the iF Design Award, and the Good Design Award. Today the company produces about half a million watches a year with a staff of about 470 in total.
History and Design
1917
Rado The watch movement factory Schlup & Co. was established in Lengnau, Switzerland in 1917. The Schlup brothers initially focused on the production of watch movements during the first couple of decades of operation. In 1957, the company presented its first entirely in-house produced watch collection and named it the Rado Collection.
Watch collections (From DiaStar to Hyperchrome)
The watches from Rado use materials including specialised ceramics, carbide, and sapphire crystal. The 1962 DiaStar 1 is one of the company's models. This was the first scratch-resistant watch. Currently, the watch is manufactured with the name “original” in the D-Star collection. The D-Star collection also includes the D-Star 200 and the elegant D-Star.
Captain Cook MK1
From 1962 to 1968 was made in low quantities (only 8,000 pieces) a diver watch: Captain Cook MK1: with 220 meters of depth resistance, was an extremely modern watch for the time.
Rado Ceramica
In 1990, the company launched the Rado Ceramica, which was the first watch in which both the case and bracelet were made of durable ceramic. A high-tech injection moulding process enables the production of a high-tech ceramic case as a single piece.