WISekey reaches an agreement with the Liaoning Government to establish a WISekey Anti Counterfeiting Center at the Liaoning Watch Factory, located in Dandong City.
Liaoning Province, is one of China's biggest watch movement manufacturers with over 50 years experience. The range of movements made by the factory include hand-winding tourbillons, automatic chronographs and several variants of the Chinese Standard movement including skeleton and open-heart. Liaoning Watch Factory is a major supplier of movements to Million Smart Enterprises and other OEM companies.
The agreement will allow WISekey unique breakthrough solution to help reduce counterfeiting among the luxury watch industry and to protect the 3 million watches produced at the Liaoning Watch Factory. This solution arrives during a period on which the watch industry is also impacted by the crisis and needs to reassure its clients.
The Liaoning Watch Factory will the use of WISekey technology WISeAuthentic®, a certification system of authenticity through a smartcard.to secure tehir local production.
"Counterfeiting represents approximately five to seven percent of all world trade," said Carlos Moreira, CEO of WISeKey. "Therefore, with the luxury brand industries estimated to reach one trillion dollars (US) by 2010, these companies need a solution that will prove authenticity. We are pleased that WISeKey technology can be used in the fight against counterfeiting."
The export Peacock automatics were one response to the success of quartz watches, another was to begin selling movements to Hong Kong watch producers. The Liaoning 'ZLN' soon became one of the most commonly used Standard movements in the industry. However declining sales on the domestic market prompted development of a new product; something cheaper but with added value. The KongQue 'Sun & Moon' watch was introduced with a modern square case and a simple 24 hour disk turning counterclockwise at 6 o'clock. This watch was a commercial failure, and many unused examples continue to be available nearly 20 years later. The significance of this watch however is that it is an early example of the trends that continue to define mechanical watch production in China; that is, simple mechanical enhancements for maximum visual effect. Liaoning Watch Factory now boasts a wide selection of multi-calendar, skeleton and open-heart variants of the automatic Standard movement. Development of new variants is ongoing.
Early in the 21st century, Liaoning introduced China's first automatic chronograph, based on the design of the ETA 7750. Of even greater significance was the development of their tourbillon movement, which offers unrivalled value-for-money for such a complicated feature and has been a major successs in watches assembled by Million Smart Enterprises. This movment was even used for the 150th anniversary watch of the prestigious British Horological Institute.
Ebauches of the tourbillon movement are currently supplied to a Swiss company (name omitted by request) who assemble them for their own brand of Swiss watches. Given the higher component cost of a tourbillon movement it is fair to say that in order to meet 'Swiss Made' rules, the Swiss component value in such movements would be relatively higher than other Swiss-finished Chinese ebauches. Interestingly, the Liaoning Watch Factory catalogue shows an example of the movement featuring the distinctive 'CP' logo tourbillon carriage of the Swiss client watches.