The topic of the Tudor brand has been raised more than once – what it represents, what kind of watches it produces, and so on. What we should agree on, however, is that in recent years the brand has clearly shown that it is working purposefully to step out of the shadow of Rolex, presenting a collection with its own spirit and ideas that help create an independent identity.
In other words, while Rolex strives to deliver increasingly bright and attention-grabbing designs for the newly rich, Tudor aims to serve the proletariat. We hope that these words will not provoke another wave of controversy, and we would like to say that they come from an official statement made a few years ago by a representative of Rolex management – admittedly, slightly interpreted by us, but only for journalistic effect :-).
Fortunately – at least in our opinion.
Tudor is an interesting brand with a rich history. Hans Wilsdorf, the founder of Rolex, was a brilliant strategist with a very good and clear vision for the future, and this is confirmed by the following words of his: “For several years I have been considering the idea of creating a watch that our agents would be able to sell at a more modest price than Rolex, but at the same time this watch would have to meet the same standards of quality and reliability for which Rolex are famous. I decided to establish a separate company for the purpose of producing and marketing this new watch. It is called the Tudor Watch Company.” Having created Rolex in the first decade of the 20th century and already, by that time, a leading figure in the world of luxury Swiss watches, he made this announcement on 6 March 1946. It marked the birth of the Tudor brand and of its production and communication strategy.
Hans Wilsdorf’s intuition was as simple as it was brilliant. At that time, the development of the watchmaking industry was in full swing, and today’s widespread mergers and acquisitions in the sector were still a distant future. The public was ready to recognise and appreciate a product whose technical, aesthetic and functional qualities were not offered by a newcomer to the market, but by the Rolex brand, which had already earned worldwide fame for the high quality of its watches.
Initially, the rose was chosen as the company’s logo – a reference to historical facts and, more specifically, to the royal Tudor dynasty, in whose coat of arms, as you know, the rose occupies a central place and whose name was used for the naming of the brand.
After several decades during which the brand remained in the shadow of Rolex and all of its models, even in their names, copied the same models of the parent company, 2009 arrived, when the corporation decided to invest in Tudor’s own path of development. This was shown at Baselworld 2009 and reinforced with the new advertising campaign: “Designed for Performance. Engineered for Elegance.” Tudor’s communication strategy is focused on the technical refinement of the models, and this is shown through the disappearance of the rose from the brand’s logo and the focus on the shield, which becomes the new logo of the brand.
The model was first presented in 2023, and its name immediately reveals the collaboration from which it was born. The aim is to immortalise the new partnership with the multiple America’s Cup winner and legend in water sports – the Alinghi Sailing Team, whose headquarters are, strange as it may sound, in... Geneva. The partnership between Tudor and Alinghi Sailing Team started in 2022, and here the brand replaced none other than names such as Audemars Piguet, Hublot and Omega.
The sporty spirit of the model complements the heritage it carries – starting with the crown, which is ribbed and oversized, moving through the dial design – a deep blue colour with red accents, a nod to the team’s main sponsor Red Bull – the carbon composite case, used by Tudor for the first time, and the titanium unidirectional bezel. All of this simply screams that this watch is not just any watch, and that the materials used aim to show the strong connection with the partner sailing team.
At its heart beats the brand’s in-house MT5813 movement – a column-wheel chronograph created in collaboration with Breitling and their proverbial B01, with 70 hours of power reserve, 47 jewels and operating at 28,800 vibrations – excellently proven for its robustness.
