Those Ingersoll watches are produced under the european part of the original trademark. The US trademark is still owned by Timex, the european by Zeon, an UK low price watches producer.
The trademark rights have been granted to a German company (Cristano or similar name) two years ago and they started a larger scaled production of an entirely mechanical collection of watches with a vintage look. All are fitted with chinese movements and most of them look like chronographs but are in fact multi-functions watches only.
They've sold extremly well in the beginning, most larger department stores offered them, mail order catalogues included some models and many jewellers also had them. The owners of the german company have been some kind of distributor of other brands before and have a large network of sales agents. Low priced (all below 200 EUR in the beginning), a watch for the newbies, those that ever wanted a mechanical watch but hesitated to spend to much money for it. The designs are good but often, let's call it friendly 'hommages', of known watches of famous brands.
Here's the website:
http://www.ingersoll-uhren.de/
The quality was really bad in the beginning, i've heared of several jewellers that had up to 50% returns, we also repaired a lot of them, quite bad made movements with several tricks that could cause defects very easily, i think they've improved the quality but i haven't seen one of the new productions yet.
Zeon has something to do with the productions, maybe the watches are made in the same factories on order only, anyway, they offer also Ingersoll branded watches but those (the 'diamond' studded ones) look even worser, just feed for the masses on tv shopping channels.
The trademark rights have been granted to a German company (Cristano or similar name) two years ago and they started a larger scaled production of an entirely mechanical collection of watches with a vintage look. All are fitted with chinese movements and most of them look like chronographs but are in fact multi-functions watches only.
They've sold extremly well in the beginning, most larger department stores offered them, mail order catalogues included some models and many jewellers also had them. The owners of the german company have been some kind of distributor of other brands before and have a large network of sales agents. Low priced (all below 200 EUR in the beginning), a watch for the newbies, those that ever wanted a mechanical watch but hesitated to spend to much money for it. The designs are good but often, let's call it friendly 'hommages', of known watches of famous brands.
Here's the website:
http://www.ingersoll-uhren.de/
The quality was really bad in the beginning, i've heared of several jewellers that had up to 50% returns, we also repaired a lot of them, quite bad made movements with several tricks that could cause defects very easily, i think they've improved the quality but i haven't seen one of the new productions yet.
Zeon has something to do with the productions, maybe the watches are made in the same factories on order only, anyway, they offer also Ingersoll branded watches but those (the 'diamond' studded ones) look even worser, just feed for the masses on tv shopping channels.
