The Christopher Ward watch company was founded on a boat on the River Thames in 2004 by Mike France, Chris Ward and Peter Ellis. From the start this has always been about finding a way for everyone to enjoy the truly visceral pleasure derived from owning and wearing a premium quality Swiss made watch. VIVE LA REVOLUTION! Having learned from insiders in the Swiss watch industry just how much of the cost of a typical luxury Swiss watch is marketing hype, the three friends set out on a mission to turn the traditional model on its head and create a revolution in watchmaking. The phrase they instantly came up with that encapsulated the mission they were about to embark on was that they wanted to create..."the cheapest most expensive watches in the world." Chris was the man with the watch making expertise, Mike and Peter, who previously owned the renowned Early Learning Centre chain of educational toy stores, brought the retail know-how. D-DAY JUNE 4TH 2005 Having spent the best part of a year designing our first two watches, the C5 Malvern Automatic and C3 Malvern Chronograph, they were launched, via our website, onto an unsuspecting world in June 2005. The reaction was astonishing... THE POWER OF THE INTERNET Watch forums across the world were inundated with disbelieving watch aficionados’ claiming watches at this price couldn’t possibly be of the quality claimed. At one point in December 2005 our fledgling brand was being discussed more frequently on the world’s largest watch forum, Timezone, than Rolex! And then, unbeknown to us, one of the world’s most influential watch bloggers, Dave Malone from Australia, purchased a Malvern Automatic with the intention of exposing the myth. To his eternal credit, having received his watch and being blown away by every aspect of it, he wrote a stunningly complimentary post which whizzed around the watch world like wild fire. Christopher Ward had arrived! THE CHRISTOPHER WARD FORUM Other Christopher Ward followers decided in 2006 to start an independent forum, (www.christopherwardforum.com), dedicated to the discussion of our watches and philosophy and this helped to further spread the word so that by the end of that year we had customers in more than 40 countries (today it’s more than 70) as well as a ready made source of comments and ideas. The forum continues to thrive and is the perfect place for people new to our brand to learn what lurks behind the thin marketing veneer! LIKE-MINDED PARTNERS We have been fortunate to create close ties with partners in a host of disciplines who share our vision and values. Our dedicated ateliers in the Jura, Switzerland, who assemble our watches by hand, are small enough to be devoted to the Christopher Ward brand but large enough to have attracted some brilliant watch makers and technicians. A Swiss-made movement is a pre-requisite for a fine watch. We use some of the best and most famous manufacturers such as ETA, Sellita and Ronda.
