View single post by Hammerfjord
 Posted: Thu Jan 7th, 2010 10:54 am
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Hammerfjord



Joined: Thu Apr 16th, 2009
Location: Arctic, Norway
Posts: 5821
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 Yema started to be a kind of iconic brand in diving-watches and was very recognised in France in the 70-80's but the Seiko-buy buried them. At this time everybody thought that the mechanical-watch-era was dead and Seiko was good in quartz. Maybe Seiko wanted to come closer to the European market but that wasn't the right way: Many saw it as the flagship of French-divers was tarnished.

To recapitulate precisely: Yema born in 1948 in Besancon(France), in the 50's they start with antichoc, water-tight and automatic diving-watches, also chronos.
In the 60's comes out the model "Superman" who's 300m deep water-tight and 1967 was the year where Yema was the most exported French watch in the world.
In 1985 the second French man in space is wearing a Yema. Matra Horlogerie(French company) had bought Yema in 1982 and then sell it to Seiko in 1988: From then, the sells are falling... Yema was selling 1 million watches in the year 1980, 20 years later they sell under 100 thousands.