Alpina

Brand history

Founded 1883 in Biel/Bienne as a watchmakers cooperative; now headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates. Alpina supplied pilot watches to the French Air Force and has made Swiss-made sport watches at accessible prices for over a century.

Founded 1883 in Geneva by Gottlieb Hauser as a cooperative of European watchmakers under the "Alpina Union" banner, one of the earliest attempts to standardize parts and share movement production across smaller Swiss firms. The brand changed ownership several times through the 20th century and spent decades as a largely dormant name before being relaunched in 2002 under the Frederique Constant group (Scheufele family) with an explicit outdoor-sport positioning. The Startimer Pilot, whose design pulls from the German Flieger tradition but adds Swiss complications, and the Seastrong Diver are the modern catalog anchors. The Alpiner 4 uses a hall-effect sensor to measure altitude, temperature, and compass bearing alongside the mechanical movement, a combination the brand calls the world's first "mechanical smartwatch." Priced in the CHF 700–2,500 band; ETA and Sellita base calibers with Alpina finishing.