Companies
The Swatch watch passed another milestone on March 1, 2008, as it celebrated the 25th year of its first sales in Switzerland. While there were plenty who scoffed at the idea of a cheap, plastic watch when it came out on March 1, 1983, the past quarter-century has shown that the brand was a huge winner for the Swiss watch industry.
One hundred years ago in Bern one of Switzerland’s most famous export products was invented – the nougat-chocolate Toblerone. For years it was believed that its triangular shape represented the equally famous Swiss mountain, the Matterhorn. Now historians have rejected this myth.
Swiss shipping company MSC, headquartered in Geneva, is making headlines for two reasons: On the one hand, it is the world’s second biggest business of its kind despite the fact that Switzerland is landlocked. On the other, the 100-strong staff of its Basel office is entirely made up of women. At the helm of the all-female crew is René Mägli, who believes that women do not strive for power and hence work better. With his approach to personnel policy he stands alone in Switzerland, perhaps even in all of Europe.
Two young women, Alexandra Bisaz and Nicole Reolon, enjoy success with a sweet idea! In a total of 20 Lolipop shops they sell approximately 1,500 different varieties of sweets – and nowhere in Switzerland is there a bigger choice.
With this entrepreneurial idea, the Lolox Company won the Swiss Economic Award 2007. The prize was awarded in May to three young businesses in the sectors technology, trade and services for innovative achievements.
The number 13 is considered by many people to be unlucky, but in 1940 it turned out to be a lucky figure for a Swiss baker in the town of Laufen in what is now canton Basel Country. Emil Richterich mixed and blended 13 curative herbs to make a herbal sweet that is known throughout the world – Ricola. The name is now synonymous with herb and sugar-free lozenges, cough syrup and herbal teas.
To develop their business in France, Swiss coffee-machine maker Jura
AG has chosen a new sales partner. For the identification of potential partners JURA relied on the services of Osec.
The Freitag story began near Zurich’s Hardbrücke, where in 1993 the Freitag brothers Markus and Daniel were living in a student flat on one of Switzerland’s busiest truck routes. “Looking out the kitchen window one day, we came up with the idea to make a messenger bag from one of those dirty 100,000-mile truck tarpaulins“, Markus Freitag recalls.
A knife with just about everything you can wish for in a set of tools was giving the Wenger company of Delémont in western Switzerland a welcome boost a year ago.
