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Joel Pynson
December 2024
Update: March 2025
1. The Choffat from Tramelan, father and son
Willy and Paul Choffat joined forces in 1913 in Tramelan to create a watchmaking factory [1]. In 1918, Paul went it alone and the company was renamed Paul Choffat [2].
1916
1920
The company specialized in small anchor watches and was interested in technical innovations: automatic watches and jumping-hour watches were produced as early as 1931.
1932
The HOGA brand (for HOrlogerie GArantie) was registered in 1930 [3].
When Paul Choffat died in 1943, his son Jämes took over, and the company became Jämes Choffat, Montres Hoga [4].
1944
1945
In 1955, Jämes Choffat patented a jumping-hour watch [5]. This type of watch had become fashionable in the 1930s, and HOGA was to bring them back into fashion. The special feature of the mechanism described in the patent is that it can be adapted to any movement.
These watches were launched in 1956. They were briefly called Cleartimer in 1957, then took their definitive name Directime in 1958.
The Directime watches were a great success and enabled HOGA to launch other models, in particular chronographs in 1964.
1964
In the early 1960s, with the end of the "statut horloger" protecting the Swiss watchmaking industry, companies began to merge. In Tramelan, this took shape in 1966 with the creation of Soprod SA, with the aim of rationalizing watch production and assembly at 7 Tramelan companies: Arly, Damas, Rila, Dulux, Hoga, ARSA and Spera [6].
New Directime models were launched in 1968, this time with a central seconds hand, other models in 1970 with a linear display, and a range of chronographs in the same year.
1968
1970
1970
Under the influence of ASUAG, company mergers were encouraged in the late 1960s, and HOGA became part of the ARSA group in 1972 [7].
2. From HOGA to Auguste Reymond
A. Reymond SA (ARSA) is a Tramelan-based company that was already part of ASUAG. It was ARSA that took over as head of the group, made up ofARSA, HOGA, and Béguelin et Cie, Montres DAMAS. From then on, the HOGA and DAMAS brands were used for economy models, while ARSA was reserved for more high-end watches.
1973
During the "quartz crisis" of the late 1970s and early 1980s, ARSA tried to move upmarket with elegant quartz watches and a more luxurious A. Reymond range, but the group went bankrupt in 1984.
The ARSA Group brands were taken over in 1987 by Jämes Choffat, who founded Auguste Reymond in Tramelan in 1989 [8].
The Auguste Reymond brand was subsequently relaunched and is still active today: https: //augustereymond.ch/
See also: DAMAS, ARSA
[1] FOSC 1913
[2] FOSC 1918
[3] FOSC 1930
[4] FOSC 1943
[5] Patent CH 327016
[6] La Suisse Horlogère, weekly edition, 1966, 36, p. 1076
[7] Journal Suisse d'Horlogerie, 1972, 3, p. 274
[8] FOSC 1989
Notes:
About Time To Tell: Time To Tell has one of the largest private digitized databases on the history of Swiss watchmaking, with over 2.3 TB of data on more than 1,000 Swiss watch manufacturers. This database has been built up over a period of some thirty years, and continues to be fed with around 50 to 100 GB of data every year. The database is made up of old documents, mainly Swiss trade journals, dating from the late 19th to the late 20th century. Most of these documents are not available on the Internet. Historical articles published on the time2tell.com website always cite the sources used.
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