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Joël Pynson
February 2026
Rigi is the name of a mountain peak overlooking Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. It is also an acronym formed from the first two letters of the names of Arthur Rieder and Walter Gigandet, who founded the company Rieder & Gigandet, Fabrique d’horlogerie Rigis in Solothurn in 1926 [1]. The Rigi trademark was registered that same year, but it had already been used by other manufacturers, which may explain the “Rigis” in the company’s name.
1930
The factory produced all kinds of anchor-escapement watches, and beginning in 1942, automatic watches using the A. Schild 1171 caliber.
In 1944, Walter Gigandet was joined by his son Walter Jr., and the company became Gigandet-Rieder & Cie, the “Rigis” watch factory [2].
1944
1945
1948
In 1955, the company became Montres Rigi SA [3]. At that time, it was led by Walter Gigandet Jr. and Hans Kaufmann.
Little information has survived from the 1960s and 1970s, but the company likely fell victim to the “quartz crisis” and ceased operations in 1986 [3].
[1] FOSC 1926
[2] FOSC 1944
[3] FOSC 1986
The FOSC (Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce) is available at E-periodica
Notes:
About Time To Tell: Time To Tell has one of the largest private digitized databases on the history of Swiss watchmaking, with over 2.5 TB of data on more than 1,000 Swiss watch manufacturers. This database has been built up over a period of around 30 years and continues to be updated with around 50 to 100 GB of data each year. The database consists of historical documents, mainly Swiss trade journals, dating from the late 19th century to the late 20th century. Most of these documents are not available on the Internet. The historical articles published on the time2tell.com website always cite the sources used.
Time To Tell is a private company, independent of any watch manufacturer.
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