Movement

At the heart of the Les Originales Tradition beats a Sellita SW200-01, a Swiss Made mechanical automatic movement, one born out of necessity and the fires of change within the Swiss watch establishment, a fire that starts with ETA.

ETA is a Swiss movement manufacture and supplier to the majority of Swiss Made watch brands, they supply movements and partially constructed movements (ébauches). In 2002 they started the move that some considered as big a change as the quartz crisis of 1970, they were planning to stop supply of all movements and ébauches to anyone outside of the Swatch Group family (of which ETA is part). Since the announcement there has been back peddling, cartel law breaches and negotiated staged supply reductions. As it currently stands 2019 is the stated date when ETA will stop supply, but there has already been significant reduction in availability over the past few years.

With reduced availability of ETA movements and the eventual demise of all access to ETA movements for third parties, Sellita has become one of the primary companies for a wide selection of watchmakers who do not produce their own in-house movements. With Sellita's current track record of reliability and accuracy coupled with their previous experience performing outsourced assembly for ETA, I doubt this will trend will change anytime soon.

The SW200-1 is a near identical reproduction of the ETA 2824-2 (Sellita creates clones of ETA movements that are out of patent), the only difference is the addition of a single jewel (taking the count to 26) on the upper side of the barrel access, below the ratchet wheel. It has a beat of 28,000 semi-oscillations per hour (4Hz), it is a hacking movement (the second hand mechanically disengages to allow accurate setting) and it has a power reserver of 38 hours. It can be manually wound and has a quick date set.

ETA 2824-2 and Sellita SW200-1 comparison, as show by Christopher Ward (http://www.christopherward.co.uk/blog/the-eta-v-sellita-story/)

Timing and accuracy has also been proven to be as good as ETA's, the SW200-01 (outside of COSC) has three standards (Standard, Elaboré and Prémium) ranging from +/- 20 seconds a day to +/- 10 seconds a day. My observations having worn this watch for several days (and on a winder overnight) was from +5 a day to +9 a day, a level of accuracy I am most happy with.

Rotary is in good company with this movement, having such contemporaries as Tag Heuer, ORIS, Christopher Ward and others opting to use the SW200-1 on a range of timepieces. For me (and a lot of watch manufacturers) Sellita movements are for all intense and purposes a straight swap for ETA.

If you would like to view further information on the SW200-01 movement you can view the full technical document here, Sellita SW200-1 .

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