Achille Ditesheim founded the workshop that would become Movado in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1881, producing pocket watches under the Ditesheim name. The firm adopted the brand name Movado (Esperanto for 'always in motion') in 1905 and through the early 20th century earned a reputation for design innovation: the 1912 Polyplan with its triple-curved movement designed to follow the natural shape of the wrist, and the 1926 Ermeto, a self-winding pocket / purse watch that wound itself as the user opened and closed its sliding case.
In 1947 American artist Nathan George Horwitt designed what would become the brand's defining object: a black dial with a single gold dot at 12 o'clock, no other indices, and minimalist baton hands. Horwitt called it the Museum Watch; the design entered the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1960, and Movado adopted it as the brand signature. Production began in 1948 and the Museum Dial has remained in continuous production ever since, becoming one of the most recognisable design watches of the 20th century.
Movado merged with the American distributor North American Watch Corp (later renamed Movado Group) in 1983, and the parent company today operates as a publicly-traded design-watch group on the NYSE under ticker MOV. Beyond the Movado brand itself, the group owns and licenses Ebel, Concord, Olivia Burton, Coach Watches, and Tommy Hilfiger Watches. Modern Movado catalogue spans the Museum Classic and Museum Sport, the Bold contemporary line, the SE quartz/automatic mid-tier, and the Series 800 Performance dive collection - all anchored around the single-dot dial design language.
