WYLER GENÈVE Official Watch of the Italian National Football Team
WYLER GENÈVE GOES BACK TO ITS ROOTS WITH NEW OFFICIAL WATCH OF THE ITALIAN NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM
Geneva (Switzerland), 30 September 2008 - Wyler Genève has signed a new licensing agreement to produce the official watch of the Italian national football team, almost 75 years after the pioneering Italian Wyler distributor Innocente Binda put the company's watches on the wrists of the Squadra Azzurra for the 1934 World Cup. MORE>>
When he took on the distribution of Wyler watches from the 1920s onwards, Innocente Binda started an association between the Binda family and the Wyler brand that continues to this day, with Wyler Genève now a company of the Binda Group, headed up by Innocente's grandsons Marcello and Simone. Binda built up a solid reputation for Wyler timepieces in Italy through a visionary use of publicity. In what was arguably one of the earliest forms of celebrity endorsement, Innocente Binda offered the Italian football team Wyler watches to wear for their first-ever World Cup appearance in 1934. His prescience was rewarded by Italy's debut victory and an album of meticulously handwritten compliments from each of the players, which takes pride of place today in the company archive. He followed up this success with award-winning advertising vehicles and the first-ever watch advertising on television.
To coincide with Italy's first qualifying matches for the 2010 World Cup, Wyler Genève renews its association with the Italian team through a new licensing agreement to produce the official watch of the Italian national football team. The watch is built around the brand's unique shock-absorbing case and bears subtle distinguishing features that are sure to appeal to Italian football fans.
Wyler Genève's association with the four times World Cup winners and defending World Cup champions is not the only Italian flavour to imbue the brand's Swiss Made timepieces. A schoolboy friendship between Marcello Binda and Andrea Zagato, head of the eponymous atelier, has led to a design partnership and the first-ever wristwatch to feature design by Zagato, sparking considerable interest among watch fans.
Bruno Grande, Managing Director of Wyler Genève, on the partnership: "I'm immensely proud of this renewed association with the Italian football team, which takes us back to the roots of our company. The advertising slogan for our shock-absorbing chronograph is 'Time Suspended' and to come back to partner with the Italian team after 75 years certainly does feel like time has been suspended."
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:
Case
Top and bottom plates: stainless steel, 4 titanium screws
Case middle: Carbon fibre resin, 2 sapphire crystals
Inner movement case: titanium, suspended on 4 independent shock-absorbing springs, water resistant to 50m
Chronograph pushers: stainless steel with stylised design motif
Crown: rubber-coated stainless steel
Crown protector: stainless steel with engraved Wyler logo
Case back: Stainless-steel case-back with screws and scratch-resistant sapphire crystal aperture with special
FIGC engraving
Dimensions: Width: 43.4 mm; length: 52 mm; height: 14.5 mm
Special engraving etched on to the sapphire crystal case back: "OFFICIAL WATCH OF THE ITALIAN NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM, 1934 - 2009" together with the FIGC logo.
Movement
Swiss-made self-winding mechanical movement; 42-hour power reserve; personalized oscillating weight in drilled blackened heavy metal with rhodium-plated bevels
Functions: Chronograph: 1 second, 30 minutes, 12 hours; continuous seconds, date
Dial
Blue dial matching Italian team's kit colours; applied counter rings and Arabic numerals, skeleton hour and minute hands with luminescent tips, 4 gold stars on the continuous seconds dial corresponding to the Italian football team's four World Cup victories. Small seconds hand in the colours of the Italian flag (green, white and red).
Strap
Wyler personalised natural rubber in blue matching the Italian team's kit colours, foldover clasp in stainless steel buckle and titanium
Box
Special blue leather box with white stitching and embossed FIGC logo with four gold stars. White alcantara interior with separate blue leather travel box with white stitching, also featuring the embossed FIGC logo and gold stars.
Reference
R04.C1C.00.00.BL003.RIT07.41
