IWC Factory Visit

After years of waiting, yesterday we visited the legendary factory of IWC in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. On this occasion, Team Ace and 10 customers, huge IWC fans, had they honor to go see the factory. We departed Amsterdam around 7 am and arrived in Zürich around 8.30 am. From there, we traveled by car to the IWC Factory Schaffhausen.After a warm welcome by the host and our guide for the day, we had a grand tour through the factory and unfortunately we were not permitted to take pictures inside. At noon we had lunch at an amazing restaurant located literally in the water of the Rhine river, with a spectacular view of the biggest waterfall of Europe Schlossi Wurth.

After lunch we were transported by boat to the heart of the waterfall, and we were able to climb the rock in the middle of the thundering waterfall. IWC was founded by an American in 1868 in Schaffhausen, because this waterfall supplied the energy for the factory!

When we all dried up and recovered from the spectacle, we visited the test laboratory of IWC. One of the visitors wanted to test the resistance of his Big Pilot watch in a super strong magnetic field and realized only an IWC Ingenieur watch can withstand such strong fields. Since his movement got magnetized, the chief of the laboratory was so friendly to demagnetize the watch for him.

The new IWC museum opened up in June of last year and looks amazing. Not only is a huge selection of milestone pocket and wrist watches on display, it also has beautiful movies and a rotating wall with the history of the company and its collections. Our group voted the following watches as the most beautiful:

After seeing the history we had the opportunity to view the new collections, who were presented by nobody else than the legendary Kurt Klaus. After welcoming him a couple of times in Amsterdam, it was a honor to meet him in his hometown and work space where he created the infamous Da Vinci Perpetual Calendar movement.

After asking several times, they were able to locate the new Limited Edition Portuguese Regulateur Tourbillon watch. This was a prototype and was amazing to see the completely see-through tourbillon on full effect. We were able to take a picture of the white gold version:

After seeing and trying on all the marvelous timepieces, we had a light dinner and rushed back to Zürich airport to catch our flight back to Amsterdam.

Tags: ace, ace jewelers, iwc, kurt klaus, portuguese, regulateur, rhein, rhein fall, schaffhausen, schlossi worth, switzerland, Team Ace, tourbillon