In the 1960s Benrus was one of America’s largest watchmakers, producing about a million watches a year. It made the huge clock that kept time at Pennsylvania Station in New York City, supplied watches to the U.S. military and had its timepieces worn by President John F. Kennedy, Steve McQueen, Charles Lindbergh and Babe Ruth.
Now, following a multimillion dollar investment by a small private equity group, Benrus is back.
“I fell in love with the brand because of its history and importance,” said Michael Sweeney, the brand’s new chairman and a partner in an investment group that bought the name in 2017. “It was a Top 3 American watchmaker, with Hamilton and Bulova. Now, it’s the only one still U.S.-owned.”
Last week the Benrus brand was reintroduced at the Time to Watch exhibition in Geneva. Its new collection included: the Model 3061, a steely time-only piece based on the watch that McQueen wore in the 1968 film “Bullitt”; the DTU-2A/P, a 34-millimeter cuff watch inspired by a 1962 military watch worn during the Vietnam War; and the Type 1 and Type 2 models, both water-resistant to 360 meters (1,180 feet), similar to watches worn by the U.S. Navy SEALs and Army Rangers in the 1970s.
Benrus was founded in Manhattan in 1921 by three brothers from Romania; its name was a contraction of one of the brothers’ names, Benjamin Lazrus. The business later moved to Switzerland, a model its current owners plan to replicate: This year, Mr. Sweeney said, Benrus will open facilities in the Swiss watchmaking town of La Chaux-de-Fonds, although its headquarters will continue to be in the Hippodrome Building on Sixth Avenue, the same Midtown Manhattan property where it was founded.
“It’s history repeating itself,” Mr. Sweeney said, adding that the company would rely on Swiss movements and production. “We don’t see manufacturing happening in the U.S.”
Prices will start at $964 for the DTU-2A/P and go up to $2,000. “We’ve watched the drift to higher pricing and we believe it’s created a white space” for midrange mechanical watches, he said. “Swiss Made watches from a cool brand between $1,000 and $2,000 — there’s not so much on offer. We’re filling a demand.”
If the brand name seems familiar, it might be because Mr. Sweeney and his team produced a handful of short-run limited edition pieces in recent years that were sold through online outlets such as the specialist watch site Hodinkee. “We’ve sold millions of dollars of watches the last five years and now we’re ready to do a worldwide collection,” Mr. Sweeney said, adding he wants to have 100 global points of sale by the year’s end. “We think we’ll have strong acceptance.”