After months searching for the ideal location, the Russian watch brand has come up trumps with a 20 square-metre space on Moscow's most exclusive shopping street, where it has cut the ribbon on its first own-name store.

While Longines advocates elegance as a way of life, this hasn't prevented it from implementing a strategy more akin to a battle plan, conquering fourth place among Swiss watch brands in the process. Still leading the troops after 48 years, Walter von Känel has his sights set on the next rival in line.

While Longines advocates elegance as a way of life, this hasn't prevented it from implementing a strategy more akin to a battle plan, conquering fourth place among Swiss watch brands in the process. Still leading the troops after 48 years, Walter von Känel has his sights set on the next rival in line.

Two seasoned industry professionals, neither of them involved with any brand or group, have teamed up to develop a watch that might give some food for thought to the big players.

Japan's Citizen Watch is marking its territory in Switzerland with movement specialist La Joux-Perret and its components-maker Prototec, at the service of Frédérique Constant, Alpina and Arnold & Son. A melting pot of nationalities that makes the group's Swiss-Made something of a global village.

Every watch brand has its secrets, but recently we were granted a private tour of the Blancpain Manufacture in the Joux Valley, Switzerland, where watchmaking magic takes place.