Vetta
Vetta
See entry for Wyler Watch Company for more information
Brief History
In 1906, Innocente Binda opened a small watch shop in Besozzo, on lake Maggiore. By the time the Wyler Watch Company was launched, by brothers Paul and Alfred Wyler, Innocente Binda was already tightening his relationship with Swiss suppliers and beginning to expand his business selling parts and movements in Italy. Binda soon relocated to Milan, and now formed a working relationship with the Wyler brothers - a relationship that was to continue right up to the present time.
The relationship between the Binda company and Wyler Watch was already becoming established by the time the Incaflex balance system came on to the market, and the decision in 1933 to change the Wyler company name to Wyler Vetta was taken jointly. There are a number of factors that seem to have pushed the two firms towards this change. Firstly, for Binda in particular, the use of an Italian name as a part of the company name assisted him in further exploiting his home market, Italy, and secondly, it was thought necessary to protect the Wyler concern from the negativity associated with the foreign Wyler name. One has to remember that these were difficult times in Italy, with Fascism on the rise. What is unclear about the switch to the use of the Wyler Vetta name (also spelled without the hyphen, as "Wyler Vetta") is just how frequently the watches were marked "Wyler-Vetta" in the decades immediately following the new brand name. It appears that the Wyler company continued to use the names "Wyler" and "Vetta" on their own, and it is the case that vintage Wyler watches marked "Vetta" were made for the Italian market (an early photo of a period Wyler showroom in Italy bears the name, "Vetta," above the windows).
Innocenti Binda was a marketing genius well-ahead of his time, and without his entrepreneurial flair, Wyler watches would never have become so popular and well-known. In 1934, Italy's World Cup football team were supplied with Wyler Incaflex watches as part of their official attire - though even Binda couldn't claim that World Cup triumph for Italy in that year was down to their wearing of Wyler watches. In 1938, the Italian coach and World Cup players were once again provided with Incaflex watches which were worn both on and off the pitch, and Binda had shown himself to be a pioneer of the idea of the "Testimonial" and the use of sporting fixtures to promote watches.
There is also mention in the sources of "Peak" watches being sold by Binda - possibly a Wyler sub-brand that was technologically different and placed in a different price range to the Wyler-Vetta branded pieces. Binda, of course, was selling brands other than those made by Wyler/Wyler Vetta, and these included Breil and Jean Daniel. Later, in more modern times, the Binda group was to be responsible for the branding, marketing and/or distribution in Italy of a number of watch brands, and the Binda Group is now a big player in the watch market. Interestingly, Innocenti Binda was among the first watch marketing companies to start using television advertising, in 1953, and he was also a pioneer of celebrity endorsement.
In 1993 the Binda family permanently and wholly acquired the Wyler brand and stock and subsequently commenced production of a number of limited edition Wyler watches (La Temps perdu, Centenaire, and Time After Time) from 2002.
Credit- https://thewatchforum.co.uk/index.php?/topic/104502-wyler-the-whys-and-wherefores/
