Zodiac
- Founded
- 1882
- Based in
- Le Locle, Switzerland
- In our catalog
- 5 watches from $995 to $2,995
Zodiac is one of the old names of Swiss diving. Its Sea Wolf arrived in 1953, the same year as the first Blancpain Fifty Fathoms and Rolex Submariner, and it was sold to ordinary buyers rather than to navies. Today the brand builds its catalogue almost entirely on that history, with bright dials, bold bezels and prices that sit well below the big names.
History
Ariste Calame opened a workshop in Le Locle in 1882 and registered the Zodiac name in 1908. For its first decades the company made pocket watches and its own movements, including an extra flat pocket watch in 1924.
The Sea Wolf of 1953 changed the brand's direction. It was a compact, water-resistant watch with a rotating bezel, and it sold well enough to spawn the Super Sea Wolf, the Aerospace GMT of the 1960s and the Astrographic, a "mystery" watch whose hands appear to float. The quartz crisis hit Zodiac hard, and in 2001 the American Fossil Group bought the name. Fossil revived the Super Sea Wolf in the 2010s and gave the brand movements from its own Swiss factory, STP, in Lugano.
Signature models
- Super Sea Wolf Compression Diver: The 1970s-style diver with a wide bezel and chunky indices, here in green on a bracelet.
- Super Sea Wolf Skin Diver: A slimmer, more vintage take with a slim bezel and a clean no-date dial.
- Super Sea Wolf GMT: The travel version, with a two-tone 24-hour bezel. The neon green and white one is about as loud as a GMT gets.
- Olympos Field: A reissue of the 1960s Olympos with its faceted cushion case, here with a field watch dial.
- Sea-Chron: A dive chronograph on a Sellita SW510 with a panda-style dial.
What it's known for
Colour. Zodiac uses orange, turquoise, green and neon bezels freely, and limited runs with collaborators like Worn & Wound or Rowing Blazers come out often. Most models use STP movements (Fossil's in-house alternative to ETA and Sellita) or Soprod for the GMTs. Water resistance is a solid 200 m across the dive range.
Price and positioning
New Zodiacs list at roughly $1,000 to $3,000, with the core divers around $1,600. Discounts at dealers are common, so street prices are often lower. That puts Zodiac against Doxa, Squale and Christopher Ward, with a history that is genuinely older than most of its rivals.
Zodiac watches in our library
- Zodiac Olympos Field ($995)
- Zodiac Super Sea Wolf Skin Diver ($1,595)
- Zodiac Super Sea Wolf Compression Diver ($1,695)
- Zodiac Super Sea Wolf GMT ($1,695)
- Zodiac Sea-Chron ($2,995)