The brand

A hundred years of Fliegers

Laco was founded in 1925 in Pforzheim, the town at the edge of the Black Forest that has been the centre of German watch and jewellery making for more than two centuries. The name comes from Lacher & Co, and a merger with the movement maker Durowe put the company at the front of Pforzheim’s watch factories within a few years.

During the Second World War, Laco was one of only five manufacturers that built the Beobachtungsuhr, the large observation watch issued to Luftwaffe navigators. That watch set the template for every Flieger since: a big case, a black dial, oversized numerals, a triangle at twelve and luminous hands you can read in a cockpit at night. Almost every pilot watch on the market today borrows from it. Laco is one of the few brands entitled to call it their own.

Pforzheim was badly damaged in the war, but production recovered and grew in the decades after. Laco also built the first functioning electronic wristwatch in Germany, a reminder that the brand was never only about heritage. At the start of the 2000s it relaunched its pilot watches, and that decision is what the modern catalogue is built on.

Today the range is organised around how much history you want. The Basic Fliegers run on Miyota automatics and sit between roughly €350 and €500. The Original collection steps up to Swiss Sellita movements, branded Laco 200, with the proportions and details of the wartime watches. The Flieger Pro line is the modern take, with double-domed sapphire, 200m water resistance and case sizes from 37mm to 43mm. Around them sit the navy, squad and sport watches, and newer designs like the Frankfurt GMT and the Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven dress pieces.

Everything is still designed and finished in Pforzheim, using Swiss and Japanese movements. Laco does not chase trends, and most of the catalogue is variations on a handful of shapes that have been refined for decades. That consistency is the point.

Who it’s for

You want a pilot watch from a brand that actually made them, not one inspired by them. You like the idea of choosing between an honest Miyota-powered Basic and a Swiss Original built to the wartime blueprint, and you value a brand that has spent a century perfecting one kind of watch over one that reinvents itself every season. With Laco, that focus is exactly what you are paying for: generations of Flieger design refined down to the detail, from a house that has done little else since 1925.

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