Lothar Schmidt

Lothar Schmidt is an engineer and businessman who has owned the German manufacturer Sinn since 1994. Schmidt is primarily responsible for the company's current success with innovative materials, having continued the firm's focus on military, aviation, and dive inspired watches offered mainly via direct-to-consumer sales at lower prices. He was previously involved with IWC, A. Lange & Söhne, and Bell & Ross.

Early Life and Career

Lothar Schmidt was born in 1949 in Neunkirchen, Saarland, just 100 km from Metz, where Helmut Sinn was born three decades earlier. Schmidt studied engineering in Saarbrücken before becoming technical director at a watch casing company.

In 1980 Schmidt, then a consultant, went to work for IWC in Schaffhausen, where he was responsible for the development of innovative watch cases and bracelets. He developed techniques that allowed difficult materials such as titanium, ceramic, and platinum to be used commercially for the first time. The culmination of this work were the Porsche Design watches created by IWC throughout the 1980s, including the zirconium oxide ceramic case of the famous IWC Da Vinci and Grande Complication.

Schmidt was brought in to assist the re-launch of A. Lange & Söhne in 1990. This was a sister company to IWC under LMH boss Günter Blümlein.

Sinn and Bell & Ross

In 1994, Schmidt was called on to assist in the launch of Swiss-French firm Bell & Ross. This was created by Sinn intern Bruno Belamich, who also used that German firm to design and manufacture their first collection of watches. At nearly the same time Schmidt took over Sinn from its then-78 year old founder.

Schmidt moved quickly to bring his expertise in materials engineering to Sinn. The company immediately launched two watches with innovative cases: The Sinn 244 used a titanium case while a new chronograph featured a 22-carat case in a special hardened gold alloy. Sinn launched the Ar-Dehumidification system the following year, featuring a copper sulphate drying capsule and special seals, and brought the oil-filled HYDRO system to market in 1996.

Sinn also launched a series of signature models in the second half of the 1990s, including the EZM1 and EZM2, 356 pilot watch, and Frankfurt Financial District line. In 1998, Schmidt joined forces with Walter Fricker (of watch case company Fricker in Pforzheim) and Ronald Boldt (former Head of Technology and Quality at GUB) to found a specialist case manufacturer in Glashütte known as Sächsische Uhrentechnologie GmbH (SUG).

In the following decades, Sinn flourished under Schmidt. It remained focused on specialist watches sold direct to consumers at affordable prices and eschewed conventional watch industry marketing. Schmidt remains in charge of day-to-day operations at Sinn as of 2025, though he announced in May of 2024 that he would turn his shares of the firm over to a foundation.