Sea-Gull
Tianjin Sea-Gull Watch Factory
Chinese watch manufacturer
A goverment decision
On a Chinese government decision in January 1955 four Chinese watchmakers began with the production of watches. From this has now arisen the world's largest manufacturer of mechanical watch movements, whose production cover a quarter of the total world production of movements.
Company history
In 1990 the Tianjin Watch Factory obtained the status of a national company, and in 1992 the Tianjin Sea-Gull Corporation was founded. In the same year the decision was made to stop the production of mechanical watches in favor of quartz watches. Five years later it came to a complete reversal of this decision: since then only mechanical watches are produced.
In the year 2000 the Sea-Gull Group went public. In 2003 a sales office was opened in Hong Kong.
Sea-Gull makes the most profit on the mass market, but through the skills at the production of tourbillons and chronographs one has gained a growing appreciation. Thus the image of the label 'Made in China' was also indirectly improved. Meanwhile, with watch friends Sea-Gull watches are enjoying a growing reputation as a representative of high-quality Chinese watchmaking.
Current movement families by Sea-Gull
- Woman-size automatic, hand-wind or hand-wind skeleton
- Man-size automatic, with various calendar and 24-hour/day-night display options
- Hand-wind, rectangular form-movement with open heart
Sea-Gull ST16 – Miyota-style simplified construction with Seiko-style auto-winding. Many calendar and 24-hour display options available.
Sea-Gull ST17 – Upgraded ST16 with even more options including jump-hour, big date and power-reserve. Skeleton versions, both automatic and hand-winding.
Sea-Gull ST18 (Sea-Gull ST1812) – Premium ETA 2892-style movement; fast-beat, automatic, day/date.
Sea-Gull ST19 – Hand-winding chronograph developed from Venus 175. Available as skeleton or with power-reserve.
Sea-Gull ST21 (Sea-Gull ST2130) – Clone of ETA 2824-2 (Often incorrectly referred to as ST24)
Sea-Gull ST22 – A pair of small ST6 automatics on a common dial plate. Open-heart and big-date options.
Sea-Gull ST25 – Premium movement with double-bridged balance for open-heart. Various calendar options.
Sea-Gull ST28 – AS1475-style hand-winding alarm.
Sea-Gull ST31 – Unusual bowtie-shaped movement with linear train, open-heart, subsidiary seconds and day/night indicator. Also available as skeleton.
Sea-Gull ST36 (Sea-Gull ST3600) – Unitas 6497-style 36mm pocket watch movement, hand-winding with subsidiary seconds. Skeletonized version with unusual bar-type bridges.
Sea-Gull ST41 – Thin, small hand-winding movement, hour and minute display only.
Sea-Gull ST80 – Blancpain-style flying caroussel-Tourbillon. Various calendar and power-reserve options. Hand-winding or automatic. Skeleton version is hand-wind only, no options.
Sea-Gull ST82 – Tourbillon with large-diameter balance on common axis with carriage. Hand-winding or automatic. 'Flying' or bridged Tourbillon.
Sea-Gull ST8080 – Hand-winding dual tourbillon; caroussel and common axis.
Sea-Gull ST84 – Hand-winding common axis tourbillon. Narrow movement suitable for women's watches.
Sea-Gull ST90 – Hand-winding quarter-repeater.
Sea-Gull ST91 – Hand-winding minute repeater. ST9150 includes perpetual calendar (as per ST2590).
Note: A thorough comparison of the Sea-Gull ST21 (ETA 2824 clone) and a ST18 (ETA 2892 clone) movements can be found on the TZ-UK forum: (In this article, the movements are incorrectly referred to as ST24 and ST26) http://www.tz-uk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=43661&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
Weblinks
- Tianjin Seagull (Chinese Watch Industry Wiki)
- Sea-Gull Watch Collection Website (Chinese)
- Sea-Gull, Hongkong
- Sea-Gull, European Website
- Sea-Gull, U.S. website