South Bend Watch Company — a million watches in twenty-six years

1903 – closed 27 November 1929

The Studebaker sons buy a watch works: In 1903, on the standard account — the NAWCC company history compiled by Warren H. Riddle dates the purchase to 1902 — Clement Studebaker Jr. and George Studebaker bought the assets of the bankrupt Columbus Watch Company of Columbus, Ohio, and organized the South Bend Watch Company. They brought 145 Columbus men with them, including the noted watch designer Walter Cross Shelton Sr., built a new factory, and began production in March 1905. The watches were quality-grade pocket watches, hardened and tempered in a patented ice-box process the company called the freezing process, and sold from $16 to $125.

Scale, and a mail-order gamble: The peak years ran at 60,000 watches a year with nearly 600 employees. The company took a gun-sight contract in the First World War and resumed watch production in 1918. Its total production is carried in the record at figures between about 850,000 and nearly 1,000,000 watches, against serial numbers running to about 1,240,000 — the discrepancy is a known one among collectors and is printed as such. From 1923, needing new outlets, the company organized the Studebaker Watch Company as a mail-order subsidiary selling on credit at a dollar down, and made attractive watches on that plan. By 1929 employment had fallen to about 300.

Thanksgiving Eve, 1929: The crash hit a company holding a large volume of delinquent mail-order accounts, and on 27 November 1929 — the day before Thanksgiving — the plant closed, the staff told it would reopen on 1 January 1930, with some 35,000 watches on hand in process of manufacture. It never reopened. A Chicago merchant was appointed to sell off the stock at wholesale and retail, and the liquidation was completed in 1933 with creditors receiving fifty cents on the dollar. The factory building burned on 8 July 1957.

Sources:

1. South Bend Watch Company, the standard company history — organized in 1903 by Clement Studebaker Jr. and George Studebaker from the Columbus Watch Company's assets; production from March 1905; prices $16 to $125; the 60,000-a-year peak and nearly 600 employees; the 1923 Studebaker Watch mail-order subsidiary at a dollar down; the 27 November 1929 closing with about 300 employees and some 35,000 watches in process; the 1933 liquidation at fifty cents on the dollar; the factory's burning on 8 July 1957.
2. PocketWatchRepair, "The Story of the South Bend Watch Company" — the 145 Columbus experts and Walter Cross Shelton Sr.; the First World War gun-sight interlude; production totals carried between about 850,000 and nearly 1,000,000 against serial numbers to about 1,240,000.
3. Warren H. Riddle, "South Bend Watch Company History" (National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors) — the Columbus purchase dated 1902 and the corporate organization of 1903.
4. WNDU, "New South Bend clock tower inspired by South Bend Watch Company" (2025) — the 1903 founding and the 1929 closing as carried in the city's own telling.