Omega was founded by Louis Brandt at La Chaux – de – Fonds, Switzerland in 1848 as a assembly workshop. In 1879, after his death, his two sons Louis Paul and César started the in-house manufacturing so they started having total production control. One year later, Omega moved into a small factory that became a huge one when 12 months later they bought the entire building. In 1903, they both died leaving the company in 24 years old, Paul Emile Brandt’s hands. Because of the crisis that the Second World War left, he had to work really hard in order to face the economic difficulties. He merged Omega with Tissot calling the new company SSIH. The SSIH group continued to grow and multiply under his leadership and, by the seventies, it had become Switzerland’s number one producer of finished watches and number three in the world. In 1985, the holding company was taken over by a group of private investors under Nicolas Hayek leadership. It was immediately renamed SMH (Société suisse de Microélectronique et d'Horlogerie). SMH had a rapid growth and success becoming today's top watch producer in the world. Named Swatch Group in 1998, it now includes Blancpain and Breguet.