Orient, Japan

Orient was long one of the Japanese big three: SEIKO, CITIZEN, ORIENT until Casio pushed into watch market after having successfully introduced a very inexpensive handheld electronic pocket calculator. In 2001, Seiko's EPSON subsidiary bought 30% of Orient' stock. So Orient is today partly owned by SEIKO. There is a lot of talk whether that partial take over would affect Orient's corporate direction. In the past, Orient had often raced creating great inhouse movements against SEIKO and CITIZEN. And often, all in-house movements of those companies had great similarities. Orient today seems to have shifted into a slightly higher tier of watches in Japan, whereas internationally they continue to promote their less expensive lines. Orient watches are also very popular in Russia and Orient has a large factory in Brasil where they are also very popular. One thing is sure, Orient has always been known as providing excellent value for the money at a sometimes unmatched quality level in the given price league.

Note regarding Orient Calibers from Dan aka Zeb
Dan aka Zeb (a fellow PMWFer) is investigating Orient's Caliber Numbering and has found some interesting facts so far. Good to know is that the movement notation changed in 1995.
The different movements, indicated by two letters in the model number, have different degrees of accuracy. This info is from a 2001 catalog.
FC, EG : +10~-5 sec / day
FA, EX, FE, ER, EM : +25~-15 sec / day
PF, NR : +40~-30 sec / day
For more information, please have a look at Dan's growing Orient Movement Database
Adriano from SCWF made a great post with Orient movement information. Some excerpts of Adriano's findings are: most of the Orient watches obviously use the Caliber 46943 or a variation of it which is based on the SEIKO Caliber 70xx (7005, 7009 etc). The movement was designed in the 70ies. Today the quality of the movements is still the same, but the movements are not as nicely finished as they were in the 70ies. Orient Stars and Royal Orients use different movements. PMWC uses the inscription on the dial at 6 o'clock for all Orient Calibers which according to the information above, denominates the accuracy rather then the movement number.




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