CEO Of The Month: Chapter 15 I Rolf Studer - The Quiet Conviction Powering Oris's Independence

Rolf Studer is not a CEO who needed to be introduced to Oris. That would be redundant. Instead, he represents something increasingly rare among the newly appointed leaders of Swiss watchmaking: a steward who has spent his entire career inside the house he now runs alone. Appointed sole Chief Executive Officer of Oris in April 2026, Studer had already served a decade as co-CEO alongside Claudine Gertiser, who now moves into the role of Chief Financial Officer while remaining vice-chairwoman of the board. Chairman Ulrich W. Herzog framed the reshuffle as a natural evolution rather than a rupture, and that framing matters. Studer isn't stepping into Hölstein to reinvent Oris. He is stepping in to sharpen it. To know more about the history of Oris, click here. 

A Childhood Spent Among Well-Made Things

Studer's affinity for craft did not start with watches. It started with wood. His grandfather ran a shipyard building wooden boats, and Studer has spoken about growing up surrounded by the smell of lacquer and mahogany, with tools always within reach. It is a small biographical detail, but it explains a lot about how he talks about watchmaking today - not as luxury for its own sake, but as the quiet satisfaction of something built properly. That instinct shows up again in the watch he calls his personal favorite: his first Carl Brashear, worn so often in the ocean that the case has turned green. He doesn't talk about it as a collector's piece. He talks about it as a keeper of family memories.

An Independent Brand That Needed No Reinvention

Oris does not suffer from a lack of identity. Founded in 1904 on the outer edge of Switzerland's traditional watchmaking region, the brand built its character around a history of self-determination: a 1982 management buyout secured its independence, and decades earlier, the tireless lobbying of executive Rolf Portmann helped overturn the Swiss Watch Statute that had barred smaller brands like Oris from using Swiss lever escapements. That DNA - the refusal to be dictated to - is baked into the company's long-running "Go Your Own Way" ethos. Studer's elevation to sole CEO does not disturb that lineage; it consolidates it. Gertiser's move to CFO keeps the same institutional memory in the room, just realigned around clearer lines of authority. To know more about the Oris collections, click here. 

The Real Shift: From Co-Leadership To Singular Clarity

What stands out under Studer is not a change in direction but a sharpening of one. Oris remains one of the 50 largest Swiss watch brands by sales, and Studer has been candid that a strong Swiss franc and a difficult macro environment are testing the entire industry. His response has not been to chase volume or noise, but to lean harder into what already differentiates Oris: mechanical watches built at accessible prices, anchored in a storied history and a genuine community culture. Under his watch, the brand has pushed through a rebrand, revived the Artelier collection, and refreshed the Aquis Date and diver lines - not as radical departures, but as more resolved expressions of the same design language. Even the brand's 60th-anniversary Star Edition, marking the escapement ruling Portmann fought for, reads less as nostalgia and more as a reminder of what independence actually costs to defend.

Why This Matters More Than Scale

Most watch-industry CEOs are measured by growth. Studer is building his case on something else entirely: the idea that a watchmaker can hold a moral posture without turning preachy about it. Oris has long positioned itself as one of the "citoyens" of the industry - the ordinary citizens of watchmaking, as Studer has described it, rather than the aristocracy. That shows up in Oris being among the first carbon-neutral brands in Swiss watchmaking, and in partnerships chosen for substance over spectacle: ALS fundraising with the New York Yankees, oyster-reef restoration in New York Harbor, tidal-flat conservation in the Wadden Sea, and grassroots ties to cricket and French football. None of it is designed to flatter; it is designed to reflect values the brand claims to hold regardless of who's watching.

Final Word

Rolf Studer is unlikely to be remembered for disruption. His leadership is shaping up as something quieter and, in an industry he himself has called overdue for its own Age of Enlightenment, potentially more consequential: the disciplined stewardship of a brand that already knows who it is. Moving from co-CEO to sole CEO isn't a hunger for singular control - it's a bet that Oris's next chapter needs one clear voice translating decades of accumulated conviction into decisions, especially as currency pressure and industry consolidation squeeze independents from every side. Studer isn't promising to make Oris bigger. He's promising to keep it honest - a Swiss lever escapement of a leadership style, built for endurance rather than spectacle.

That is precisely where his tenure will be judged: not in headline reinventions, but in whether Oris can keep being what it has always been - approachable, self-determined, and unmistakably itself - while everyone around it either scales up or sells out. For a brand whose entire identity rests on going its own way, having one person clearly holding that course may be exactly the kind of change that isn't a change at all. To know about interesting Oris facts, click here.