The DUCKWORTH PRESTEX: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
Duckworth Prestex may sound like a new name, but it goes back a very long way in the history of watchmaking. More than 100 years, in fact. For Neil Duckworth, the founder of Duckworth Prestex and the man who originally brought TAG Heuer to the UK in the 1980s, this is a very personal story.
Neil’s family firm, Prestons, was originally founded in 1869 in Bolton – in the north of England – and by the 1920s it was making its own pocket watches initially under the Prestons Ltd. name and subsequently under the name Prestex: which enjoyed tremendous success in the region. . Prestons ltd was run by Frank Duckworth and his sister Gertrude at this time and the original pocket watches were made in Switzerland and finished in Bolton. Over the next couple of decades, Prestex produced a variety of timepieces including chronographs, pocket watches and some stunning dress watches.
Under Gordon’s leadership, the business grew and diversified, selling other Swiss watches such as Omega, Rolex and Heuer. In fact, in the 1960s, the family business became the largest single sales outlet for Omega watches in the UK, with the home-grown Prestex range – where it all started – being quietly discontinued.
Neil dreamed of resurrecting the original family watch brand, reinventing the Prestex concept to reflect the history and aesthetics of a long-standing British company, while making the most of modern watchmaking technology by offering contemporary quality and reliability. By adding the historic ‘Prestex’ trademark to Neil’s family name Duckworth, a new name is born that salutes the history of the old one: reflecting the passion and tradition of three generations of watch-making.
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