Top Swiss Brands

Top Ten Swiss Brands You Use Every Day

Interesting facts about Swiss companies and their worldwide reach

How did this tiny landlocked country, with almost no natural resources of its own, become one of the world’s wealthiest countries, a worldwide financial capital, and home to some of the world’s best known and widely respected companies? Here are some of the brands you probably connect with every day, without realizing they are Swiss:

The world’s largest food company has over 8,000 brands. Nestle’s thirty top brands each have sales of over $1 billion, including Dryers, Stouffers, Nespresso, Nestea, Kit-Kat, and Smarties. They own 70% of the world’s bottled water resources.

The world’s largest watchmaker not only makes their own line of watches, but they supply the watchworks for many other major watch brands. The revolutionized the Swiss watch industry in the face of competition from digital watches and inexpensive Asian imports by streamlining production processes and reducing the number of parts in a typical swiss watch from 91 to 51 with no loss of accurancy. The name “Swatch” is a contraction of “second watch.”

Lindt & Sprüngli, more commonly known as Lindt. One of the world’s is a leading chocolate maker and confectioner. In the US, they are the third largest chocolate maker. Lindt also owns Ghirardelli and Russel Stover.

Makers of the Swiss Army Knife. Brand includes both Victorinox and Wenger knives, as well as watches, fragrances, luggage, and apparel. Little known fact: The steel in Swiss Army knives is actually Swedish steel.

A Swiss chocolate bar introduced in 1908 by Bern chocolatier Theodor Tobler. The name Toblerone is a portmanteau combining Tobler's name with the Italian word torrone, a type of nougat popular at the time. Toblerone is now made by Mondelz, formerly Kraft Foods.

This luxury, Geneva-based Swiss watchmaker makes about 2000 watches per day. Even if you don’t own a Rolex, you may be wearing a watch that features some of their timekeeping innovation, including the first waterproof wristwatch (1926), the first wristwatch with an automatically changing date on the dial (1945), and the first wristwatch to show two time zones at once (1952).

This global financial services company is the largest bank in Switzerland and one of the largest banks in the world.

Best known worldwide for their herbal cough drops, Ricola started as a bakery and confectionary in 1930, by Emil Richterich in Laufen, Switzerland. The name Ricola was formed using the first two letters of the company name, Richterich & Company, Laufen. All their products include natural herbal ingredients, grown in Switzerland without any use of pesticides, insecticides, or herbicides.