Rado was founded in 1917 as Schlup & Co. in Lengnau, in the Swiss canton of Bern, by the brothers Fritz, Ernst and Werner Schlup, initially to make watch movements. The Rado name was registered as a trademark in 1928 and became the company name in 1957, when the Green Horse collection was the first to carry it. In 1962 Rado introduced the DiaStar 1, marketed as the world’s first scratchproof watch. The company joined ASUAG in 1968, and through the merger of ASUAG and SSIH it became part of the group renamed the Swatch Group in 1998. Between 1986 and 2002 it introduced ceramic and composite designs including the Integral, Ceramica, Sintra and V10K.
Rado remains headquartered in Lengnau and is a brand of the Swatch Group. It is known for hard, scratch-resistant materials such as hardmetal, sapphire crystal and high-tech ceramic, with the DiaStar and Captain Cook among its best-known lines.
