Schmidt, Lothar

Lothar Schmidt is an engineer, watch entrepreneur and owner of the watch manufacturer Sinn.

Helmut Sinn had founded the Sinn Spezialuhren GmbH & Co. KG in 1956 and built it up as a special producer of pilot's watches. After he had successfully positioned this company on the market by an unusual concept of direct marketing, he sold it in September 1994 to the former IWC employee and graduate engineer Lothar Schmidt.

The 1949 in Neunkirchen, Saarland, born Lothar Schmidt, after graduating from high school, studied engineering in Saarbrücken. In the 1970s, he had his first contact with the watch industry: he became technical director of a housing company. 1980, he moved as a freelancer for IWC to Schaffhausen, where he was responsible for the development of an innovative case and bracelet production. He developed solutions to problems in dealing with the difficult to process materials titanium, platinum and ceramic. Under his leadership the first Porsche Design models were created: Porsche Design by IWC Ocean 2000, the zirconium oxide case of the Da Vinci and the case of the Grande Complication.¹⁾

From 1990, Schmidt was responsible for rebuilding the revived tradition brand A. Lange & Söhne in Glashütte, which was made possible through the support of the LMH (to which belonged IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre).

1998, four years after his acquisition of the brand Sinn, Lothar Schmidt, together with Walter Fricker (owner of the housing company Fricker, Pforzheim) and Ronald Boldt, former Head of Technology and Quality of the Glashütter Uhrenbetrieb, founded the case manufacturer SUG Sächsische Uhrentechnologie GmbH in Glashütte.