Audemars Piguet is a
manufactureManufacture d'horlogerie is a French horological term of art that is also used in English. In horology, the term is usually encountered in its abbreviated form manufacture. This term of art is used when describing either a wrist watch movement/watchworks fabricator or its products...
of expensive Swiss
watchA watch is a timepiece that is made to be worn on a person. It is usually a wristwatch, worn on the wrist with a strap or bracelet. In addition to the time, modern watches often display the day, date, month and year, and electronic watches may have many other functions.Most inexpensive and...
es that compete with Patek Philippe and
Vacheron ConstantinVacheron Constantin is a Swiss manufacture of prestige watches and a brand of the Richemont group. It currently employs around 400 people worldwide, most of whom are based in the manufacturing plant; a modern building in Geneva...
.
The roots of Audemars Piguet date back to 1875, when the 23-year-old Jules-Louis Audemars met Edward-Auguste Piguet, then only 21, at
Vallée de JouxThe Vallée de Joux is a valley of the Jura Mountains in the swiss Canton of Vaud. It is located at 20 miles North from Geneva and Lausanne, its mean altitude is over 3300 feet . There are three lakes in the Vallée de Joux : the lac de Joux , the lac Brenet and the lac Ter...
, which is considered to be the cradle of prestige watch-making. Their hometown was
Le BrassusLe Brassus is a village in the Vallée de Joux in the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland. It is part of the municipality Le Chenit.-References:...
. When they graduated school they went to Vallée de Joux to start working in their favorite field of watch manufacturing.
Thus Audemars started producing component parts for movements and Piguet got the job of a
repasseur, whose job it was to make the final regulation of the timepiece.
Audemars Piguet is a
manufactureManufacture d'horlogerie is a French horological term of art that is also used in English. In horology, the term is usually encountered in its abbreviated form manufacture. This term of art is used when describing either a wrist watch movement/watchworks fabricator or its products...
of expensive Swiss
watchA watch is a timepiece that is made to be worn on a person. It is usually a wristwatch, worn on the wrist with a strap or bracelet. In addition to the time, modern watches often display the day, date, month and year, and electronic watches may have many other functions.Most inexpensive and...
es that compete with Patek Philippe and
Vacheron ConstantinVacheron Constantin is a Swiss manufacture of prestige watches and a brand of the Richemont group. It currently employs around 400 people worldwide, most of whom are based in the manufacturing plant; a modern building in Geneva...
.
Foundation
The roots of Audemars Piguet date back to 1875, when the 23-year-old Jules-Louis Audemars met Edward-Auguste Piguet, then only 21, at
Vallée de JouxThe Vallée de Joux is a valley of the Jura Mountains in the swiss Canton of Vaud. It is located at 20 miles North from Geneva and Lausanne, its mean altitude is over 3300 feet . There are three lakes in the Vallée de Joux : the lac de Joux , the lac Brenet and the lac Ter...
, which is considered to be the cradle of prestige watch-making. Their hometown was
Le BrassusLe Brassus is a village in the Vallée de Joux in the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland. It is part of the municipality Le Chenit.-References:...
. When they graduated school they went to Vallée de Joux to start working in their favorite field of watch manufacturing.
Thus Audemars started producing component parts for movements and Piguet got the job of a
repasseur, whose job it was to make the final regulation of the timepiece. They founded a firm later known as
Audemars, Piguet et Cie.
Since 1882, members of the Audemars and Piguet families have always been on the board of directors and have thus directly or indirectly run the company.
Business
The business started with Audemars managing the production and technical part and Piguet focusing on sales, and success was not immediate. The Audemars Piguet
trademarkA trademark or trade mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or services from...
was registered in 1882, however it would be seven years later that the company was officially founded. At this point Audemars Piguet et Cie became one of the largest employers for watch-making in the whole of
VaudVaud is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland and is located in Romandy, the southwestern part of the country. The capital is Lausanne. The name of the Canton in Switzerland's other languages are Vaud in Italian , Waadt in German and Vad in Romansh.-History:Along the lakes, Vaud was inhabited in...
, southwestern Switzerland.
The company opened its first branch in
GenevaGeneva, is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie...
in 1889, and began creating its own components and assembling within its factory with direct supervision and strict quality control .
Between 1894 and 1899 the company produced about 1,200 timepieces, including some very complex watches. When Audemars and Piguet died, in 1918 and 1919 respectively, the company steadily grew and became more famous. As the success of the company's business was rising its customers became Tiffany & Co,
CartierCartiers SA is a French jeweller and watch manufacturer that is a subsidiary of Switzerland's Compagnie Financière Richemont SA. The corporation carries the name of the Cartier family of jewelers whose control ended in 1964 and who were known for numerous pieces including the "Bestiary" , the diamond...
and
BulgariBulgari is an Italian jeweler and luxury goods retailer. The trademark is usually written "BVLGARI" in ancient Roman style, and is derived from the surname of the company's Greek founder, Sotirios Voulgaris...
, who rebranded and sold Audemars Piguet watches under their own house names. Today these watches are only identifiable as Audemars Piguet products by their serial numbers.
Later Audemars Piguet launched several watches like the smallest
minute repeaterA repeater is a complication in a mechanical watch or clock that audibly chimes the hours and often minutes at the press of a button. There are many types of repeater, from the simple repeater which merely strikes the number of hours, to the minute repeater which chimes the time down to the...
in the world and a jumping second hand (i.e. the second hand jumps from second to second in quanta rather than progressively) pocket watch. In 1925 Audemars Piguet introduced the world's thinnest pocket watch, at 1.32 millimeters. Only three years later the company created the first
skeleton watchA skeleton watch is a mechanical watch , in which all of the moving parts are visible through either the front of the watch, the back of the watch or a small cut outlining the dial...
.
At the end of 1920s and the beginning of 1930s the success of Audemars Piguet started dimming. The crash of the stock market as well as the
DepressionThe Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
slowed the development of many Swiss companies.
During World War II the manufacturer was able to come back on the market by producing one of its well-known models – an ultra-thin
chronographA chronograph is a timepiece or watch with both timekeeping and stopwatch functions. Pocket watch chronographs were produced as early as the 18th century but did not become popular until the 1820s. The term 'Chronograph' is often confused with the term 'Chronometer' which in some cases designates...
, the heart of which was Calibre 2003. The sales of Audemars Piguet started growing in the forties and fifties. Together with
Jaeger-LeCoultreJaeger-LeCoultre is a luxury watch and clock manufacture based in Le Sentier , Vaud, Switzerland.-The Founding of the Seminal Organization:...
it designed the thinnest
automatic movementAn automatic or self-winding watch is a mechanical watch, whose mainspring is wound automatically by the natural motion of the wearer's arm, to make it unnecessary to manually wind the watch...
. The latter included a 21 carat gold rotor placed in the center. Their "Royal Oak", was produced in 1972 and is considered to have created the market for the stainless steel luxury watch. It was designed by
Gerald GentaCharles Gérald Genta is a Swiss watch designer.In 1994 he designed the "Grande Sonnerie", the world's most complicated wristwatch, price approximately one million U.S. dollars....
.
Today the company, along with Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin, is sometimes claimed to be one of the top three Swiss watchmakers. Every timepiece manufactured in-house is still made using the old-fashioned hand-made technique.
The Audemars Piguet watch group is composed of 1,100 employees, fourteen distribution subsidiaries and sixteen boutiques around the world. It comprises three production sites: Le Brassus (SA de la Manufacture d'Horlogerie Audemars Piguet & Cie), LeLocle (Audemars Piguet: Renaud et Papi SA) and Meyrin (Center SA).
The manufacture Audemars Piguet produces 26,000 timepieces per year.
Sponsorships
Since 1999, Audemars Piguet has been the sponsor of the
Queen Elizabeth II CupThe Queen Elizabeth II Cup is a Group One Thoroughbred horse race at Sha Tin Racecourse in the New Territories, Hong Kong. Established in 1975 by the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club, it is run annually in April at a distance of 2,000 metres on turf. Prior to 1997 it was run at 2,200 metres...
, a
Group OneGroup One or Group 1 is the term for conditions races used in most of the world for the highest level of Thoroughbred racing and harness racing. In the United States, Canada and Japan, "Grade I" is used instead. These races attract the best horses, and are for very large stake money.-See also:*...
Thoroughbred horse raceThoroughbred horse racing is a worldwide sport and industry involving the racing of Thoroughbred horses. It is governed by different national bodies. There are two forms of the sport: flat racing and jump racing...
in
Hong KongHong Kong , officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, is a highly autonomous territory of the People's Republic of China, facing Guangdong to the north and the South China Sea to the east, west and south...
,
New TerritoriesNew Territories is one of the three main regions of Hong Kong, alongside Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon peninsula. Historically, it is the region described in The Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory...
, China.
Audemars Piguet are also a sponsor of the
Alinghi Sailing TeamAlinghi is a coined name of the syndicate set up by Ernesto Bertarelli to challenge for the America's Cup. Bertarelli had raced several smaller yachts named Alinghi previously, but 2003 was his first attempt at the America's Cup...
which won the
America's CupThe America’s Cup is the most prestigious regatta and match race in the sport of sailing, and the oldest active trophy in international sport, predating the Modern Olympics by 45 years. The sport attracts top sailors and yacht designers because of its long history and prestige...
in 2003 & 2007
In 2007, Audemars Piguet offered its support to the
Clinton FoundationThe William J. Clinton Foundation is a foundation established by former President of the United States Bill Clinton with the stated mission to "strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence." The Foundation focuses on four critical areas:...
. The Foundation works around the world on global issues, including education, health, poverty issues, and fight against HIV/AIDS. The company created the Jules Audemars Clinton Foundation Equation of Time watch in a limited edition of 126 pieces. The watch incorporated complex astronomical features. It shows sunrise and sunset times, perpetual calendar and astronomical moon.
Ambassadors
Like many other brands of luxury watches, Audemars Piguet has a number of ambassadors, such as Indonesian-French singer
AnggunAnggun Cipta Sasmi is an Indonesian singer/songwriter with French citizenship. Having already had tremendous success in her homeland Indonesia since she was 12, she decided to pursue an international career and left Indonesia in 1994...
, Indian Cricketer
Sachin TendulkarSachin Ramesh Tendulkar is an Indian cricketer widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. In 2002, Wisden ranked him the second greatest Test batsman of all time, next to Donald Bradman, and the second greatest one day international batsman of all time, next to...
and Malaysian actress
Michelle YeohDato' Michelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng is a BAFTA Award-nominated actress and dancer, well known for performing her own stunts in the action films that brought her to fame in the early 1990s....
, as well personalities and teams in different sport categories such as
cricketCricket is a bat-and-ball team sport that is first documented as being played in southern England in the 16th century. By the end of the 18th century, cricket had developed to the point where it had become the national sport of England. The expansion of the British Empire led to cricket being...
,
softballSoftball is a team sport popular especially in the United States. It is a direct descendant of baseball. Some key differences between softball and baseball are that softballs are larger than baseballs, and pitches are thrown underhand rather than overhand. Softball was invented by George Hancock...
,
golfGolf is a precision club-and-ball sport, in which competing players , using many types of clubs, attempt to hit balls into each hole on a golf course while employing the fewest number of strokes. Golf is one of the few ball games that does not require a standardized playing area...
,
skiingSkiing is a group of sports using skis as equipment for traveling over snow. Skis are used in conjunction with boots that connect to the ski with use of a binding....
, motor sports and
sailingSailing is the art of controlling a boat with large foils called sails. By changing the rigging, rudder, and sometimes the keel or centre board, a sailor manages the force of the wind on the sails in order to change the direction and speed of a boat...
.
External links