News This year marks Audemars Piguet's 125th anniversary, which is being celebrated with the company's usual dynamism. Launched in 1875 in Le Brassus, the manufactory is still in the hands of the de-scendants of its two founders, Jules-Louis Audemars and Edward-Auguste Piguet, a unique accomplishment in Switzerland's watch sector.
As it has always done, Audemars Piguet challenges the very limits of fine luxury watchmaking. With its ultra-thin movements, grand complications and bold designs and styling, the manufactory continues to notch up world firsts. Through its corporate philosophy, it safeguards and perpetuates the unique expertise that the master watchmakers of the Joux Valley have handed down from one generation to another.
The brand's production is divided into five lines and covers the whole gamut of fine luxury watch-making. It challenges time with the Royal Oak and the Royal Oak Offshore, the world's most expensive sports watches. It reveals the essence of time with the Jules Audemars and Edward Piguet Classiques, which combine grand complications and exquisite styling. It creates modern time with the Millenary and Canapé Contemporaines, and unveils the fascination of time with its feminine creations, Promesse, Charleston and Carnegie, and its Haute Joaillerie watches and jewellery. It immortalises time under its Tradition of Excellence label.
Audemars Piguet has a workforce of almost 400, 221 of whom are in Le Brassus , produces 70 watches a day, and enjoyed a 1999 turnover approaching 140 million francs. With ultra-modern workshops, the latest technological and computer-assisted tools, and state-of-the-art clean rooms for assembly, it will have the wherewithal to strengthen its reputation during this anniversary year. All to be officially inaugurated in the autumn, they will be central to the manufactory's objective of an annual 7% increase in turnover, which will be achieved on the basis of absolute quality, the creation of a new generation of exclusive movements, and greater use of new technologies and new materials.
This year, Audemars Piguet has been presenting both its customers and the general public with an itinerant exhibition of 125 unique watches to illustrate its achievements during its 125 years of existence. After the Far East, Switzerland and Paris, it will travel to London (June), Monte Carlo (August), Wiesbaden (September), Rome (October) and New York (November).
For Audemars Piguet, the celebration of such an anniversary would be incomplete without making a philanthropic act, so throughout the year it will be making donations to several associations for under-privileged children.
June 07, 2000
