News To become a watchmaking manufactory in its own right, Chopard Geneva took the bold step of establishing a workshop in Fleurier in 1996 for the production of a new self-winding movement. Five years later the project has proved a success.
As a tribute to its origins, the Genevan Chopard company decided a few years ago to develop its own self-winding movement, which it named LUC (after Louis-Ulysse Chopard who created the business back in 1860 in Sonvilier). It established a workshop in Fleurier (NE) with sophisticated equipment and small team of first-class engineers and technicians…
Today the Chopard Manufactory in Val-de-Travers has more than 60 employees and makes five different types of LUC movements. The latest is the small LUC 6.96 model, a world first presented in Basel this year (see photos). This movement is used in the LUC Tonneau the only watch in the world with an automatic fashioned calibre with an off-centre microrotor which fits harmoniously into a domed case.
But the Fleurier-based company does not just develop and make LUC movements. It also performs other work for its parent company, including assembly of the famous Mille Miglia watches.
According to the unwritten laws of the watch industry a company cannot use the envied title of “manufactory” unless it makes at least one of its movements itself. By producing high quality movements, Chopard is trying to secure a share of the market for very fine luxury men’s watches. Asked whether he had already recouped the investment of around 3.5 to 4 million francs in Fleurier, Mr Karl-Friedrich Scheufele, Vice-Chairman of Chopard, replies: “Yes. Not only in terms of sales but also as goodwill. We have won incredible goodwill for the brand. Apart from that, the little company in Fleurier is doing very well indeed. The first two or three years were the launch years during which we invested but now we have gained our independence.”
In the old buildings of the Fleurier Movement Blank Factory – FEF which the manufactory has acquired in the meantime, the plan is for the number of staff to reach eighty watchmakers in 2002. Annual production capacity for its part should reach between 8000 and 10,000 mechanical LUC movements in the next three to four years.
“Our ambition is to fit a LUC movement in still more Chopard watches”, the Vice-Chairman of the Genevan company points out. Five thousand movements, i.e. less than 10% of the 70,000 movements needed by Chopard each year, are delivered today by the manufactory. “For our brand, the launch of the LUC movement was a particularly important step which earned us considerable prestige and inestimable celebrity in the watchmaking world”, Mr Scheufele concludes.
June 06, 2001
