A Brand In Focus - Audemars Piguet

The name Audemars Piguet comes from an amalgamation of the founding watchmakers Jules Audemars and Edward-August Piguet who met in the Vallee de Joux back in 1875. At just twenty three and twenty one years of age respectively, the young men were plying their craft as self employed watch makers. Audemars was creating complicated movements for watches from a make-shift workshop he had set up on his parent’s farm, while Piguet was a master watchmaker who performed the final regulations on a watch. Shortly after meeting in 1875, the men decided to join forces and founded the company that would one day become known as Audemars, Piguet et Cie.

From the beginning, Audemars and Piguet had very focused roles within the company. Audemars was responsible for production and the technical side, whilst Piguet spent his time trying to push sales. As mentioned above, success was not immediate for the young watch makers, who registered the Audemars Piguet trademark in 1882, but the official founding of the company didn’t take place until 7 years later.

After the founding of the company in 1889, the duo set-up a branch office in Geneva, and Audemars Piguet decided it was going to then produce all its own components and assemble every watch in-house. It gave the company much more control over the quality and movements of the watches it produced, which led to only the finest watches leaving the production workshop. This attention to detail and quality control is still found in the Audemars Piguet range today.

Between 1894 and 1899 only approximately 1,200 watches were actually produced. However, the company already made their mark within the industry by producing one of the most complicated timepieces ever created; the now legendary “Grande Complication”. This series of watch is still being made today, and is as iconic now as it was back then.

Audemars died in 1918, with Piguet following suit just a year later. After their passing the company steadily grew more and more famous, whilst the technical achievements and progression of their watches carried on well after their legacy. Audemars Piguet went on to create the world's smallest minute repeater watch (with a diameter of just 15.8mm), debuted the Hunter Model – which was a hinged-lid pocket watch with a jumping second hand, and produced another first in the form of the world’s thinnest pocket watch.

Even though the company’s sales suffered during the great depression, the brand bounced back strongly and has now cemented itself within the luxury watch market. With around 1,100 employees, 14 distribution centres and 16 boutiques around the world, the brand produces approximately 26,000 high quality timepieces per year.

These are some of the most sought after watches in the current market, with ambassadors for the brand consisting of some of the world’s top sportsmen, such as Lionel Messi, LeBron James, Novak Djokovic and Michael Schumacher. It has also commissioned a number of special and limited edition watches for superstars such as Jay-Z and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Despite all this success, the company has never lost sight of its heritage and the core values which made the brand what it is today. This might be due to the fact that since its inception a member of the Audemars or Piguet family has always held a spot on the board of directors – making sure the company doesn’t stray from the quality and attention to detail its forefathers envisioned. This means that even now, each and every watch is made in exactly the same way; built by hand and one timepiece at a time.

Audermars Piguet is soon to launch online at TIME².