AUDEMARS PIGUET

The roots of Audemars Piguet date back to 1874, when the 23-year-old Jules Louis Audemars met Edward Auguste Piguet, then only 21, at Vallée de Joux, they were both born in Le Brassus. When they graduated from school, they went to Vallée de Joux to start working together in watch manufacturing.

Thus Audemars started producing component parts for movements and Piguet got the job of a repasseur, maker the final regulation of the timepiece. In 1875, 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, therefore, directly or indirectly run the company.

The business started with Audemars managing the production and technical part, and Piguet focusing on sales, and success was not immediate. The Audemars Piguet trademark 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 Vaud, southwestern Switzerland.

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 Depression slowed the development of many Swiss companies.

During World War II the manufacturer was able to come back on the market by producing a range of ultra-thin chronograph models, notably the Calibre 2003. The sales of Audemars Piguet started growing in the 1940s and 1950s. Together with Jaeger-LeCoultre it designed the thinnest automatic movement. The latter included a 21 carat gold rotor placed in the center. Their "Royal Oak", which uses a custom Jaeger-leCoultre movement, was produced in 1972 and is considered to have created the market for the stainless steel luxury watch. It was designed by Gerald Genta.

Today, the company, along with Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin & Jaeger-LeCoultre , is sometimes claimed to be one of the "big four" 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 (Centror SA).

The manufacture Audemars Piguet produces 26,000 timepieces per year.

Since 1999, Audemars Piguet has been the sponsor of the Queen Elizabeth II Cup, a 2000 metres Group One Thoroughbred horse raceat Sha Tin Racecourse in Hong Kong around the end of April each year.

In 2007, Audemars Piguet offered its support to the Clinton Foundation. 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.

Audemars Piguet was a sponsor of Team Alinghi, winners of the America's Cup in 2003, making a series of Alinghi limited edition watches.

Like many other brands of luxury watches, Audemars Piguet has a number of ambassadors, including: Novak Djokovic, Sachin Tendulkar, Michael Schumacher, Lionel Messi, Sebastien Buemi, LeBron James, Michelle Yeoh, Diamant Lulaj, among many other personalities and athletes.