Audemars Piguet

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Audemars Piguet
Type
Founded
Headquarters
Industry	Watch manufacturing
Products	Wristwatches, accessories

Audemars Piguet is a major Swiss watch manufacturer. Their watches include classic^[vague] watches, the Royal Oak casual watches. They have received great attention for their Terminator 3 watch.^[vague]

1 Foundation
2 Business
3 Sponsorships
4 Ambassadors
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Foundation

The roots of the famous Swiss watch manufacturer date back to the 19th century, when, in 1875, the 23-year-old Jules Audemars met Edward-August Piguet, then only 21, at Vallée de Joux, which is considered^[who?] to be the cradle of prestige watch-making. Their hometown was Le Brassus. 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.

In this great^[vague] Swiss Manufacture of watches, the torch of the founders of the company continues to be carried by their successors in hot line. Since 1882, the members of the Audemars families and Piguet sat always at the Board of directors and thus directly or indirectly ran the company.

[edit] Business

Their business started with Audemars managing the production and monitoring the technical part and Piguet focusing on sales. Instant success was not to come. The Audemars Piguet trademark was registered later in 1882 and only seven years later the company was officially founded. Then Audemars Piguet et Cie succeeded in becoming one of the first largest employers for watch-making in the whole Canton of Vaud, southwestern Switzerland.

The two talented watchmakers focused on the production of accurate watches with sophisticated^[vague] mechanisms. After the company founded it opened its new branch in the heart of Switzerland – Geneva.^{[dubious – discuss]} Thus, since 1889 the company started creating its own components and assembling within its factory as well. Quality control was strict, and only the best products^{[citation needed]} were launched into the market.

Between 1894 and 1899 the company produced about 1,200 timepieces. These included some very complex watches. When Audemars and Piguet died, in 1918 and 1919 respectively, the company continued its activity steadily growing and expanding its fame.

Later Audemars Piguet launched several watches like the smallest minute repeater in the world and a jumping -second hand^[vague] pocket watch. In 1925 Audemars Piguet amazed those people interested with its thinnest pocket watch. Only three years later the company created the first skeleton watch in the world.

As the success of the company's business was rising its customers became Tiffany & Co, Cartier and Bulgari. 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 one of its well-known models – an ultra-thin chronograph, the heart of which was Calibre 2003. The sales of Audemars Piguet started growing in the forties and fifties. Together with Jaeger LeCoultre it designed the thinnest automatic movement. The latter included a 21 carat gold rotor placed in the center. The legendary^{[dubious – discuss]} "Royal Oak" was produced five years later, in 1972. The designer of the watch^{[dubious – discuss]} was Gerald Genta.

Today the company maintains one of the leading positions^[vague] in the watch-making branch. It owns about 40 per cent of Jaeger LeCoultre and every timepiece manufactured in-house is still made using the old-fashioned hand-made technique.

Since year 2000 company claimed that they dont exeed amount of 16 000 watches produced each year and they wont, which is really small production when comparing to other famous Swiss watch manufacture Rolex which produces 2000 watches per day.

[edit] Sponsorships

Since 1999, Audemars Piguet has been the sponsor of the Queen Elizabeth II Cup, a Group One Thoroughbred horse race in Hong Kong, New Territories, China.

Audemars Piguet are also a sponsor of the Alinghi Sailing Team which won the America's Cup in 2003 & 2007

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. ^[1]

[edit] Ambassadors

|ref=Audemars Piguet^[2]

Like many other brands of luxury watches, Audemars Piguet has a number of ambassadors, such as Indonesian-French singer Anggun and Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh, as well personalities and teams in different spot categories (cricket, softball, golf, skiing, motor sports and sailing)