Despite a reputation for innovation, Audemars Piguet is also steeped in tradition. after 136 years it is still owned by the founding family and offers a perfect blend of old and new.
AUDACIOUS BUT TRADITIONAL
The Swiss watchmaking industry is steeped in tradition. And right at the heart of that tradition sits family-owned Audemars Piguet. It is one of the few of the great watchmaking houses still owned by the founding family.That’s impressive continuity for a firm established over 130 years ago. But despite these strong and unbroken links with its heritage, Audemars Piguet remains widely recognised across the world as a leader in the cutting edge of watch technologies. Audemars Piguet is simply where the past and the future meet in the present.
TRANSFORMATIONAL TECHNIQUES
Flamboyant and creative, as well as being practical and desirable, Audemars Piguet watches have always been an inspiration to the rest of the industry. From its earliest days, the manufacturer has supplied the ideas, inspiration and the innovations that have transformed the industry.
When it was first founded, Audemars Piguet made bespoke complications for the gentry. Today it continues to make very limited edition special watches that appeal to the higher echelons of the market.
The first minute repeater, a pocket chronograph and the first wristwatch with a minute repeater were early achievements. This innovative streak continues in Audemars Piguet’s specialist watches today, as limited edition specials and onc-off pieces — often in unique materials — offer unique and highly prized products that watch lovers can’t get anywhere else.
SIZE MATTERS
In recent years, demand for larger watches has grown. But Audemars Piguet prefers to set trends rather than follow them. As far back as 1915 it established a reputation for thin watches that offered better movements than bigger offerings sold by rival firms.
Although the firm was more than capable of going Large (its 1972 Royal Oak model was nicknamed the Jumbo) Audemars Piguet designers also became known for their ability to do more with less. In 1915, for example, the firm offered a wristwatch with minute repeater at just 8.3mm, then by far the world’s thinnest. From the slimmest pocket watch in 1925 to the world s first skeleton watch, right up to the thinnest automatic movement in 1967, Audemars Piguet developed a reputation for design excellence. Today the Jules Audemars Perpetual Calendar boasts more than 350 components — somehow squeezed into a case just 9.15mm thick.
TRADITIONALIST MAVERICKS
Audemars Piguet’s watchmakers are masters at understanding the rules and essentials of the industry. Unlike many of their more conservative peers, Audemars Piguet encourages it staff to draw on this experience to have the confidence to throw the rule book out of the window.
Nonconformist and visionary, Audcmars Piguet is unique among the top four Swiss Watch houses in its approach to watch making. It manages to apply all the conventions of the Swiss watchmaking tradition, while at the same time breaking enough rules to give its watches a unique quality that many others lack.
Despite only making and selling limited quantities of watches — certainly compared to some of the bigger houses — Audemars Piguet still produces a huge variety of different case shapes.
This allows the firm’s designers to be increasingly inventive in their watch designs and to make sure they use the perfect case shape for each new watch, rather than fitting new watches into standard shapes and sizes. Small scale production also allow the firm to focus on producing the very best watches.
MATERIAL WORLD
From the very beginning, the firm’s confidence to innovate has included the use of the very latest materials in its watches. While many think this might have reached its apogee with the introduction of the Royal Oak in 1972, today the firm is as inventive as ever working in specialist high-performance materials, such as titanium, forged carbon and ceramics. Quality watchmaking is about precision and dedication. Over its history, Audemars Piguet has drawn on and developed the early passion for creating the perfect watch that inspired its founders.
After 136 years, few companies and watches are able to match an Audemars Piguet. Isn’t it time you joined the family?
For more information and details on stockists visit www.audemarspiguet.com
[…] Audemars Piguet – A tradition for innovation 0 March 1, 2011 Posted by queenofextreme in NewsAldo Zilli – The view from here Aldo Zilli, founder and chef-patron, Zilli Restaurants. I've been branded as a fish expert but with my new restaurant — Zilli Green — they will have to add vegetarian food. My ultimate aim is to open a vegetarian restaurant in my home town in Italy, to see my brothers pass out. When I arrived in Soho it was very Italian and was like a village. It reminded me of where I came from. When I started business life at the age of 26, it was simpler. Everything was cash-based. That meant no VAT or tax, no tills and no computers. Whatever you took you put in your pocket. Once you’d paid suppliers the rest was yours. I bought myself a Porsche within six months. I still cook in Brewer Street nearly every day. I want to see what’s going on and what’s coming in. It’s all very well doing PR, but you’ve got to put food on the table. I have a very personal approach my restaurants. My customers have favourite tables and I name dishes after customers. People love it. They feel they belong somewhere. It's about creating that community. Last year was bad. People thought I was gone, because I wasn’t around much. I took time off. At those times you think, who needs restaurants? My wife says, "don’t stress yourself. Get rid of them, we don’t need them." She says we could live away from London. But I am the boy from Soho. You can take me out of it, but you can’t take it out of me. Chefs are competitive people at the best of times. Can you imagine what it’s like on TV? Chefs have become luvvies and rock stars. It’s all about who has the best hairdresser. But a lot of celebrity TV chefs don’t open restaurants because they know how hard it is. My challenge here is to get non-vegetarians to eat vegetarian. If I can do that I’ve got a winning formula. I’m not hoping that people are going to turn vegetarian. But I want people to understand that they can come here and enjoy it. The reaction to this has been better than any restaurant I’ve opened. Zilli Green is not just a vegetarian restaurant. Everything's green. The tables and everything are recycled. Harden's Guide asked if this was a turning point. Are other chefs going to follow me and wake up to this? In 10 years' time 25 per cent of the population will be vegetarian. I have a voice in the food industry as a chef and I think there will be a few more people who come with me. Especially when people start to see that it is also a feasible business. Previously I expanded too quickly. In one year I opened three restaurants and invested £2.5m in the business. Then 9/11 happened, Americans stopped travelling. The Covent Garden restaurant, which had a lot of theatre business, suffered. It was too big to be allowed to suffer. I sold it for peanuts to pay back the banks. Doing commercials on TV is fine, but putting your money down and working for yourself is tough. You have to be ambitious to think a restaurant will work in this climate. But I would advise young chefs to work towards it. For a chef, nothing is more rewarding than having your own restaurant. Aldo Zilli’s latest book, Zilli Light: Healthy Italian Eating, is published by Simon & Schuster, priced £20. […]
[…] Audemars Piguet – A tradition for innovation 0 March 12, 2011 Posted by queenofextreme in NewsSimon Thomas – One to watch – United Leisure and GamingRising star Simon Thomas. What's so special? His company is refurbishing the London landmark Hippodrome. “There aren’t enough characters in gaming anymore. The market is totally divided up among the dull big corporates," says Simon Thomas. He says it would be nice to see smaller, more innovative firms in the casino and gaming markets. It’s clear that this is how Thomas sees his own business, United Leisure Gaming, which is in the process of refurbishing the Hippodrome. The £15m project will turn the enormous venue into what he describes as “a premier entertainment destination”, complete with London’s largest casino, a 160-seater show theatre and at least one fine-dining restaurant. Thomas runs the business with his father, having taken over the family bingo business, Beacon Bingo, in the mid-1990s. Thomas sold the firm in 2005 to venture capitalists. Although it was tough to leave some of the employees behind, he says the move was sensible. “I could see that the new gambling legislation, combined with the smoking ban, would harm the bingo business. As it turned out, we sold at the top of the market and we got an offer that really was too good to refuse." The Hippodrome is due to re-open in 2011, by which time Thomas hopes that the worst of the recession will be over. “This is a good time to be doing the building work," he says. The Hippodrome will, he says, reinstate many of the original features while the casino will appeal to a wider market than many existing casinos in the UK. As Thomas sees it: “Hardly anyone in the UK has been to a casino in this country, but lots have been to one overseas when they are on holiday. We want to attract some of those visitors, who will see that this is the sort of place they will feel comfortable in. ” […]
[…] Audemars Piguet – A tradition for innovation 0 March 1, 2011 Posted by queenofextreme in NewsMayfair Spa The Mayfair Hotel has had a £75m refurbishment and no expense was spared when they developed their stunning spa. With a loyal clientele this is luxury at its best. After a few hectic days of meetings and tight deadlines there was only one place for me to recover, my favourite place. The Mayfar Spa. As soon as you enter ard see the giant wall carved into a tribal face with a cascading waterfall you know you are somewhere special. Luxury has been defined here and with an impressive list of treatments for men and women the choices are endless. Tne spa therapists place strong emphasis on guests arriving an hour early so they can experience their stunning steam room lit by optic fibre lights, which gives the feeling of a warm summer’s night and their sauna is filled with the sweet smell of fruits and herbs roasting on a cast iron plate. I was relaxed, chilled and ready for my treatments. I opted for the Crystal Clear Oxygen Facial, favoured by many celebrities and the Hot Stone Massage, which is a favourite with the men. The spa has taken tailored treatments from around the world, including Indian Head Massage. Salt Glow. Mineral Wrap and the famous Cleopatra Mud Bath which you can have with a partner if you want to cosy up and have some fun! I emerged three hours later walking on air and glowing as if I had been on a long holiday. Now. we know the golden rule about drinking lots of water after a massage but don't do what I did and head for the trendy bar in the hotel for a cocktail or two. Not quite the detoxication I had in mind, but it felt it would be rude not to. Mayfair Spa. Stratton Street W1A Tel: 20 7915 2826 http://www.mayfairspa.com […]
[…] Audemars Piguet – A tradition for innovation 0 May 12, 2009 Posted by queenofextreme in NewsPhil Hall – Founder and Chairman PHA MediaPhil Hall: "This recession will sort the men from the boys. Lots of PR companies talk about grand strategies, but clients can't see how it touches their bottom line. The biggest smoke and mirrors is that PR is about strategy. It's not. It's about getting people talking to newspapers and magazines so that they get their product out there. As editor of the News of the World, I was running the biggest-selling newspaper in the world. Prime ministers would ring me up all the time. I was once called by the prime minister and invited to tea at Number 10, but asked if I could make it the following week because I was having a tough week on the paper. Despite what people think, Rupert Murdoch is the best boss you can work for. He lets you be the editor. His last words in every conversation are “it’s your call". Whenever I was in trouble the first phone call was always Rupert. People think the News of the World runs every story, but that’s far from the truth. You have to be very careful. In five years as editor, I never got sued successfully. We always had evidence and we jailed 110 people. If you have a great sensational story, you don't have to sensationalise it on the front page. “Prime minister quits" doesn't need any more. When Diana died we ran the headline “Diana dead". There was no more shocking story. I am poacher turned gamekeeper. Journalists tell me that I must understand their point of view. But we were careful at the News of the World. We always made sure we had a public interest defence and stayed within the parameters. Directors shouldn't make decisions based on PR or how something looks. But they do have to think about perception. PR has to work with the business decision, not drive the decision. Business people have become celebrities. Sir Philip Green, Sir Stuart Rose, Allan Leighton… these are clever guys. Should they become celebrities? I don't see why not because they've got substance. They've got talent, success and if they become role models, I don't think that's a bad thing. There will be our equivalent in the media of the industrial revolution in the next three to four years. Blogging and online media will mature. We're going to see huge changes. Local papers are going to die and the Sunday newspapers are suffering. Journalists are trying to do stories over the phone. They aren’t meeting people or going to a location. Blogging is unbelievably powerful. But there's also an element of you telling your secrets. If I meet a high-profile potential client, and I blog about it, all the other PR firms will call them. Why tell people what you are doing? You've got to have the communications guy at the top table. The worst thing is when a firm gets into a mess and they call us in, but we don't know the whole story. If I know everything that's happened, I can advise people properly. Chief executives and business leaders have to be careful about playing the PR game. If they put themselves up as icons or business leaders they are there to be shot down. They should let their business performance speak for itself. But instead they put themselves up there. It’s difficult to avoid taking the blame when things go wrong. Don't look at the glory because glory comes at a heavy price." […]
[…] Audemars Piguet – A tradition for innovation 0 April 12, 2009 Posted by queenofextreme in NewsRichard Farleigh – Entrepreneur and investor Richard Farleigh: "I've been a central banker, an investment banker and a hedge fund manager. But I’m not to blame for what’s happened. I was into macro-economic modelling and big-picture views. The blame game is being played. It reminds me of when the Berlin Wall came down and people started blaming the border guards. What about the people ordering the guards to shoot? I did design derivatives. But they met a need and helped reduce risk. They were relatively easy to understand. If the management can’t understand products because they are too complex, there will be problems. It wasn’t necessary for them to get that complicated. You can point to bank directors, but what about the central banks? Economic policy has been targeting the price of day-to-day commodities, while asset prices have gone through the roof. They were watching if the CPI was 2.1 or 2.3 per cent, while house prices rose 100 per cent in four years. Economists say the housing market is the biggest bubble in history. We are all to blame. It’s ridiculous when a squashy London flat costs £2,000 per sq ft. But we were all part of it. The Great Depression is the nearest comparison we have to now. If governments then had reacted the way they have this time there wouldn't have been a depression. And if we had allowed banks to fail this time and hadn’t bailed out the economy, we would be heading for another depression. We've got it right this time. But the outcome will be higher taxes for a generation. The US plan will cost $8oobn (£578bn). The world’s GDP is only $40trn and we are talking about nearly $1trn in the US. That’s serious money and it’s just the start. This recession is different because it started with the wealthy. It didn’t start with factory workers losing their jobs. It started with the wealthy getting share portfolios decimated. But it’s premature to talk about recovery. We are still on the way down. I have been bearish about investments for 18 months. But I am still doing some early-stage investments. They are uncomfortable. People like investments that make some money most of the time. They tend to be overpriced. Most people don’t want early-stage investments because nine out of 10 fail. It’s uncomfortable getting bad news all the time, while you wait for the one month where you make a return. I also like investing in disruptive businesses. When we did Home House in the 1990s, it was shocking. Clubs then were men only. At Home House there was no dress code and you could use your mobile phone and people could bring dogs. It was as disruptive as Wolfson Microelectronics, which developed the chips for the iPod and Xbox. Good management can make a poor product work. They’ll either stop it, so you don’t lose too much money, or they’ll adapt it or buy in new technology. I have seen plenty of examples of good technology or good product being messed up by poor management. I'm the counter argument to all those child entrepreneurs, the kids with the lemonade stand or the tuck shop at school. I had no aptitude for business whatsoever. I tried to do a paper round and ended up losing money. The rationale for the entire AIM market has disappeared. The cost of keeping a company on AIM is £500,000. That’s a lot of money. [If companies have] a market capitalisation of £5m or £6m, what’s the point? There’s no volume, what’s the service? People can’t buy or sell shares. AIM is a baby of the bubble, maybe it is also going to be a corpse of the collapse." […]