About Audemars Piguet
Audemars Piguet is a Swiss national watch brand, founded in 1881, one of the world’s top ten watches. In 1889, Audemars Piguet exhibited its GRAND COMPLICATION tourbillon at the 10th Universal Watch Exhibition in Paris, where its exquisite design drew a great response and international fame, establishing Audemars Piguet in the watchmaking world. Today, under the leadership of the fourth generation of the Audemars and Piguet families, Audemars Piguet is one of the world’s top ten watches, highly regarded by watch connoisseurs and collectors.
Audemars Piguet engraves the name of the maker on the back of each watch as a guarantee of responsibility. In order to maintain Switzerland’s reputation as a watchmaking kingdom, there is a watchmaking school in Switzerland to train the watchmaking talents required by the watch industry. An apprentice must complete a four-year course at the watch school before qualifying as a qualified watchmaker, but to become a master of the Manufacture Audemars Piguet, he must spend an additional two years before qualifying to be assigned to the ultra-thin mechanical department. The Audemars Piguet Manufacture insists on its “. Audemars Piguet’s after-sales service is well known among the world’s most prestigious watchmakers. Even if a part has been out of production for twenty years, Audemars Piguet can still repair it for its customers as long as the manufacturing data is available, so as to guarantee quality for generations.
What about Audemars Piguet watches?
(A) Pure bloodline, always independent
Audemars Piguet, along with Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, Breguet and Lange & Söhne, are recognized in the industry as the world’s top five watch brands, each representing a different realm of horology. However, Audemars Piguet is even more proud of the fact that it has been in the hands of its founder’s family since its inception in 1881, and is the only top watch brand that has always been family-run. The other four, with the exception of Patek Philippe, which returned to the family’s hands after many twists and turns, have long been subservient to different watch groups.
Oliviero Bottinelli, President of Audemars Piguet Asia, believes this is a belief that Audemars Piguet holds very close to its heart. “We have always remained independent, even though today there are many top luxury groups that want to acquire us. We have always maintained our position because we feel that this is how we can keep the bloodline pure.”
Many people may not know that Audemars Piguet also had very difficult times, during the World War, when the top brand could only sell two watches a year at worst, “but we managed to pull through the factory without closing it or changing hands, and it was this persistence and this sense of responsibility that kept Audemars Piguet independent.” Oliviero Bottinelli explains.
(B) High brand gold content
Audemars Piguet watches belong to the special class: they are distinguished by the production of complex menus, they are well polished, they fully demonstrate the technical strength of the Manufacture, their production is limited and their brand is extremely valuable.
(C) Use the best diamonds
The diamonds used in Audemars Piguet watches are carefully selected for their color and clarity, and are truly flawless. They are then carefully set by experienced jewelers to reveal your charm and elegance while keeping time with precision.
(D) Not to open blind stores in China and strictly control the quality of Audemars Piguet watches
It is still very cliché to say that China is now the place where all the major luxury goods must compete, and those who have already established a firm foothold are thinking about how to expand rapidly, while those who came one step later are banging their heads trying to come in.
Audemars Piguet entered China in 1999, not too early and not too late. 10 years of watching the Chinese luxury market change dramatically, and while opening many stores in China looks like it should clearly be one of the goals in Audemars Piguet’s growth plans, the cautious brand claims it won’t just open stores. “Our brand is very special and it’s not possible to open a store everywhere like many brands,” says Oliviero Bottinelli, “We are very selective and the stores we open must be of the highest quality. We control the quality in a very fast growing channel and open the best stores. Another thing is that Audemars Piguet also produces very little each year, only 27,000 finished pieces a year, and we don’t blindly pursue production values because of the increase in the number of stores.”
Will this lose its competitive edge compared to other rapidly expanding brands?Oliviero Bottinelli’s answer: “The Chinese market is very special and when there is that opportunity in front of us, we must choose it very carefully and we must go for the best and the most desirable thing. In China, our criteria for choosing a store are first of all a very good address, and if it’s in a mall, there must be other brands around that match Audemars Piguet’s.”
(E) Global reputation for after-sales service
Audemars Piguet’s after-sales service is well known among the world’s leading watchmakers. Even if a part has been out of production for twenty years, Audemars Piguet can still repair it for its customers as long as the manufacturing data is available, so that quality is guaranteed for generations.
How much do Audemars Piguet watches cost?
(A) Audemars Piguet watches are expensive
Audemars Piguet watches are indeed very expensive, but it can’t be helped, Audemars Piguet watches are handmade every single watch, the factory produces more than ten thousand watches a year, the average daily production is just forty or so, while other famous brand watches may be the daily production of tens of thousands. Because the production is small, so the labor cost of more than ninety artisans is very high, the cost of designers is also very high, there are also molds, we know that even less production must do enough types of molds, these reasons are the basic reason for the high price of Audemars Piguet watches.
Audemars Piguet has always been a watchmaker’s “master’s hands”. On the back of each Audemars Piguet watch is the name of the craftsman who made it, which adds a legendary and human touch to the watch. But of course, in today’s industrialized world, the consumer has to pay for this humanity and legend? Money! This is the second reason why Audemars Piguet watches are priced; anon returned.
Although Audemars Piguet is a home-based factory in terms of production, its marketing, its advertising must be modern in cost, it must build an international marketing network and must pay high advertising costs. But with its annual production of just over 10,000 pieces, its high costs dictate that it must set a high price. The good thing is that its brand status echoes its demand, and the fact that it is absolutely handmade makes it possible to acknowledge the high price. On this level, Audemars Piguet is expensive for a reason.
(B) Audemars Piguet watch prices vary greatly, the cheapest tens of thousands of yuan, the most expensive tens of millions of yuan.
Of course, 100,000 yuan Audemars Piguet watch and tens of millions of yuan Audemars Piguet watch will have some differences in function, but tens of millions of yuan watch must have diamonds. On the price of one million yuan for illustration: the value of the table is also mainly reflected in the function, even if it is a watch, it makes a bigger publicity, and then good packaging, it is not possible to mark the value of 500,000 yuan to 1 million. If there are diamonds, the price can be raised upwards, but it can’t mean that the value of the watch is transferred. Audemars Piguet’s expensive watch is not reflected in the diamonds, because as long as there are diamonds, anyone can do it. Audemars Piguet is expensive because it is a handmade watch, and more importantly, it has many patented technologies, such as power retention, which keeps the mechanical watch to maintain a stable going speed and avoid the watch going fast or slow due to the winding.
(C) Which price point is the most sold Audemars Piguet watch?
Hong Kong is the best selling region for Audemars Piguet watches. More than 4,000 watches are sold here every year, basically over 100,000 or several hundred thousand are the best sellers. Audemars Piguet watches are expensive, hand-made is the basic reason, more important is that in Audemars Piguet, it produces watches not purely for chime instruments, it is more to sell tradition and unique artisanal skills. The customer buys an Audemars Piguet watch in pursuit of a status and taste. On this premise, Audemars Piguet watches are as expensive as possible, and diamonds only help to make this possible.
The value of a brand can be endlessly large, but it’s a soft component, and watches as a craft offer a lot of room for the value of a brand. To make a hypothesis, if Audemars Piguet did not produce watches with diamonds, would its profits go down? Would the value of the brand go down? I don’t think so. Its main profit comes from the price point between 100,000 and several hundred thousand dollars, which means that the profit point is not in watches with diamonds worth millions or tens of millions of dollars, and when we talk about Audemars Piguet as a brand, we talk more about its handcraft, its minute repeater technology, its power keeping technology, and rarely about how good its diamonds are, because it is not the content of the brand.
(D) Is a watch set with diamonds jewelry or a timepiece?
Of course it’s still a timepiece, it’s still a watch. Adding diamonds to a watch is because many customers like it, especially female customers, because it really looks good, but adding diamonds simply increases the added value of the watch. Maybe the diamond overloads the watch itself when stating the value of the watch, and that’s because the diamond is a valuable thing. A valuable thing is put on a valuable thing to have a high price tag out, so even if an Audemars Piguet watch is set with diamonds, it is still an Audemars Piguet watch. Before 1991, when diamonds were not brought into watch making, Audemars Piguet was the most expensive watch
(E) What does a diamond on a watch mean for Audemars Piguet?
First of all, it should be noted that Audemars Piguet watches are worthy of diamonds. Watches with diamonds pay more attention to the appearance and design, which is also a test of the brand. Beautiful design with perfect diamonds is a very high-profile taste. In fact, jewelry is only an added value for the watch, and if the watch is not good, there is no added value.
In the process of brand establishment, some moves are often doing useful useless work, the useful part is on the brand; the useless part is on the profit. For example, in the product structure, it will be arranged at the highest level of the structure to produce some high technology, high difficulty and high value products, the consumers of such products are few, but the producer does not care about this, all it needs is an identification: the identification of his R & D capability and production capacity to inject gold into the brand. In other words, to increase the added value of the brand
