Post by Sam on Jul 8, 2007 14:33:41 GMT -6
This is another fairly short report and it’s short for good reason. We were supposed to get a complete factory tour at this maker, but when we gathered in the lobby of the Hotel des Horologers in the Vallee-de-Joux in the morning for the short walk to AP, we found there was a delay of some sort. Nick, our excellent tour operator, was making calls and had walked down to AP (which was right next door actually) to sort out some issue. When he came back he told us that we would not be seeing the factory, but would only be seeing their museum instead.
I think we were all quite disappointed by this news, and it was explained to us by the AP rep who eventually showed up to take us to the museum that the day we arrived coincided with some sort of construction milestone at their new facility – I think it was laying the first stone. Our guide explained that there were many VIP’s at the factory so this meant we could not go there. I guess what that told us is that we were not VIP’s!
So I’m not sure exactly how this became a problem so suddenly on the morning of our visit, considering that this visit had been planned months in advance. So either AP was not very organized, or there was some reason they weren’t telling us for cancelling the factory tour.
In any case, we took what we could get and all made the short walk to the museum to begin our tour of that building. Unfortunately photos there were somewhat limited by policy (normally they don’t allow any) so once again I don’t have a lot to show you other than a few specific watches.
The museum itself was built like Fort Knox. There was a ton of security and each and every door was locked with an electronic system, and was also like a safe door – quite heavy steel with large pins that came out into the door frames. It all seemed a bit overboard actually…..
We started in a small room talking about various AP advertising campaigns and going over all their brand ambassadors in great detail....... I got the feeling we were going into such detail because there wasn’t a ton of things to see, and my thoughts were right. This was probably the least enjoyable visit of the trip, and I think when a poll was taken at the end of our week most people said that future tours should “skip AP” if they didn’t let us into the factory.
Of course being a museum, they had a lot of old stuff. Here are some pictures of that old stuff.
I am pretty sure this machine is used to produce guilloché patterns on dials……
This is a watch making bench from the early days of the company, used by members of the AP families.
The good thing about not being able to take a lot of pictures, is that I could take more notes! So a few facts about the company.....
- Audemars Piguet was founded in 1875 and is still family owned. They have been in continuous production since the founding, although some years in the 1930’s their annual production was as low as one watch!
- The first Tank Francaise from Cartier made in the 1930’s was actually produced by AP for Cartier.
- AP and JLC jointly developed the Caliber 101 that was released in 1927. It is still produced by JLC and is still the world’s smallest mechanical watch movement. I have pictures of that movement from JLC tour that I will post when I get to that report.
- AP uses 6,000 carats of top wesselton quality (colours F and G) diamonds each year for their watches.
- AP was the first company to introduce and automatic watch with a perpetual calendar in 1978 – all were manual winding before that.
So of course AP is now best known for the Royal Oak line of watches. Here is a photo showing a rough and finished Royal Oak case.
AP does not make the cases for these watches, but contracts out all case manufacturing except that of prototypes and some limited editions.
The Royal Oak was a “groundbreaking” watch at the time it was released because before that no one had produced a stainless steel luxury watch, complete with a price that rivaled gold watches at the time. Many thought the idea would flop, but it didn’t. An interesting fact is that the original prototype released when the Royal Oak was created was actually made of white gold because AP had not yet learned how to make watches in stainless steel, so they made it out of gold and just told everyone it was stainless.
Now for some watches in the museum….
This is an interesting watch. It’s a minute repeater made for John Shaeffer of the Shaeffer pen company. Apparently he was quite concerned about someone stealing his watch, so he asked AP to make the dial so that the hour markers spell out his name. ;D
This is a Royal Oak Grande Complication – price tag is 750,000 Swiss Francs….seems to be the going rate for a watch like this as the Blancpain 1735 was the same amount.
This is a RO concept watch – I thought the design was......errrr.....interesting…
Now one for movie and Arnold Schwarzenegger fans!
This is the very watch that Arnold wore in Terminator 3. I am actually a huge fan of the movies, but less so of the watches.
A few facts about this watch….
It is the only Royal Oak produced that has the studs raised above the bezel, rather than sunk in as we normally see. Not sure why this is, but my guess is they don’t do this often because it would be hell on your dress shirts! LOL!
You can see that the watch has a few war wounds, and AP decided not to fix it up since they wanted it to be "authentic."
Despite Arnold’s size and strength, he specifically requested that this watch be made in Titanium rather than steel so it would be lighter. I guess he’s getting older so I’ll cut him some clack on that one.
Here is the one photo I managed to get of people working on watches. The tourbillon room is located in the museum – they didn’t say why this is. So, here is a shot of some people working.
So our tour of the museum finished, and we went back to our hotel and had a lunch sponsored by AP. I only took one food shot, and that was of the lovely dessert we had…..
I also took some pictures of the outside of the AP facilities there on a different morning…….it was a lovely morning with a spectacular mist hanging in the hills around us.
Here is our hotel. I include it in this report because the building is actually owned by AP, although they don’t run the hotel. It is a great place to stay (although no air conditioning) and it we really had a nice room – actually a suite. The hotel caters to tours like ours, and also to people visiting the various watch companies in the Vallee. Hard to explain how satisfying it was to be staying in such a place as the Vallee, and the nature of the place seems slow.
One of the things I'll never forget is waking up in the morning with the windows open (due to no A/C) and hearing the cow bells on the cows on the side of the hill outside our hotel. Certainly not the kind of thing you would get to experience in a place like Geneva.
So in closing AP was definitely not the highlight of our tour. We were all quite disappointed that we didn’t see the workshops, and many were upset that we didn’t get any sort of product presentation of their watches. There are only one or two AP’s that I actually like anyway, so this was not a great loss to me personally.
Anyway thanks for reading all my reports – I appreciate your interest and welcome any comments or questions you might have.
Cheers!
I think we were all quite disappointed by this news, and it was explained to us by the AP rep who eventually showed up to take us to the museum that the day we arrived coincided with some sort of construction milestone at their new facility – I think it was laying the first stone. Our guide explained that there were many VIP’s at the factory so this meant we could not go there. I guess what that told us is that we were not VIP’s!
So I’m not sure exactly how this became a problem so suddenly on the morning of our visit, considering that this visit had been planned months in advance. So either AP was not very organized, or there was some reason they weren’t telling us for cancelling the factory tour.
In any case, we took what we could get and all made the short walk to the museum to begin our tour of that building. Unfortunately photos there were somewhat limited by policy (normally they don’t allow any) so once again I don’t have a lot to show you other than a few specific watches.
The museum itself was built like Fort Knox. There was a ton of security and each and every door was locked with an electronic system, and was also like a safe door – quite heavy steel with large pins that came out into the door frames. It all seemed a bit overboard actually…..
We started in a small room talking about various AP advertising campaigns and going over all their brand ambassadors in great detail....... I got the feeling we were going into such detail because there wasn’t a ton of things to see, and my thoughts were right. This was probably the least enjoyable visit of the trip, and I think when a poll was taken at the end of our week most people said that future tours should “skip AP” if they didn’t let us into the factory.
Of course being a museum, they had a lot of old stuff. Here are some pictures of that old stuff.
I am pretty sure this machine is used to produce guilloché patterns on dials……
This is a watch making bench from the early days of the company, used by members of the AP families.
The good thing about not being able to take a lot of pictures, is that I could take more notes! So a few facts about the company.....
- Audemars Piguet was founded in 1875 and is still family owned. They have been in continuous production since the founding, although some years in the 1930’s their annual production was as low as one watch!
- The first Tank Francaise from Cartier made in the 1930’s was actually produced by AP for Cartier.
- AP and JLC jointly developed the Caliber 101 that was released in 1927. It is still produced by JLC and is still the world’s smallest mechanical watch movement. I have pictures of that movement from JLC tour that I will post when I get to that report.
- AP uses 6,000 carats of top wesselton quality (colours F and G) diamonds each year for their watches.
- AP was the first company to introduce and automatic watch with a perpetual calendar in 1978 – all were manual winding before that.
So of course AP is now best known for the Royal Oak line of watches. Here is a photo showing a rough and finished Royal Oak case.
AP does not make the cases for these watches, but contracts out all case manufacturing except that of prototypes and some limited editions.
The Royal Oak was a “groundbreaking” watch at the time it was released because before that no one had produced a stainless steel luxury watch, complete with a price that rivaled gold watches at the time. Many thought the idea would flop, but it didn’t. An interesting fact is that the original prototype released when the Royal Oak was created was actually made of white gold because AP had not yet learned how to make watches in stainless steel, so they made it out of gold and just told everyone it was stainless.
Now for some watches in the museum….
This is an interesting watch. It’s a minute repeater made for John Shaeffer of the Shaeffer pen company. Apparently he was quite concerned about someone stealing his watch, so he asked AP to make the dial so that the hour markers spell out his name. ;D
This is a Royal Oak Grande Complication – price tag is 750,000 Swiss Francs….seems to be the going rate for a watch like this as the Blancpain 1735 was the same amount.
This is a RO concept watch – I thought the design was......errrr.....interesting…
Now one for movie and Arnold Schwarzenegger fans!
This is the very watch that Arnold wore in Terminator 3. I am actually a huge fan of the movies, but less so of the watches.
A few facts about this watch….
It is the only Royal Oak produced that has the studs raised above the bezel, rather than sunk in as we normally see. Not sure why this is, but my guess is they don’t do this often because it would be hell on your dress shirts! LOL!
You can see that the watch has a few war wounds, and AP decided not to fix it up since they wanted it to be "authentic."
Despite Arnold’s size and strength, he specifically requested that this watch be made in Titanium rather than steel so it would be lighter. I guess he’s getting older so I’ll cut him some clack on that one.
Here is the one photo I managed to get of people working on watches. The tourbillon room is located in the museum – they didn’t say why this is. So, here is a shot of some people working.
So our tour of the museum finished, and we went back to our hotel and had a lunch sponsored by AP. I only took one food shot, and that was of the lovely dessert we had…..
I also took some pictures of the outside of the AP facilities there on a different morning…….it was a lovely morning with a spectacular mist hanging in the hills around us.
Here is our hotel. I include it in this report because the building is actually owned by AP, although they don’t run the hotel. It is a great place to stay (although no air conditioning) and it we really had a nice room – actually a suite. The hotel caters to tours like ours, and also to people visiting the various watch companies in the Vallee. Hard to explain how satisfying it was to be staying in such a place as the Vallee, and the nature of the place seems slow.
One of the things I'll never forget is waking up in the morning with the windows open (due to no A/C) and hearing the cow bells on the cows on the side of the hill outside our hotel. Certainly not the kind of thing you would get to experience in a place like Geneva.
So in closing AP was definitely not the highlight of our tour. We were all quite disappointed that we didn’t see the workshops, and many were upset that we didn’t get any sort of product presentation of their watches. There are only one or two AP’s that I actually like anyway, so this was not a great loss to me personally.
Anyway thanks for reading all my reports – I appreciate your interest and welcome any comments or questions you might have.
Cheers!