They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising and promotion. These cookies, including those from third parties, are aimed at creating profiles related to you and are used to deliver adverts more relevant to you and your interests in line with your preferences expressed while surfing the web. We use this information to help run our Platform more efficiently, to gather broad demographic information and to monitor the level of activity on our Platform. It includes the number of visitors to our Platform, the platforms that referred them to our Platform and the pages that they visited on our Platform. The information gathered does not identify any individual visitor and is aggregated. These cookies, including those from third parties, are used to collect information about how visitors use our Platform. For example, some of these cookies enable visitors to specify language, product or other platform preferences. Their overall purpose, however, is to enhance visitors’ experience and enjoyment of this Platform. These cookies serve a variety of purposes related to the presentation, performance and functionality of this Platform. Without these cookies, services you have asked for, like transactional pages and secure login accounts, would not be possible. These cookies are essential to provide you with services available through this Platform and to use some of its features, such as access to secure areas. Our Platform uses various types of cookies, each of which has a specific function. The Royal Oak Offshore can be summed up partly by its use of exotic materials and by its inflated proportions, but mainly for the quality and watchmaking excellence that has run through the DNA of Audemars Piguet since its inception. Raising the price bar once again, the large, bold and often colourful Royal Oak Offshore has recreated the niche for super-luxury watches, opening the floodgates for new, super-premium brands to follow in its footsteps. The Royal Oak evolved into the Royal Oak Offshore in 1993, a modern evolution of the piece that changed history for Audemars Piguet. As a product that only the most affluent could afford, this extreme pricing did, however, introduce a new level of super-premium luxury, and once the Royal Oak took, it took well, pulling it out of the mire and back into financial success. At its release in 1972, it cost more than every other watch and ten times more than the period Rolex Submariner, and so initial take-up was slow. The biggest shock was not the watch itself, but the price. Compared to the period watches of the time, the Royal Oak watch was a futuristic, dynamic and angular shock to the system. Taking inspiration from the 1862 battleship, the HMS Royal Oak, Genta used the octagonal portholes as the basis of his case design, integrating the bracelet into it seamlessly. This make or break scenario gave the company a chance to try something daring, hiring up and coming design talent Gérald Genta to design a piece so bold and unique that it could have very easily sunk the brand into oblivion. The market for luxury goods had virtually fallen flat overnight. However, the stock market crash of the 1930s forced many watchmakers to the brink of collapse, and Audemars Piguet was one of them. Quality control was where the manufacturer excelled, allowing the brand to produce some stunningly complicated movements.ĭespite the deaths of the two founders in 19, the company continued to be one of the finest in watchmaking, with achievements such as the smallest minute repeater, the thinnest watch and the first skeleton watch. The two friends made the Audemars Piguet name successful by being the best at what they did, and over time, the company began to grow, quickly becoming one of the largest watchmaking employers in Switzerland. The former produced and assembled movements while the latter ensured that the completed movements were correctly regulated. Two friends, Jules-Louis Audemars and Edward-Auguste Piguet establish a workshop from which to make movements. Le Brassus, 1875, in the heart of the Vallée de Joux. In order to be a leader and not a follower, the brand had to differentiate itself from its competitors, which means taking risks risks that almost cost the company its own existence. This kind of global respect is not earned overnight-it is the result of over one hundred years of hard work and dedication. Today, Audemars Piguet watches are considered one of the top three horological brands in the world for quality, complexity and desirability.