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From its humble beginnings in the Jura village La Côtesaux-Fées
in 1874, Piaget has become one of the world’s top addresses for jewelry and watches. The secret
of this company’s modern success doesn’t differ much from the company’s philosophy more than
a century ago: Good products and honest policies—elements that have continued to rule
this company even after its takeover by the Cartier group in 1988.
Piaget’s
CEO is Philippe Léopold-Metzger, a man who has worked his way up through
the Cartier group ranks since 1981, taking Piaget’s helm at the end of 1999.
The recent past
"When I look back at Piaget in early 2000," Léopold-Metzger begins,
"I see that it was a very established watch brand.
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When you ask people today what Piaget is,
most say a jewelry watch or even jewelry. I was very frustrated by the fact that Piaget got very
little recognition for being the watchmaker it is. In a way, I could understand it because
the whole world was talking about the most complicated watches and, okay, we make a basic movement.
I thought, though, that it would be very important for Piaget to start going more complicated,
and ultimately we launched the first tourbillon four years ago."
This
tourbillon was the Emperador, and it did indeed kick off Piaget’s newfound career in complications.
"That
was a really important time for us because it started the rebuilding of our reputation for
the more mechanical part of the brand. I feel that that legitimacy had been forgotten and people
were talking about other brands, which was frustrating, because at the end of the day they were just
taking movements and doing little things to them, but they were not at all genuinely manufactured.
We have continued to produce many calibers in the past four years—four alone last year, one of which
was very interesting: the Tourbillon Relatif, which I was pleased to see recognized by most critics
and collectors as being a very interesting tourbillon," he adds.
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