Patek Philippe

 Not so long ago, family businesses run by grandsons and great-grandsons of the founder or owner were standard in the Swiss replica watch industry. In the 1960s, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Audemars Piguet, Piaget, Heuer, and Breitling, to name a few, were owned and run by the founding families. "When I was little, we saw a lot of family businesses," says Philippe Stern. "Suddenly, they all disappeared, more or less at the same time, between 1975 and 1985."

That was the period of the quartz crisis in Switzerland, when electronic quartz technology developed by Japanese manufacturers Seiko, Citizen, and Casio virtually removed mechanical watches from the market. "Family businesses got weaker and weaker," says Stern. "They didn't have the will or the money to evolve. Large groups came into the picture. Today, the family business is really unusual."
Additionally, because so many independent firms switched hands in the quartz and post quartz era, the roots of many of the surviving family-owned Swiss replica watch companies are not deep and rarely extend beyond the second generation. Prominent independent firms such as Chopard, Breitling, Girard-Perregaux / JeanRichard, Raymond Weil, and Corum all have second-generation family members in charge or in prominent management positions.
So how did the Sterns manage to keep Patek Philippe in the family for three-quarters of a century? Part of it is not imposing the problem on the next generation; another part is to start them at the bottom.
The Stern family acquired Patek Philippe during that other great Swiss watch crisis of the 20th century, the Great Depression. The first generation of Sterns at Patek, the brothers Charles and Jean Stern, owned a watch dial factory in Geneva, Fabrique de Cadrans Stern Frères, which supplied dials to Patek Philippe. In 1932, Patek Philippe, like many Swiss watch companies, was in dire need of capital. The Stern brothers came to the company's aid and acquired a majority of the shares. They immediately made two important decisions. First, they realized they needed a strong regulator to run the business. (The Sterns' expertise was in dial manufacturing; their parents were enamel painters by trade.) So they hired Jean Pfister, the well-respected head of the Tavannes Watch Co. office. In Geneva, to lead operations.
Second, the brothers and Pfister decided that from then on, Patek Philippe would make his own ébauches (movement spaces) instead of relying on LeCoultre (soon to be Jaeger-LeCoultre) in the Vallée de Joux.
The Stern era got off to an illustrious start. In 1933, Patek Philippe completed and delivered his most famous watch, the Graves Supercomplication, made for the American watch collector Henry Graves, Jr. Its 24 complications made it the most complicated watch in the world until 1989 when the firm's caliber 89 surpassed it. (The two-faced Graves watch sold at a Sotheby's auction in 1999 for $ 11 million, by far the highest price ever paid for a watch at auction.)
Henri Stern, Charles's son, was 21 when the Patek family took over Philippe. During that time, he started working at the dial factory Stern Frères, where he assisted not only his father but also an engraver. However, his wish was to join the watch company. He lobbied his father and uncle to move him to Patek Philippe. Finally, in 1935, they did. That year, Charles Stern became Patek's president, and Henri served as his assistant. In 1937, Charles sent him to the United States to explore the American market, which had long been a stronghold of Patek Philippe. (The firm's co-founder, Count Antoine Norbert de Patek, paved the way in the United States himself. He called on Tiffany founder Charles Lewis Tiffany in New York in 1854 and took over the company.) In 1942, Henri founded the company. Henri Stern Watch Agency in New York; it remains the name of the US subsidiary to this day. Charles Stern died in 1944, and Pfister resigned in 1946. Henri Stern then spent more and more time in Geneva, where he took over the position of president of the firm in 1958. Most popular replica Rolex hot sale swiss replica on our website www.watchufc202.com.