Patek Philippe SA

Patek Philippe - an almost 200-year-old success story

The history of Patek Philippe SA began on 1st May 1839, when the Polish migrants Antoine Norbert de Patek (Antoni Norbert Patek) and François Czapek (Fanciszek Czapek), founded the watch manufacturer Patek, Czapek & Co. in Geneva. However, the collaboration did not last long, and they parted company in 1845; Czapek then founded his own company, Czapek & Co. which was also brief and only lasted until 1869. Antoine de Patek joined forces with the French watchmaker and inventor Jean Adrien Philippe (1815-1894) and founded the new company Patek & Co., which was renamed Patek Philippe & Co. in 1851 and finally transformed into a public limited company in 1901 with 1.6 million Swiss francs in starting capital: Ancienne Manufacture d'Horlogerie Patek Philippe &. Co. S.A. By this time, Jean Adrien Philippe had already laid the foundations for the development of modern automatic watches with his innovative inventions such as the winding crown, and Pope Pius IX purchased a pocket watch from the up-and-coming manufacturer.

The watch manufacturer is a family business to this day

Patek Philippe SA is regarded as the manufacturer of the first Swiss wristwatch, and the key-wound bangle watch was bought by the Hungarian Countess Koscowizc in 1876. On 27th April 1887, the famous Calatrava cross was registered as a trademark, followed by further patents and trademarks. Despite a steadily growing illustrious clientele, which included US industrialists and bankers, in 1932 the global economic crisis led to a change in ownership: In 1932 and 1933, the brothers Charles Stern and Jean Stern acquired a majority stake in Patek Philippe, and the company is still owned by the Stern family today. During the same period, the famous classic wristwatch with reference 96 is launched on the market for the first time, a model which is still produced almost unchanged today. In 1933, the Graves Super Complication, a wearable watch with complex mechanics, was introduced. It embodied an unrivalled technical standard until 1989 and was auctioned in New York in 1999 for a record price of 11 million US dollars, which has not been surpassed to this day.

Aesthetic brilliance and technological innovation

In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, Patek Philippe SA celebrated its 100th anniversary, a very modest celebration in view of the circumstances of the time. Nevertheless, one of the most popular models at auctions was presented the following year: the Reference 1415 World TimeWatch. Patek Philippe survived the war and the difficult period that followed and introduced a number of other fine watch collections: 1976 saw the launch of the Nautilus, an exclusive sports watch designed by Gérald Genta that meets the highest quality standards, and in 1989, the company celebrated its 150th anniversary with the Calibre 89, the most complicated pocket watch in the world with 33 complications, of which only four were made and passed into the hands of private collectors. To this day, every rare and precious special edition model is personally approved by the President of the company - currently Thierry Stern, fourth generation. Patek Philippe's annual turnover is around 1 billion Swiss francs.