What does the future of watchmaking look like?
Audemars Piguet offered one answer in April at Watches and Wonders Geneva. Inside a room labeled “The Future,” artisans engraved, enameled and polished timepieces by hand as visitors moved among the workbenches to watch. It was the public introduction of Atelier des Établisseurs, a new division dedicated to craftsmanship, specialized métiers d’art and strictly limited production.
On May 16 a different answer was seen outside Swatch boutiques from Los Angeles to Dubai, where some fans — or those interested in lucrative resales — had spent days waiting for the release of Royal Pop, the bioceramic pocket watch created by Audemars Piguet and Swatch. Crowds became so large and, in some cases, so unruly that police intervened and shops were closed in many cities around the world.
The contrast between the slow, handcrafted world of Établisseurs and the sneaker-drop hype surrounding Royal Pop illustrates the dual nature of contemporary watchmaking, where brands such as Audemars Piguet often work with industrial-scale production and artisanal scarcity. (The house has announced that its portion of Royal Pop’s sales will be used to support initiatives tied to craftsmanship and the preservation of traditional métiers d’art.)
“Atelier des Établisseurs is much more than a creative experiment,” Ilaria Resta, the brand’s chief executive, wrote in an email. “It opens up new creative territory and gives us an opportunity to broaden the conversation around Audemars Piguet while staying true to who we are. It highlights another facet of the brand: one rooted in creative freedom, exceptional savoir-faire and limited creations.”
Ms. Resta said the idea to establish such a division came to her in 2024, when she first explored the company archives after taking over as chief executive. “What struck me was the richness of our creative history and its range of expressions over time,” she wrote. “In that sense, Atelier des Établisseurs feels like a natural way to reconnect with that spirit in a contemporary way.”
A literal translation of the division’s French title would be Workshop of the Artisan Coordinators. And for more than a century the company — founded in 1875 by Jules Louis Audemars and Edward Auguste Piguet in Le Brassus, Switzerland — was an établisseur, producing timepieces by coordinating the work of independent craftsmen and specialist workshops throughout the Vallée de Joux.
“There were a few watchmakers working alongside many independent specialists in the vallée, producing movements, cases, dials or jewelry elements,” Sébastian Vivas, the company’s museum and heritage director who will supervise the new division, said during a phone interview from Le Brassus. “The établisseur acted like an orchestra conductor, bringing together all that expertise, assembling the components, finishing the pieces and selling the watches.”
“It is only over the past 20 years that Audemars Piguet has evolved into an integrated manufacture,” he noted. “Today, we oversee nearly every stage, from the first sketch to production and distribution.”
But such large-scale vertical integration can make it hard for watchmakers to maintain the creative flexibility that existed in the past. “This approach complements our existing collections while creating space for techniques that are difficult to implement at scale,” Ms. Resta wrote about the new division.
The initiative has debuted at a moment when Audemars Piguet remains closely associated with the Royal Oak, an octagonal bezel design by Gerald Genta introduced in 1972. Last year the model accounted for an estimated 88 percent of the company’s sales, or 2.28 billion Swiss francs of its estimated 2.6 billion franc total, according to Morgan Stanley. And in 2025, according to the same source estimates, the company produced approximately 53,000 watches.
The Établisseurs division, which has four full-time employees, began operations this spring in the brand’s original headquarters, a house connected to the Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet and near the brand’s restoration workshops.
Over the next few years, Mr. Vivas said, the division intends to produce 15 to 20 pieces a year, both variations of previous Établisseurs designs and new creations.
The first three Établisseurs designs debuted at Watches and Wonders, each with a distinct look and powered by existing Audemars Piguet movements, a move that Mr. Vivas said helped to speed the development process.
Xavier J. Perrenoud, an independent Swiss designer, conceived the pebblelike form of the Établisseurs Galets, a sculptural 18-karat yellow gold wristwatch with a turquoise dial and tiger’s-eye bracelet links with the house’s Caliber 3098 movement.
The Galets’ articulated bracelet was created by Nadia Morgenthaler, a jeweler in Geneva, who used miniature ball joints for flexibility. “For me, the challenge was to create a bracelet that would feel like a second skin,” she said during an interview at Watches and Wonders, “moving in every direction while still keeping the stones perfectly balanced.”
Ludovic Python, an independent designer in Lucerne, Switzerland, created the Établisseurs Nomade, a transformable timepiece that could function as a pocket watch, pendant or table clock. It was crafted with onyx and meteorite and powered by the Caliber 7501. The movement was hand-skeletonized and finished with anglage, the watchmaking term for beveling, by Jérôme Besançon, a watchmaker at Audemars Piguet.
“I traced each opening, then cut them out using a small handsaw,” Mr. Besançon wrote in an email. “It’s demanding work, requiring more than a month of meticulous hand-finishing.”
The third timepiece, the Établisseurs Peacock, was created by Kenan Géraud, a junior designer at Audemars Piguet. It is an 18-karat white gold watch in the shape of a beetle, what the industry calls a secret watch. The beetle uses an automaton mechanism powered by Caliber 3098.2 to open its engraved wings and reveal a miniature peacock enameled on its translucent dial.
“We have given ourselves the freedom to create surprising and extraordinary objects again,” Mr. Vivas said. “We are not reproducing old watches, just using traditional savoir-faire to build something entirely new.”
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