Chopard

Chopard is a remarkable Swiss brand of watches and jewelry. Chopard watches and jewelry combine innovative designs, modern technology and traditional craftsmanship.

Louis-Ulysse Chopard was born on the 4^th of May, 1836. In 1860, at the age of 24 Louis was already an independent watch-maker. He established a watch-manufacturing factory named L.U.C. in Sonviller, a location famous for watch-making in Jura in Switzerland. This area specializes in manufacturing pocket watches and precise timers. Louis-Ulysse Chopard was a descendent of a famous watch-making family. With the fame of his family and the highly precise products, Chopard’s watches swiftly established their prestige. Chopard was honorably invited to provide timers for the Swiss Railway Company and to this day is one of the main timers suppliers for Swiss Railway Company. In 1920, the son of Louis’ decided to design watches embedded in jewelry and also remove the factory from Sonviller to Geneva, the capital of watch industry. Since then, the prestigious Chopard’s jewelry watches have been extremely desirable objects.No matter how highly recommended Chopard watches were by people all over the world, Paul-Andre Chopard, the last successor of the Chopards in 1960s, had to face a problem because several of his sons were reluctant to take over the family business. Luckily at that time, a young goldsmith and watch-maker Karl Scheufele coming from Pforzheim in Germany was looking for a merger/acquisition of a promising business. The grandchildren of the founders of these two companies promptly realized that this would be a well-matched union. In 1963, approximately 10 decades after the establishment of Chopard by Louis-Ulysse, Paul-Andre sold this brand to Karl-Scheufele. Young Karl then later modernized the newly bought company and laid the foundation for the premium brand of wrist watches and jewelry. Paul-Andre Chopard still worked for the company until his death in 1968.

After the handover, Chopard still remained a completely independent family business. Under the business operation by Karl and Karin, the husband and wife, and Karl-Friedrich and Caroline, the two children (the present co-chairmen), such a worldwide reputed company has attained impressive accomplishments and is among the top brands of premium wrist watches and jewelry.

In fact, the number of movements originally manufactured by Chopard was not very high. But when starting this business in 1860, the founder Louis-Ulysse Chopard just intended to wholly self-make the movements. After the takeover by Karl-Friedrich, it started to self-make the movements for mechanical watches by holding on to the primary faith. As he recalled, “At that time, we really had to self-make a lot of components. But none of them is a component for watches. This is exactly what we lack in our philosophy.”  

In order to meet the requirements derived from the words “watch manufacturer”, it is necessary to design and manufacture movements on its own. Such a prestigious title is only applicable to those factories which produce all the components on their own. In 1993 autumn, such an issue was discussed and planned at a closed meeting held by the internal staff of Chopard. Not long after the meeting, design drafts and samples were to be finished. In 1996, a high-tech manufacturing plant of Chopard was built in Fleurier, a town with a long history for watch-making. As Karl-Friedrich recalled, “There have been many setbacks and obstacles all through the path of manufacturing movements on our own.”

After countless tests, experiments and endeavor during 3 years, the new movements designed and manufactured by Chopard’s workshops were finally brought to the world in 1996. The L.U.C. 1860 watches equipped with Breguet balance spring and 22K gold mini-disc passed the most stringent tests and have met the highest quality standard in Geneva. This series of watches was selected by the editors of watch-making publications and the business agents to be the Best Watch of the Year the next year.

**no guarantee about story is completely accurate and existed difference**