BeckerTime BLOG

While you probably didn’t come here for Benjamin Franklin quotes, I’m going to start with one anyway, because it perfectly encapsulates how we ended up with the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak: ‘Out of adversity, comes opportunity’. At the start of the 1970s, the Swiss watch industry was facing nothing but adversity, and Audemars Piguet was […]

It is fair to say that Grand Seiko is responsible for completely transforming the image of Japanese watches. Before the manufacture was established in 1960, the country had produced little else other than cheap, relatively primitive models. It didn’t help that parent company, Seiko was also the driving force behind quartz movements, a technology which, […]

Making up one third of the so-called Holy Trinity of horology, Audemars Piguet sits alongside the other watchmaking titans of Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin. Formed in the late 18th century, the marque was founded by two friends, each bringing his own particular strengths and attributes to tackle the myriad challenges of producing timepieces which […]

No one would ever claim trying to break into the horology industry was easy. It is a business dominated by a handful of mammoth players (the ones everyone has heard of regardless of how much interest watches hold for them), followed by a relatively large number of mainstream brands which are almost as recognizable. After […]