Frederique Constant Unveils Four New Perpetual Calendar Tourbillon Watches To Celebrate 30th Anniversary (Prices)

Peter C. Stas and Aletta Stas-Bax developed an initial idea, whose time would come in 1988, as the result of something they noticed while on  a ski vacation in the Swiss Alps. They saw a wristwatch in a shop window that they couldn’t forget. “Their intellectual discussion about this model rapidly grew into a full-blown passion for timepieces worn on the wrist. It reached the point where the couple had no choice but to sacrifice their promising careers in multinational companies on the altar of their own watch business. Rome was not built in a day, and similarly, their journey to chronometrical entrepreneurship was not completed overnight. In the mid-nineteen eighties, the couple went to Hong Kong in the course of their work. As watches were naturally having a moment over there too, Peter Stas set up a small company selling high-quality design software, in parallel with his day-to-day occupation. The ambitious owner also used this company to design his first wristwatches. Because he considered what was produced in China as anything but attractive, he pored over books and relevant catalogs. From this grew the first succession of prototypes, produced from different components on the kitchen table at home. Aletta Stas exhibited some of these at the watch fair in Hong Kong. Initially they fell flat. But shortly before the end of the fair, a Japanese wholesaler placed an order for 350 watches. These sold with amazing speed. Orders for a further 1,100 watches gave the necessary encouragement for a small prototype collection of just six models altogether. The elegant cases contained electronic quartz movements alone. Because quality then played a vital role, assembly was carried out in Switzerland, using Swiss Made parts. These babies also thrived splendidly. But logic demanded that they should also have a suitable name. In this situation, Frederique Schreiner, Aletta’s great-grandmother, and Constant Stas, Peter’s great-grandfather, entered the scene. The first names of these two ancestors were combined to make Frederique Constant.

The Frederique Constant Perpetual Calendar Tourbillon features a silicon escapement and high-tech parts.

In 1992, Frederique Constant SA, founded with a capital of 60,000 Swiss francs, had over a thousand Swiss Made wristwatches produced by external partners. Brisk sales gave the motivation for greater deeds. At this point, a meeting with a man named Miguel Garcia proved to be a real stroke of luck. This former sales manager, now owner of the “Ebauche” specialists Sellita, expressed an interest in the suggestion of opening up the front of the Eta 2836 automatic movement, relatively high in build. In this way, the tick of a mechanical watch, which Robert Levine had described as “the heart-beat of human culture”, was made vividly visible. The highly successful “Heart Beat” collection was launched in 1994. Because the young entrepreneurs had not thought of legal protection, their creation was swiftly copied by numerous imitators. A second resource in the form of private label production, subsequently abandoned, made it possible at the time to produce larger quantities and thus reduce costs. A first business plan for a Geneva head office submitted in 1996 was accompanied by an application for a Swiss work permit. The authorities granted it on condition that he employed at least twelve persons within five years. The move to Switzerland took place the same year. The workshop, understandably still a small one, was located in a picturesque area of Geneva, Carouge. This step and the continuous growth that followed it were financed entirely from internal resources. This guiding principle remained unaltered throughout the subsequent years. Outside capital in the house of Frederique Constant was always kept within very narrow limits, which was highly beneficial to entrepreneurial freedom in the very much larger premises in the Geneva neighborhood of Chêne-Bourg, purchased in 2000. In 2001, a clear vision and the urge to set something personal beside the bought-in watch movements gave the starting signal for the development of the first in-house Manufacture caliber. This ambitious project was successfully achieved with the cooperation of specialists from two watchmaking schools, one in Geneva and the other in Holland. It was in 2004 that the ambitious family firm astonished the watchmaking world with its FC-910-1. The hand-wound movement featured a prominent aperture in the dial at 6 o’clock in which the strikingly large balance wheel was reminiscent of a tourbillon. The 2005 moon-phase version FC-915 was followed in 2006 by an exclusive automatic model called the FC 930.