Chopard is two companies wearing one name. There is the jewelry company that dresses celebrities at Cannes and sells diamond watches to people who do not read watch blogs. Then there is the manufacture in Fleurier making genuinely excellent movements that almost nobody talks about because the red carpet is louder. The first company pays for the second. Remember that.
Louis-Ulysse
Louis-Ulysse Chopard was 24 when he set up his workshop in Sonvilier in 1860, making precision pocket watches and chronometers. He sold to Russia and Scandinavia. His chronometers kept time at the court of Tsar Nicholas II, which is the kind of detail that ends up in every brand history and tells you nothing about the watches.
His son Paul-Louis moved operations to La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1921 and Geneva in 1937, chasing the Geneva Seal. The grandson, Paul-André, took over in 1943. By the early sixties he had no heir interested in the business, so in 1963 he sold to Karl Scheufele III.
The Scheufeles
Karl Scheufele came from Pforzheim, Germany’s jewelry city, where his family had been goldsmiths for generations. He bought Chopard because he wanted a movement manufacturer for his jewelry watches. He got a Swiss brand with a century of history instead. Good deal.
His kids grew up inside the company. Caroline Scheufele was two when her father bought it. She spent her childhood in the Geneva headquarters counting diamonds. At seventeen she sketched a clown pendant with loose jewels in its stomach. Her father had it made for her birthday and liked it enough to put it into production. That is how Chopard’s jewelry business started: a teenager’s doodle.
Karl-Friedrich took the watch side. He likes cars, which is why Chopard sponsors the Mille Miglia. The siblings became co-presidents in 2001. Still family owned, which in this industry is increasingly rare and worth noting.
Happy Diamonds, for fifty years
In 1976 Chopard released a watch with loose diamonds sliding around between two sapphire crystals. Playful, clever, a hit. The Happy Sport followed in 1993, putting the dancing diamonds in a steel sports watch. It is still one of the most recognizable women’s watches in the world.
It is also a fifty-year-old novelty. Chopard has been iterating on sliding diamonds since the seventies. It works commercially. It is not exactly pushing the craft forward.
The manufacture nobody talks about
A Chopard L.U.C perpetual calendar chronograph. The serious watchmaking lives here. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
In 1996, Karl-Friedrich opened Chopard Manufacture in Fleurier. The first caliber was a thin micro-rotor, chronometer certified, beautifully finished. The L.U.C collection grew into real haute horlogerie: tourbillons, perpetual calendars, minute repeaters, all in-house.
This is the frustrating part. The L.U.C watches are genuinely good. They compete with anyone. And they are invisible, because when people hear Chopard they picture the Cannes red carpet, not a hand-finished tourbillon. The brand’s own marketing made this bed. The jewelry and the celebrities pay the bills, and the bills include the manufacture, so it is hard to complain. But the serious watchmaking lives in the shadow of the diamonds.
The Alpine Eagle problem
In 2019 Chopard launched the Alpine Eagle, an integrated-bracelet steel sports watch. It is well made. It is also, transparently, Chopard noticing the Royal Oak and Nautilus trend and wanting in. Every brand did one. Chopard’s version is fine. It is also the least interesting thing they make, and it gets a disproportionate amount of attention because steel sports watches are what the internet wants to talk about.
Cannes and cars
A Chopard Mille Miglia chronograph, tied to the vintage car rally Karl-Friedrich Scheufele sponsors. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Caroline met the Cannes festival president by chance, redesigned the Palme d’Or in 1998, and Chopard has been the festival’s partner ever since. Every May they run a small army of jewelers on the Croisette. The Mille Miglia sponsorship is Karl-Friedrich’s passion project, a thousand-mile vintage rally with a line of racing chronographs attached. The chronographs are generic. The rally is cool.
Why it matters
Family ownership let Chopard build a manufacture without answering to a conglomerate. That is real and increasingly rare. The L.U.C line deserves more respect than it gets.
But the brand has a credibility problem of its own making. The red carpet association means watch nerds do not take Chopard seriously, and the nerds are the ones who care about manufactures. Happy Diamonds is a decades-old gimmick. The Alpine Eagle is trend-chasing. The Mille Miglia watches are forgettable. The jewelry pays for everything, and everyone knows it.
Chopard is a good watch company inside a great jewelry operation. The L.U.C watches deserve better than to be the brand’s best-kept secret.
Official site: chopard.com
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