$710,000 Breguet Watches Sell in U.S.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601093&sid=aSfvoxc9Zk0A&refer=home

By Thomas Mulier

March 27 (Bloomberg) -- Breguet diamond-encrusted “double tourbillon” watches that cost about 800,000 Swiss francs ($710,000) are selling within days of their delivery to the U.S., Swatch Group AG Chairman Nicolas Hayek said, a sign that demand for the most-expensive luxury goods still exists.

“We’re selling very many of them,” Hayek said in an interview yesterday at the world’s largest annual watch fair in Basel, Switzerland. “Every one we send to the United States is sold within less than one week.”

The highest end of Swiss watches has seen a smaller drop in orders than mid-range and cheap timepieces. Exports of Swiss watches wholesaling for more than 3,000 francs fell 6.6 percent in February, while the entire market fell 22 percent. Breguet, which sold timepieces to Napoleon, Winston Churchill and Russian Tsar Alexander the First, makes double tourbillon watches one at a time, keeping quantities very limited. The company declined to comment on how many it sells.

Breguet, founded in 1775 by Abraham Louis Breguet, invented and patented the tourbillon, a device that’s designed to keep an automatic watch more precise. The rotating sphere counteracts the effect of gravity, which can throw automatic watches off. The tourbillon is one of the most complicated watch mechanisms, and having two makes a watch even more precise.