As Chopard launches the new Alpine Eagle sports chic timepiece collection we step back in time to look at the roots of this reinvented masterpiece.
While vision is essential to running a family Maison, it is perseverance and determination that lead to success.
This was the path taken by Karl-Friedrich Scheufele in 1980 when he presented his very first watchmaking project.
As a youthful 22-year-old employee working for his family at the time, he submitted an idea to his father for a watch to be named St. Moritz. A coming of age project the St. Moritz tells the tale of a young man who asserts himself, spreads his wings and takes flight.
A Calculated Risk
The first sports watch from the Maison as well as the first timepiece made of steel in its workshops, the St. Moritz was profoundly innovative for Chopard, then a specialist in gold and diamond-set gold watches.
It represented a real and carefully calculated risk. Karl-Friedrich Scheufele made it a success that was to become one of the Maison’s best-sellers for the next decade. Since then, he has become co-president of Chopard and taken on many other challenges.
He was one of the first to sense the strength of the bonds between passionate enthusiasts of the automobile world and of watchmaking mechanics.
Sustainable Luxury
It was Scheufele who set Chopard on the path of its, now legendary, partnership with the Mille Miglia race. In 1996, he decided to restore Haute Horlogerie to the place it deserved by founding Chopard Manufacture in Fleurier.
In the same pioneering mode, it was on the same site in Fleurier that Chopard’s co-president had premises built, complete with the Minergie label certification criteria, thereby paving the way for sustainable luxury.
With the new Alpine Eagle, history is repeating itself, since it was at the insistence of his son Karl-Fritz, secretly supported by his grandfather Karl, that Karl-Friedrich Scheufele looked into the updating of the St. Moritz.
At first reluctant, he was won over by his son’s strength of conviction, just as he himself had been able to win his father’s support 40 years ago.
Look out for more behind the scene stories about the Alpine Eagle on the Sawubona website.
For more information on where to get this beautiful timepiece visit Picot and Moss online or check out the Chopard Boutique at the V&A Waterfront.
