Only a few months after the plans were first announced, construction has started at TAG Heuer’s new factory in Chevenez in the Jura Valley. The build for the 2,400 square- metre facility will last about 18 months and eventually employ more than 150 people.
The headline news that you may have read is that TAG Heuer will transfer production of the Calibre 1887 from Cornol to Chevenez- but that is only half the story.
The real news is that TAG Heuer will also manufacture a new in-house movement at Chevenez, the details …

Continuing with the 2012 Basel releases are a brace of Gold Carrera 1887 41mm Chronographs- two in 18k Rose Gold and one in Steel and Yellow Gold. The watches continue both the expansion of the Carrera 1887 range, and the tradition of the Carrera in Gold.

The increase in the number of Calibre 1887 Carreras reflects not only the popularity of the initial 1887 series, but also the increased availability of the 1887 movement as TAG Heuer ramps up production.
History of the Gold Carrera
Regular readers will recall Mark Moss’ articles on …

Unless you follow the business pages closely, you may have missed the result of a court case last month in the Federal Administrative Court in Berne. Calibre 11 doesn’t normally devote a lot of time to court cases, but this one is different as it confirms changes to the Swiss watchmaking industry that will impact all players- and in particular, volume producers such as TAG Heuer.

The Court upheld a decision made by the Swiss Competition Commission (known as Comco) to allow Swatch Group to begin reducing supply of its finished …

Earlier this week I spoke with TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Christophe Babin about TH’s movement strategy- and in particular, what was going on with two of their most innovative movements- the Pendulum and the Mikrotimer.

The Pendulum was unveiled at Basel in March 2010, with the Mikrotimer following exactly a year later. Along with the V4 and the Mikrograph, the four movements are developed and hand-built by the haute horlogerie team at TAG Heuer.
Coming up with cool concepts is one thing, but TAG Heuer have a good record at turning these ideas …

Once the vintage watch-collecting bug bites, it can bite hard. One minute you’re perfectly happy using your mobile phone to tell the time, and the next you’re scouring the internet and your great-uncles’ spare room to check if he bought a watch 30 years ago, but forgot to take it out of the box and actually wear it.
Richard Crosthwaite is one man who has been bitten by a very specific bug- Rich is one of the world’s leading collector of vintage Heuer Monaco watches, and over only a couple of …

While the headline of TAG Heuer’s pre-Basel releases was the Carrera Mikrograph and the Carrera MP4-12C, there was also plenty of news regarding other watches planned for 2011. In fact, the clear message that I was left with was that there will be more new models launched this year that perhaps ever before. What we’ve seen so far is only the tip of the iceberg for 2011.
Yes, there will be a new concept watch shown at Basel in March- no hints on what that might be yet- but there is …

While the name Christoph Behling may not be immediately familiar to all, his work certainly is. For the last few years he has led the TAG Heuer design team and is responsible for most of the current collection and all the concept watches.
Christoph works from his London design studio, where in addition to TH he also runs SolarLab Research & Design, a company focused on solar-powered transport and architecture.
I was keen to interview Christoph to get a better understanding of how new designs were developed and how they changed over …

Jack Heuer is one of the legends of the Swiss watchmaking industry, having led Heuer through it’s most dynamic- and turbulent- era.
The watches today that we think of when people talk about their love of vintage Heuer watches were all created under Jack Heuer’s leadership- Monaco, Autavia, Carrera, Monza, Montreal, Daytona, Silverstone- and many more.
Having cut his ties with the company following its forced sale in the early 1980s, Jack Heuer went on to a successful “second career” in the electronics industry, before returning to TAG Heuer in 2001.
But Jack …

Baselworld is an incredibly busy time for anyone in the watch industry, and this is especially the case for the CEOs who are here to meet customers, talk with the media and generally promote their brand at a time when everyone is completing for attention and space.
When I met with Jean-Christophe Babin he was nine hours into a day that was back-to-back with meetings- yet he still looked and sounded as fresh as he would have at 9am.
The impact that Jean-Christophe Babin has had at TAG Heuer is hard to …