Parmigiani Fleurier sales jumped by 50% to CHF 66 million last year, according to Morgan Stanley’s annual report on the Swiss watch industry.
The brand, which is rumoured to be for sale, is now commanding an average of CHF 35,000 per watch at retail, the report estimates.
WatchPro cannot independently verify the Morgan Stanley estimates.
High spending customers in the Middle East are an important part of Parmigiani’s growth in sales and average prices, and they are being rewarded with a grand complication Perpetual Calendar displaying Hijri Calendar dates.
The origin of the watch can be traced back to 2011, when Michel Parmigiani created a Hijri Calendar Table Clock after restoring of a pocket watch that featured the Arabic calendar.
Less than a decade later, the first Parmigiani Hijri Perpetual Calendar won the 2020 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) Innovation Prize, and the company followed up with a more modern and cleaner Tonda PF Hijri Perpetual Calendar in platinum.
This year, the Arab market is being rewarded again with a Tonda PF Hijri Perpetual Calendar with a vivid green dial in a stainless steel case.
How does it work?
The Tonda PF Hijri Perpetual Calendar is based on a Tabular Islamic calendar that was developed by Muslim scholars and astronomers in the 8th century.
This system made it possible for historians to convert Islamic dates to Gregorian dates.
The lunar Hijri calendar is based on the cycles of the moon in comparison to the solar Gregorian calendar and lunisolar Chinese Xiali calendar. This makes for a 30-year cycle with each year consisting of 12 months that are 29 or 30 days long. In each 30-year cycle there are 19 common years consisting of 354 days and 11 abundant years consisting of 355 days.
The new Tonda PF Hijri Perpetual Calendar is 100m water-resistant. It comes in a 42mm stainless steel case and bracelet with a platinum fluted bezel.
The green dial is hand finished with a Grain d’Orge guilloche and has applied markers and central hours minutes and seconds hands in 18ct gold with rhodium plating.
Subdials display the Hijri perpetual calendar and precision moon phase.
Price is on application.
