Hublot Replica Watch (French pronunciation: [yblo]) is a Swiss luxury watchmaker founded in 1980 by Italian Carlo Crocco. The company operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of France’s LVMH. In 1980, it also marked the birth of the “Fusion”[clarification needed] concept a few months after being founded.
A scion of the Italian Binda Group dynasty, best known for making Breil watches, Carlo Crocco left the company in 1976 to strike out on his own and create a new watch company. Moving to Switzerland he formed MDM Geneve and set about designing a watch that he named the Hublot after the French word for “porthole”. The watch that he created featured the first natural rubber strap in the history of watchmaking. It took three years of research to create the strap. Despite failing to attract a single potential customer on the first day of its debut at the 1980 Basel Watch Fair, the watch quickly proved to be a commercial success with sales in excess of $2m in its first year.
The Jean-Claude Biver era
Carlo Crocco, preoccupied by his own design work and many activities for the Hand-in-Hand Foundation, a charity helping deprived children all around the world, set out to look for the man who could oversee his watchmaking business. In late 2003, Jean-Claude Biver, then president of Swatch Group’s Omega division, met Carlo Crocco, and in May 2004, Biver assumed duties as CEO, becoming a board member and minority shareholder in Hublot Watches.
Upon his arrival, Biver set about creating a new flagship collection that was unveiled in Basel in April 2005, with the Hublot “Big Bang” chronograph. It was an immediate success and orders increased threefold in one year. A few months later, in November 2005, the Big Bang chronograph was awarded internationally, receiving the “2005 Design Prize” in the “Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix”, the “Sports Watch Prize” at the “Watch of the Year” ceremony in Japan, and the Middle Eastern Prize for the “Best Oversized Watch” at the Editor’s Choice “Watch of the Year” in Bahrain. Following the arrival of Biver in 2004, the brand’s sales hit 24 million Swiss francs and by the end of 2006, sales were bordering on the 100 million Swiss franc mark.[citation needed]
Hublot watches for sale stores
To date, Hublot has 96 Boutiques all over the world. In February 2007, Hublot opened its first mono-brand store in Paris, in the Rue Saint-Honoré. The second was opened in the summer of that year, in the Hôtel Byblos, Saint-Tropez. Today, Hublot has a flagship store on Bond Street, London. Stores in the United States are currently located in Atlanta (Closed permanently), Bal Harbour, Beverly Hills, Boca Raton, Scottsdale, AZ, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, New York City, and Palm Beach.
In October 2012 they opened their then newest store in Las Vegas preceded by a store in Ulan Bataar, Mongolia.
Acquisition by LVMH
In April 2008 it was announced that luxury goods group LVMH had acquired Hublot from founder Carlo Crocco for an undisclosed fee, adding to its existing portfolio of watch brands including TAG Heuer.
Hublot WISeKey
At BaselWorld 2009, Hublot unveiled a new method of detecting counterfeit watches. Using a smart card, the system authenticates watches on Hublot’s servers. The system went live in August 2009.
