Richard Mille (watch brand)

Richard Mille is a Swiss luxury watch company founded in 2001 by Dominique Guenat and Richard Mille, based in Les Breuleux, Switzerland. The brand specialises in very high-priced clockwork watches.
In early 1999, Richard Mille and Dominique Guenat drew up their plans and the basis for the Richard Mille brand in partnership with Montres Valgine and Audemars Piguet Over the next two years, they defined their brand concept, then began designing watches. They then founded Horométrie, their operating company for the new Richard Mille brand, as equal partners, which was registered on 23 October 2001 in the Swiss registry of commerce, and created the Richard Mille watchmaking brand in collaboration with Swiss watchmaking manufacturer Audemars Piguet, which became a Richard Mille shareholder in 2007.
After three years of research and prototypes, they exhibited their first watch, the manually-wound RM 001 Tourbillon, at the 2001 watch and jewellery exhibition Baselworld in Basel, Switzerland. The case showed the mechanism. The watch had a tourbillon calibre, a power-reserve indicator, and a torque indicator. Richard Mille joined the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie in 2007.
In April 2013, Richard Mille and Dominique Guenat acquired a 90% stake in Prototypes Artisanals SA, founded by Marco Poluzzi; former director Alain Varrin retained a 10% share. The company became ProArt and moved to a purpose-built 3,000 m² building in Les Breuleux. Following the sale of case supplier Donzé-Baume to Swiss luxury group Richemont in 2007, the Richard Mille company started machining its cases and some components, with ProArt as a subcontractor.
In 2013 Richard Mille turned down a proposal by the French group Kering to acquire 51% of the shares and in 2018 Richard Mille withdrew from the Salon international de la haute horlogerie (SIHH) in Geneva. In October of the same year, Richard Mille opened its sixth and largest United States store in New York. Around the same time the RM 71-01 Automatic Tourbillon Talisman was launched, described as being made by a woman (women's collection director Cécile Guenat) for women.
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