In early 2020, Patek Philippe, regarded by watch collectors as the finest watchmaker in the world, opened a state-of-the-art facility in Plan-les-Ouates, the industrial suburb of Geneva that also is home to Rolex, Vacheron Constantin, Piaget, and other luxury watch factories. Known as PP6, the building, once the company’s parking structure, occupies 133,650 square meters (that’s almost 1,500,000 square feet) across 10 floors, four of which are subterranean. It unites all of Patek’s production under a single, enormous roof. The timing of the opening was both unfortunate and fortuitous. In March of that year, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a series of lockdowns that initially prevented workers from inhabiting the space. At the same time, demand, spurred by a surge of pandemic-fueled interest in collectibles, began to tick up, substantiating Patek’s rationale for investing 600 million Swiss francs (about $683 million at current rates) in the building in..
