While we visited the Patek Philippe museum in Geneva, we have seen many astonishing piece and were thought passionate histories, but one had put a big smile on my face.
Ladies and Gentlemen, let me present you to the Gondolo Gang
Picture: Gondolo Gang, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Having wine, cigars, and probably located somewhere, a yellow cheese knife as John Goldberg's one.
These are the type of watch enthusiasts which we can call original. Wearing their sombrero type hat, bent as if they were facing daily 200km/h winds on their motorcycles, but they had probably bent it specifically to show the written word PATEK.
Gondolo & Labouriau was a Patek Philippe distributor based in Rio de Janeiro. They sold thousands of packet watches, which today are high collectibles, and called the "Chronometro Gondolo".
The watches which today are sold on auction, were at the time sold exclusively to the members of the very selective "Gondolo Gang" club. Becoming members of the club, was at the time in Brazil a sign of life success. All members had one particilar attribute: they wore a sombrero hat with written on it their favorite watch brand.
The club had about 180 members, which all aquired their Gondolo watch thanks to a orginal process called the "Plano do Club Patek Philippe System". The process can be compared to a lottery:
each member had to purchase a watch worth 790 CHF (swiss francs), divided into 79 weekly installements of 10 CHF. During these 79 weeks, a lottery was organized on a weekly basis where the winner would be excused of his installement. The trick was that the earlier you would buy a watch, the cheaper it would cost you, on the condition that you win that lottery. If a member happened to not win, he would receive a watch after 79 weeks.
Thanks to this game, Gondolo & Labouriau sold more than 1/3 of Patek's production at the time.
To ensure an exclusivity in the watches, the distributor requested the manufacture to follow specifications in the watches produced for its market. Some of the specifications included a "S" shape bridge, which has now become a symbol in Patek's movements, the forth intermediary wheel and the minutes wheel in pink gold
Gondolo & Labouriau closed their watch business in 1927, probably due to the economical crisis.
Nowadays, the Gondolo collection launched by Patek in 1993 brings us some nostalgia, but no hats were ever made again. Maybe we should.
