Karl-Friedrich Scheufele (b. 1958) is co-president of Chopard, the Swiss watch and jewellery house owned by his family. With his sister Caroline Scheufele he has run the company in joint executive capacity since the 1990s, with a division of responsibility under which Karl-Friedrich oversees the watch business and Caroline the jewellery and high jewellery business. He is the principal architect of Chopard's transition from a fine-jewellery house with a watch line to an in-house watchmaking manufacture producing its own movements and competing in the upper tier of the Swiss watchmaking industry.

Family and corporate background

Karl-Friedrich is the son of Karl Scheufele III, the German-born jeweller who acquired the Chopard name and Geneva business in 1963 from the descendants of founder Louis-Ulysse Chopard. Karl Scheufele III had inherited the Eszeha jewellery and watch firm from his own father in Pforzheim and used the Chopard acquisition to build a Swiss-based luxury house with German manufacturing depth. Karl-Friedrich joined the family business in the early 1980s after studies in business administration in Lausanne and a period of apprenticeship in the Swiss watchmaking industry, and assumed co-presidency alongside his sister Caroline in 2001 when their father stepped back from day-to-day management.

The L.U.C. Manufacture

Karl-Friedrich's signature contribution to Chopard is the L.U.C. line of in-house mechanical watches and the Chopard Manufacture facility in Fleurier, Switzerland. Founded in 1996 — the year of Chopard's 135th anniversary — the L.U.C. Manufacture was conceived as a return to the in-house movement-making tradition that founder Louis-Ulysse Chopard had practised in the late nineteenth century but that had been abandoned during Chopard's twentieth-century period as a finished-watch assembler using ébauches from suppliers. The first L.U.C. movement, the Calibre 1.96 launched in 1997, established the technical credentials of the new manufacture and was followed by a succession of in-house calibres including the L.U.C. Quattro perpetual-calendar movement, the L.U.C. Tourbillon Quattro Mark Two, the L.U.C. Tech Twist Tourbillon, and the integrated chronograph movements that have given Chopard its position in the high-end mechanical watch segment.

Chopard Manufacture and Fleurier Quality Foundation

The Fleurier Quality Foundation, established in 2004 with Chopard, Parmigiani Fleurier and Bovet (with later participation from Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier), introduced a regional quality certification for watches produced in the Val-de-Travers area, requiring 95 percent Swiss component content, in-house movement assembly, COSC chronometer certification, a 24-hour functional test (the Chronofiable test) and aesthetic finishing standards exceeding the routine industry requirements. Karl-Friedrich was a principal backer of the certification and the L.U.C. Quattro Mark IV was among the first watches to bear the Fleurier Quality mark.

Ethical sourcing and Fairmined gold

Karl-Friedrich has been a public proponent of ethical sourcing in the Swiss watch industry, and Chopard committed in 2013 to use only Fairmined gold and other certified ethical materials in its production by 2018, becoming the first major Swiss watch and jewellery house to make such a commitment. The Journey to Sustainable Luxury initiative, formalised that year, also extended to ethical practices for coloured gemstones and diamonds. Chopard achieved the 100 percent ethical gold target in 2018 according to its own published sustainability reporting, and the commitment has been a meaningful differentiator in the upper tier of the Swiss luxury industry.

Mille Miglia and motor-sport partnerships

Karl-Friedrich has overseen Chopard's long-running sponsorship of the Mille Miglia historic-car rally, an association running since 1988 and the basis for Chopard's Mille Miglia line of sports chronographs. The cumulative association — 35-plus years of sponsorship, special-edition watches each year, and Karl-Friedrich's personal participation in the rally as a driver — is among the most established luxury-watch motor-sport partnerships in the Swiss industry. The L.U.C. Engine One Tourbillon, with a movement architecture explicitly modelled on a V-engine layout, exemplifies the design crossover.

Place in the Swiss watch industry

Within the Swiss watchmaking industry Karl-Friedrich Scheufele occupies a senior position as the operational head of one of the largest privately held watch and jewellery houses, alongside the equivalent figures at Patek Philippe (Thierry Stern), Audemars Piguet (Jasmine Audemars and François-Henry Bennahmias and successors), Rolex (Jean-Frédéric Dufour as CEO), and the Richemont and LVMH watch divisions. The L.U.C. line and the Fleurier Manufacture have established Chopard within the in-house manufacture cohort of the upper segment, distinct from the broader category of brands using Sellita or ETA-supplied movements, and have repositioned the house within the industry hierarchy.

Recognition

Karl-Friedrich has been recognised within the watch industry through Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève awards for L.U.C. movements (multiple, including for the Chopard Quattro), through the Swiss watch industry trade press, and through inclusion in the GPHG jury and equivalent industry-recognition bodies. His public profile within the broader luxury sector remains lower than that of his sister Caroline, whose jewellery and Cannes Film Festival work has placed her among the more visible figures in the upper-tier luxury industry.