In one of my articles published in the end of last year, I talked about the friendship between ZF and APS, today, more interesting stores about APS factory will be shared.
First, have you heard of BF? I thought it was a new factory when their AP ROO Diver 15710 and 15720 firstly appeared in the market in 2021, but BF has been in the market for more than 5 years, even has a much longer history than APS, there is a relationship between APS and BF. Their bosses are cousins. BF introduced APS into this industry.
The relationship between ZF and APS is very solid, we talked about this in the article https://www.susanreviews.com/2023/12/23/the-bromance-between-aps-and-zf/. In the early time when APS just entered this market, almost all replica watches were using Asia clone ETA 2824 and 2836 movements, they wanted to use better movements to create better replica watches, so they focused on researching and developing movements at the beginning, absolutely the new movement development process is mainly completed by Chinese traditional movement factories. Take the Portuguese 7 Days Power Reserve as an example, the earlier model with old movement looks werid, check the picture below.
Then APS cooperated with a movement factory in Dandong and developed a new movement, after being installed, the Portuguese 7 Days Power Reserve below with new movement looks very nice. At that time, APS only sold this Portuguese 52010 movement to ZF. But one or two years later, APS realized that they could not earn enough money by only developing and selling movements to other factories, then they started to sell the Portuguese 7 Days Power Reserve replica watches by themselves, with the latest 52010 movement they owned, but under another name “AZ”, someone also call it AZF, so, APS and AZ are actually the same team.
The clone IW52010 is a great success for APS, they wanted to develop another great movement now, especially after seeing the release of Dandong 4130 movement by Noob, APS took the action immediately. They also cooperated with Dandong and developed two movements in 2020, one is JL925 for the Jaeger LeCoultre Master Moonphase, the other is JL938 for the Jaeger LeCoultre Reserve De Marche. The first batch of clone JL925 movement was sold to YL factory, later APS also equipped JL925 in their replicas of JL Master Ultra Thin Moonphase and sold under name of “AZ”. Later this clone JL925 movement was also supplied to ZF and GF two factories.
Next, it is the 3120 movement used in 15400. We know 3120 was developed by JF before, but JF was closed, later the 3120 was improved by a movement factory in Shanghai. Then APS seized the opportunity and accepted all 3120 movements from Shanghai. Now we can see the 3120 in Royal Oak 15400 made by APS is very stable. Later APS offered a small amount of 3120 movement to ZF. And then APS and this movement factory in Shanghai developed the 4302 movement together, we can see 4302 is now used in Royal Oak 15500 made by ZF and APS. The last movement from APS I want to mention here is the 5134 used in Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar 26574, this movement is also very stable, for AP 26574 replicas, I still recommend the ones made by APS, which are more stable than those ones just published by BBR a few weeks ago.
