Can you give us a snapshot of Audemars Piguet in 2018?
We have 100 novelties and more creativity than ever before. It’s a
continuation of 2017, but next year we will be working on something
big –very big.
What we see is a continuation of what we have seen for the past six
years. Last year was our best year ever. Again. That’s six years in a row
we’ve had a better year than the previous year. We grew the business
by 12% and have almost reached the billion-dollar mark in revenue. We
are very pleased, and 2018 is a continuation of that.
How do you explain that success?
We research everything, but the most important thing is we bring
people together. We make sure everybody gets smarter every day.
When I arrived as CEO of this company, even though everybody was
wearing an Audemars Piguet jersey, there were many different teams.
The watchmakers could judge the marketing, the housekeeper could
judge the sales people – it was not one team.
My biggest reward is to have managed to bring everyone together
by being very clear on the strategy and very clear on the way to get
there. Everybody is now aware of what the company stands for and
what you have to do. It has made everybody’s life better and we are
smarter together as a team. We are not the best as individuals, but as
a team we are.
How does Audemars Piguet combine design
and mechanics?
There is not one without the other today. Every time we work
on things, we have to look at improving and surprising. We have
launched the RD#2 Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin, a brand-new
mechanism and a brand-new way to think about it. It’s going to open
many doors in high-end watchmaking for years to come.
Whether it’s treatments or the materials or the design of the watch,
we look at these things every day. We have to challenge our teams
left and right on everything we do, whether it’s on the mechanical
side or the design side.
Royal Oak Offshore Grand Complication
How does Audemars Piguet deal with online sales?
Today you have a roughly 2.5 million websites promoting sales of
watches. A ton of them just have the copies of the catalog, and if
you call they will say ‘I will try to find it for you.’ But they don’t have
them. There are three to four major players in this world.
Today when you find watches online, it is from two things. One,
if you have any price difference – no brand in the world can’t
guarantee what differences in currencies will be. People play with
small differences, like the stock exchange. On this nobody can do
anything.
But what you have to do is monitor the grey market to see at what
price the watches are sold. If your pieces are sold on the grey market
close to the retail price or even more than retail, you’re the king. If
your watches are sold on the grey market for 25% to 40% off, then
you are in trouble.
If that is the case, it’s because the brand is not performing as well.
Retailers are throwing the watches on the grey market, brands are
throwing their watches on to the grey market. So it’s a mix of
many things.
What we have seen for Audemars Piguet in the past six years is
that the brand is doing better on the grey market because you don’t
find so many crazy discounts. A lot of grey market sites offer big
discounts, but if you call they never to have the watch. They only try
to attract to you and maybe bring you to buy something else. When
you start to see on that website, available, in 24 hours then it’s real.
They have them in stock.
Can you control this?
Royal Oak RD#2 Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin, up close
54 | INTERNATIONAL WATCH | WINTER 2019
We are going to control this better by reducing our network now and
by shifting ourselves to be in our retail stores. We will never stop the
grey market. It’s the price you are sold at that matters. This is how
we have to look at any ‘bad’ watches, and then, when we can say it
doesn’t sell, and we take them out. We have to be ready to do that.