Audemars Piguet Chief Comes Out Swinging

Two weeks back, Audemars Piguet was quick to shut down a report suggesting chief executive Ilaria Resta was leaving the company. She would be going nowhere, the family-owned Swiss watchmaker said.

In the days following, Resta was in Hong Kong unveiling a new collection of watches as part of Audemars Piguet’s 150th anniversary celebrations, where she told reporters the rumours were unfounded, countering that revenues were up by 12 percent in the year to August. Her message? Move on, because I’m not.

Questions may persist about her future following a further report over the weekend from the media site Miss Tweed backing up its original claim, but for now Resta remains in the position she assumed at the beginning of last year. If anything, the chatter seems to have energised her: the Italian former Procter & Gamble executive has come out swinging.

Following the Hong Kong event, she announced on Tuesday that Audemars Piguet would be exhibiting at Watches and Wonders Geneva next spring, returning to a major Swiss watch fair for the first time since 2019 when it withdrew from the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) citing cost and lack of public access, as well as its shift to a direct-to-consumer retail model. And she has hinted that in the coming weeks, she will pull the covers off a new watch that will prove a milestone in the history of Swiss mechanical watchmaking.

But in a wide-ranging interview with The Business of Fashion, Resta acknowledged this was a difficult time for luxury watchmaking. “I remain concerned about the health of the industry, especially the suppliers that are under huge stress,” she said. “Do I see it as a crisis? Frankly, no, because a crisis assumes a structural reason for suffering, and I do not see that. [Today’s challenges] are all contingent and time-limited phenomena that are creating a pause on an otherwise extremely successful trajectory for the watchmaking industry.”

Factors such as US tariffs on Swiss watch exports, soaring gold prices and a strong Swiss franc have coincided with weakened consumer confidence in key global markets. “It’s just a perfect storm,” Resta continued. “And it all comes after years of glory growth, which frankly, was also growth that was a bit excessive. So we had perfect positive momentum and now a perfect storm.”

Resta said she had made changes to adapt to the new climate. “I’ve been forced to inject new strategies,” she said. “Eighty percent of my leadership has changed. This was needed because the company had reached a level of maturity and success that was extraordinary, but when the context outside changes, you cannot continue the same strategies. Not because they are wrong, but because you need different muscles to face the storm.”

Her focus has switched to “elevating horological excellence, innovation and client-centricity.”

Audemars Piguet now controls most of its distribution, selling direct-to-consumer through its boutiques and what it calls AP Houses, private lounge-style spaces in cities such as London, New York and Milan.

“Client-centricity is all about defining innovation by observing clients and talking to them so that we know what matters to them,” Resta explained, adding that the AP House model enabled the company to glean deeper customer insights. “We don’t just launch things because they’re cool, but because they mean something in the everyday use of the people who wear our watches,” she said.

Bringing in younger clients is also a key focus. “For Gen Z, what surrounds the shopping experience is much more important than the purchase act itself,” she said. “There is a lot of learning and engagement that happens before a Gen Z-er opens the door of a store. So we are omni-channel and we are making sure we serve this generation at any and every touchpoint, well before the phases of consideration.”

Watches face stiff cross-category competition, she went on. “We’re competing with travel, a bag, a car and any other shopping opportunity Gen Z have,” she said. “A watch is in the same bubble of consideration as all these experiences and because of that, there is a ceremony around the selling and buying experience that becomes relevant to them. They bring their friends, they want engraving, they want a relationship with the sales assistant who becomes a kind of friend. So we’re obsessed about masterclasses, the behind the scenes of a watch and explaining a watch much more thoroughly than we used to in the past.”

Resta’s approach is markedly different to that of her predecessor François-Henry Bennahmias, who casts a long shadow over Audemars Piguet. During his 11-year tenure as chief executive, he looked to position the company in the heart of popular culture, forging alliances with LeBron James, Travis Scott and the Marvel Universe, an approach that earned him as many critics as fans.

By her own admission, Resta’s style is more pragmatic. “The mission for the company is to survive the next 150 years,” she said. “It’s boring and less sexy, but it’s indispensable. It’s not visible in a watch, but it’s ultimately the most important thing to work on the fundamentals of a company.”

Since Resta’s appointment the hype that surrounded many of Audemars Piguet’s launches over the past decade has cooled. The company has dropped some high-profile sports ambassadorships as it embraces a strategy refocused on “friends of the brand.” This is more than semantics, Resta insisted.

“People think we work with artists and with music as a platform for client engagement,” she says. “In reality, when we talk with artists and creators in other fields, we learn more about the creative process and this is helping us accelerate the company with new discoveries and innovations. I’m not obsessed about whether we do tennis, golf or basketball.”

She cites the example of a limited-edition version of the Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar created in collaboration with the music artist and renowned watch collector John Mayer, released last year. “He is much more an advocate of watch design and innovation [than a traditional ambassador],” said Resta. “He interacts a lot with our production team and brings the point of view of a client. This is an old partnership that existed before I came and that I have pushed to a new level.”

The brand’s relationship with retired tennis star Serena Williams continues, Resta said, while musicians Mark Ronson and Raye recorded a soundtrack for the company’s 150th anniversary. “We don’t even fixate on the length of the partnership,” she said. “We want the partnership to last as long as possible, very organically and much less contractually and transactionally. If the relationship doesn’t work, we will end it.”

Last year, Audemars Piguet reported 2.4 billion Swiss francs in sales, a slight uptick on the previous year, bucking the industry’s negative trend. Resta said the company would be up again this year. “We will continue growing,” she said. “But I don’t believe growth is a healthy measure of success. Growth can be a disease. I’m pivoting the brand towards a new success measure, which is innovation and the reputation of the brand. If we meet those success criteria, growth will come. If we don’t, growth will ultimately stop.”

Resta said Audemars Piguet would produce 53,000 watches this year, up from 51,000 in 2023 (no figures were released in 2024), and that the company couldn’t keep up with demand for some pieces, including the battery-powered Royal Oak Mini, a style-focused 23mm piece launched last summer. She said female clients had increased by 20 percent year-on-year and accounted for around 30 percent of the company’s customers.

But she said the company’s sales momentum was mainly down to selling more high-end complications, watches with complex mechanical functions that command a higher price. “Growth in [sales of] complications is a much more interesting measure of growth,” she said. “That shows we’re doing the right complications and elevating our narrative and our contribution to the world of high-end watchmaking.”

At the upper end of the market, watchmakers have been focusing on lower volume pieces with higher values for a number of years, contributing to the industry’s volume slump. Swiss export volumes have halved over the past decade, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry. “Some years, we might produce fewer watches because we’re focusing on higher-end complications,” Resta said. “We’re also looking at 100 percent hand-made pieces that take two years in the life of a single watchmaker.”

Next spring’s appearance at Watches and Wonders Geneva will be welcomed by the show’s organisers, and by its exhibitors. Rolex, Cartier, Patek Philippe and Chanel are among the big-hitting brands that backed the show at its inception in 2022, but Audemars Piguet, estimated by Morgan Stanley to be the fourth-ranked Swiss watch company by sales, had until now declined to participate. Richard Mille, Breitling and the Swatch Group of brands, which includes Omega and Longines, have also not yet exhibited at the fair.

Looking at the bigger picture, Resta said she was confident the industry would bounce back, but stressed the need to stay the course. “Is it tough?” she said. “Yes, it is. But pulling the plug now would be the worst thing that can happen. So we will continue to invest. There is a client for our watches, and the number of clients is increasing.”