Exclusive: Audemars Piguet 150th Anniversary With Ilaria Resta, CEO of Audemars Piguet

Ladies and gentlemen, how are you? It's Wo from Revolution in Singapore with the one and only Ilaria Resta, CEO of AP. How are you? Very good, thank you so much for joining us. It's such a pleasure to have you. First, happy 150th anniversary on your brand; that's incredible.

Likewise. So, you know, we were having dinner together during the celebrations in Le Brassus, and you said something really interesting to me. You said that a lot of times the point of entry for Audemars Piguet for the brand can sometimes be at the complication level, like at the perpetual calendar level or at the tourbillon level even. That's actually quite rare for a brand. I mean, what is the unique power of AP, and why does this happen? And how can you empower the brand greater with this asset?

That's amazing. You know, I love how you said that young people are coming into the brand and even bringing their parents in through complications as well. So let's talk about the perpetual calendar now. You guys have just created the caliber 7138, launched it a couple of weeks ago in Le Brassus, and it is to me super brilliant because it is actually easy to use, because the majority of them are really not. And I know you started this sort of effort really in particular with RD4, which was this extraordinary grand complication that also was actually quite easy to use as well. Why is it important to address the needs of the customer?

That's brilliant. I think you put it through the ultimate test because as we know, journalists are not easy on watches. And so two weeks ago, you actually let all the journalists play with the watch, and it was extraordinary because it so actually follows this sort of system of logic in the way your mind works, you know, this kind of the first position being the winding position, then you pull it out to the next, and then you have date and month, and then clockwise and counterclockwise, and you pull it out further, and it's time setting, and you can do whatever you want forwards, backwards, you can't injure the watch, which I think is so important as well. And then you have a little sector where you can't change it over, but that if you try to, nothing will happen anyway.

I absolutely agree. And I have to say, my favorite thing was then this fourth position, which where you go from time back to position number two, and that effectively creates a fourth position because it goes in sequence, and there you do days of the week, which is linked to the week indicator, and then a quick set for the moon phase, which is super cool as well. I love that. It's funny because we were, you know, I was at the table with you during the dinner, and there's a DJ, I won't mention his name, but quite a well-known one that messaged me, and we were joking around because we were trying to identify the market for someone like who for an RD4, right? So that watch costs not an insignificant amount of money, so we said, okay, no one's going to spend more than let's say 1% of their net worth on a watch, right? So we multiplied it by 100 and said, okay, probably that person's worth this much. Then we said to each other, do you know anyone that is kind of worth that amount of money, not that I hang out with all those people all the time, who actually reads instruction books? And they said none of them, none of them. So I love that it's a watch that someone can pick up, put it on the wrist like an iPhone, you know, and you figure it out along the way, and actually that journey that you have with the watch connects you to it even more, which I love. You know, the watch you're wearing on your wrist, which I absolutely love, has three major talking points: one is the caliber 7138, the second is of course the Royal Oak, which is, you know, a legend, but the third is a very interesting material that we saw for the first time last year called sand gold, and this is really cool because it's an alloy that's unique to you, created in your own laboratory for creating specific alloys and material innovation, and it has such a strong visual signature to it as well. Tell me why material innovation is so important to AP?

That's incredible. So you have the Manufacture, the campus, right? And then you also have the high complications. And somewhere in one of these two facilities, I'm not sure, you have this laboratory for material research, correct? Correct. And in this laboratory, one of the things that you did, we were talking about bulk metallic glass, but it was so interesting to me because the journey with this material was initially for gongs for a repeater, right? Because you were trying every different material as you were pursuing the very lofty goal of the sonnerie, and in the end, you decided not to use it for that. Correct, but because its surface hardness was so extreme, you're like, hey, and it's also very beautiful, you used it for this. Tell me about, you know, the benefit of having this in-house laboratory, which doesn't necessarily have an objective that's clear at first, but can lead to something very special.

I love that. You know, sometimes I try to apply one word to define a brand, right? And I guess the one word I would use to define AP is fearlessness. You know, and I like the fearlessness in the past because it was sometimes it was in the midst of a crisis. So the Royal Oak in '72, you've got the quartz crisis, the perpetual calendar in '78 was genuinely to rescue AP from the ravages of the quartz crisis and the entire industry as well. I love the fact that the fearlessness still exists today and it's expressed beautifully in movements like the 7138 and materials like the sand gold. But we had a discussion about this, and you said, you know what, you can't force this, you can't force audacity, you have to let it grow organically and create a culture for it where people are encouraged to be fearless, and sometimes it doesn't have a success, but that's okay as well. Tell me about that.

Well, on that subject, you also said something super interesting to me as well where you said with respect to the business, your immediate commercial results are not the primary focus for you. The key thing that you want to put in place are assets for Audemars Piguet that will benefit it 20 years down the line, 30 years down the line. Patents, for example, are super important to you. Can you tell me a bit more about that?

You mentioned innovation, we got to talk about this whole concept of AP House because this has never existed before in the watch industry. And the idea of having a community gathering point, a place where you can interact with the watches, with other fans of the brand, and be educated but also have fun, right? I mean, how important is that to you, and why Singapore?

I love it. Two last questions so, okay, a business question, but if we look at the Morgan Stanley report, which we understand is not perfect, but anyway it's a guide, right? From '23 to '24, the revenue grew from 2.35 to 2.38 billion Swiss Francs at wholesale, but the volume of watches stayed the same, 51,000 watches, and the average price increased from 48,400 to about 49,000, right? Is this a strategy to raise the value of the average watch through complications, through materials, through what have you, and is that a growth strategy?

That's fantastic. Am I correct that women are also buying complicated watches as well, and in bigger and bigger quantities?

And Ilaria, you know, I know it's just the first overture to the 150th anniversary, and we have many more things to witness throughout the year. So I just want to say thank you so much, very impressed already, and thank you so much.