Interview with Olivier Audemars, Vice Chairman of the Board, Audemars Piguet

I think that is because we are quite clear about the purpose of the company. We come from a place with very limited natural resources, where people decided to settle because they wanted to have a free life. So they started to make watches as a way to use the few resources they had, which were mostly a little bit of rest and a large quantity of time. At the time, winters were extremely long, and when people were locked into the home, the only thing they had was time. That's why they started to make extremely complicated watches. All our watches are the way those people found to have a free life and to make things they can be proud of. That's what we intend to continue doing, what we started many generations ago. Even before the foundation of Audemars Piguet, all families were involved in this activity. As we make objects with emotional content because they are made by human beings with extreme skills, we think it's something that will always talk to people in the future. As long as we remain true to that, with this emotional content in our products, we will find people who will be proud and happy to have them.

We were first affected by electronic transformation in the 1970s with the development of quartz watches, which obliged the Swiss watch industry to reinvent itself. We were making products that were instruments to measure time and also represented extreme craft. With the arrival of quartz watches, the time-measuring dimension became obsolete, and we reinvented ourselves. Now there is another digital transformation, especially with smartwatches. Smartwatches are basically technical objects without an emotional link. We are convinced that in the future, people will still need products that talk to them. In the last 10 years at Audemars Piguet, the average age of our customers is at least 10 to 15 years younger than in the past. One reason is because of this electronic and digital transformation; we were worried about its impact on customers and tried to understand future generations, which indirectly affected how we communicate with them. On the other hand, if we want to continue making watches made by human beings, the rest of the company must be transformed using new technologies. We will have to build a bridge between the traditional way of making objects and a company completely transformed by digital technologies.

Yes, but what is key is that in an activity like ours, the emotional and human link is very important. We cannot replace this human contact with digitalization. We need as many touch points as possible, but at the end of the day, it's the encounter between people that is the key element. Digital iteration helps us find different ways to build this connection.

Yes, because as a company located in a tiny valley isolated in Switzerland but with a global brand, one key element is to understand how the world is evolving. Contemporary artists have the capacity to see weak signals in our environment and represent them in their art pieces. When you work with them, you can borrow their special glasses and see what they see, then understand how the world is evolving. It's also interesting to work with artists from different parts of the world. For example, if you are in Japan and meet Japanese artists, or in Florida and meet artists from South America, you get a deeper understanding of those environments. For a small company in a tiny valley, this helps us get a deeper understanding of different parts of the world, beyond what economic or technical reports provide. For the kind of products we make, this is very important.

From what we've seen as a company in our story, nearly each time there was a huge challenge, we've been able to transform it into an opportunity. The main example is the Royal Oak that we launched in the middle of the quartz watch era. What is important today is to continue to convince people to come to the Vallée de Joux. The Vallée de Joux is still remote, even if not as remote as in the past, with limited things to do. The challenge is to convince creative people to spend one or two hours driving in the snow during winter to come to the Vallée de Joux. We are thinking hard about how to convince them to do that. The second element is to ensure we can continue to innovate in a meaningful way—innovations should not be gimmicks but strong enough and coherent with what we stand for, to be the next milestones building on our traditions.

Thank you very much to you too.