OLIVIER AUDEMARS - INTERVIEW January 2017

In 2011 we were working on the new exhibition for the 40th anniversary of the Royal Oak, and at this time we asked a photographer to come take some images that we thought would be nice to illustrate this exhibition. And this guy came with images that were completely different from what we had in our minds. For us the Vallée de Joux was the nice lake, the blue sky, and the mountains, and he came back with those images — images of rocks, of clouds, of mist. And we said, how come? This is not our valley. And then we asked, yes it is. So how come that people decided to settle in such a place in the first place?

That was actually the beginning of a kind of soul-searching process where we rediscovered things that somehow we knew but at a non-conscious level, that then helped us to get a better understanding of the purpose of the brand. What we rediscovered was that the first people who decided to settle in the Vallée de Joux were people that were very independent-minded — people who wanted to be able to live without being under the rule of the King of France, or the Duke of Savoy, or the Emperor of Germany. So they decided it was better for them to live in a difficult region where nobody would bother them, than to have an easier life but under the rule of someone else. That's why they decided to move to the valley.

But the problem they faced was that, individually, there were nearly no resources. You cannot grow anything in the Vallée de Joux. The only thing you have is a lot of rocks, dark forests, and a lot of snow. But what happened is that among those rocks, some were a little bit special — they had a tiny quantity of rust. So using the wood from the forest to feed their furnaces, they were able to extract this rust and transform it into iron. And as the quantities were limited and the process complicated, they had to specialize in making small objects with high added value. That's why they started to make watch mechanisms.

They started to develop extremely complex mechanisms. They took inspiration from the stars. They found something, they tried to replicate the movements of the Earth, the stars, and the Moon in the sky, around the Sun. And it became something like a perpetual calendar. A perpetual calendar actually is a micro representation of the movements of all the planets around the Sun and of the Moon around the Earth. It was something that was extremely complicated to do, but they had those long nights to think about it, and all this time to transform it into watches.

The other thing that is very important is that, as they had all this time, they were also trying to make sure that every component would be as perfect as possible, as beautiful as possible. And that's something that is still very present today in our company. Our watchmakers are extremely proud to make sure that every component, even if it's not visible, is as perfect as possible.

The company was founded in 1875 by my great-grandfather and his partner. But for them it was not the beginning — both of them were from watchmaking families. The great-grandfather of my great-grandfather was already a watchmaker, and we have a watch that he made from 1760 or something like that. The reason they decided to work together was to increase the chances of this tradition to continue. Because what happened at the end of the 18th century, the beginning of the 19th century, was the arrival of mass production of watches. The Americans were making watches by the millions, and that was also starting to happen in Europe and Switzerland. For them, that was not what they wanted to do. They wanted to continue to make complicated mechanisms that were made by human beings and not by machines. So they said, if we work together, if we start a new company with all our combined forces, we will enhance the chances that this tradition will continue.

For us that is something very important, because we know that the company does not belong to us. It belongs to the people that are working in this company, it belongs to the families, it belongs to the Vallée de Joux. And what we have to do is our best so that when the time comes, we will be able to pass it to the next generation. That's why we try to think in terms of generations, not in terms of financial reports. When I have a decision to take, I try to think at the same time of what my grandfather would have decided 50 years ago, and of what my grandchildren in 50 years will think about the decision I'm about to take.

It was not an easy decision to take, because before, I never really considered joining the family company. It was something my grandfather was involved in, and that's all. I think what helped me at the time to take this decision were the memories of what I saw when I was a kid. I was never educated with the idea of being directly involved, but I had those memories and all those souvenirs — I remember the people, the watchmakers. So I thought that it was worth it. And something else that was important: my grandfather told us when we were kids that if one day we had to be involved somehow, we would have to remember that the company would not belong to us — that it was something we may have to do our best to maintain in the Vallée de Joux.

That's how I eventually became involved in Audemars Piguet, where I spent about eight or nine years at different operational positions. Then I left when I joined the board, and today I'm the vice chairman of the board, but I'm also chairing what we call the strategic committee, which is the entity that is in charge of thinking about the long-term future of the company.

For a long, long time, watches were mostly an instrument to tell the time, and accuracy was extremely important. One of the reasons for the development of precise watches was the development of sailing ships that had to go into the open sea and be able to locate their position extremely precisely. There were smaller versions that were put on the wrist, but during this time there were in parallel a few brands that produced additional mechanisms — and naturally unnecessary additional mechanisms, because fundamentally you don't need a watch with a mechanism that will take into account every four years that there is a 29th of February. You don't necessarily need a minute repeater or chiming mechanism to know, if you wake up at three o'clock during the night, whether it's quarter past three or twenty past. Those mechanisms were not really necessary, but they represented an extreme in terms of mastery because they were so complicated. And people bought those watches not only to tell the time, but also because they wanted to have on their wrists something that was made by extremely skilled people.

We need to have something where there is this notion of something grounded in reality, something that has a specificity, sometimes small imperfections because it's made by human beings, something that has lasting value. When we bring people to the Vallée de Joux — young people as well as older people — and when they have this experience of being there, when they see watchmakers, most of them understand. They have this emotional experience that is extremely important. It's something very important for us, because what we want is to organize this encounter between the customer and the watchmaker around the watch. The watchmakers need to meet the people that are going to buy the watches, because it gives them energy to see someone who is very excited about wearing one of their watches or waiting for a watch. It gives them a lot of motivation.

It's true also the other way around — when the customer, the young person, meets the watchmaker, an old watchmaker or young watchmaker, and they discuss, and the watchmaker explains how he does things, and you see how the person works — the younger person will understand that, you know, if it's an extremely complicated watch, it could take six to eight months to produce one. Then it will touch him. I think that's the only way to do it. What is very important is that you have to be true. You have to make sure that what you say is what you do. If at one point you build a kind of marketing talk which does not reflect what you really are, it may be okay for a certain period of time, but then it won't work. And I think young people can understand that.