A model of this text first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth e-newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly information to the high-net-worth investor and shopper. Signal as much as obtain future editions, straight to your inbox. Audemars Piguet, the distinguished Swiss watch model, is tearing down the advertising and marketing partitions separating males’s and girls’s watches, as girls grow to be the largest development drivers of luxurious watch gross sales, in keeping with its CEO. Slightly than advertising and marketing watches particularly to males or girls, Audemars Piguet will not check with “males’s” or “girls’s” watches in its boutiques or advertising and marketing. “I am altering the narrative and the structure of the model,” mentioned Ilaria Resta, CEO of Audemars Piguet. “I finished defining watches as a males’s watch or girls’s watch. I consider it is fallacious that the corporate, in a method, predefined the client. It is not for us to inform girls, ‘That is your watch.'” The transfer displays surging demand by girls for high-priced, mechanical watches historically made for males, and the more and more blurred product traces in luxurious. It additionally marks a extremely symbolic change for AP — a part of the “Holy Trinity” of Swiss watches together with Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin — that is prone to reverberate via an trade present process speedy transition. Resta, who took over AP a yr in the past, is likely one of the first feminine CEOs of a prime Swiss watch model. Her appointment appeared to make official the significance of girls to the $100 billion-a-year luxurious watch enterprise. The ladies’s watch market alone is predicted to achieve $35 billion by 2032, up from $28 billion in 2023, in keeping with Market Analysis Future. As the luxurious watch enterprise enters its third yr of declines, participating girls and youthful consumers shall be vital to restoring development. Resta cited research predicting that by 2030, 45% of girls will purchase a mechanical watch. She mentioned the variety of girls getting into an Audemars Piguet retailer and shopping for a look ahead to themselves within the U.S. has jumped by 11% up to now two years. Of the highest 50 collectors of Audemars Piguet watches on this planet, a number of are girls, Resta mentioned. With girls anticipated to obtain practically half of the $100 trillion Nice Wealth Switch — each as spouses and descendants — their spending energy in watches is simply prone to develop. Standard knowledge within the luxurious watch trade has been that ladies favor extra female variations of watches, sometimes smaller, extra colourful, extra prone to have diamonds or jewels and with fewer problems. But the rising pattern of gender-neutral luxurious, with unisex clothes, equipment, fragrances and jewellery, can be reshaping watches. “Girls love diamonds — in addition to males — they usually love problems increasingly,” Resta mentioned. “It is also the opposite method round. We launched the Flamingo, a 34mm with a pink dial, and we’ve many males too. We’re simply reflecting society.” Together with eliminating gender distinctions, AP can be highlighting girls in a lot of its occasions and advertising and marketing, together with an occasion at Artwork Basel Miami in December with Serena Williams, Simone Biles and main girls entrepreneurs and executives. Resta’s strikes carry outsized weight within the luxurious world given AP’s prominence. In an trade the place most watch manufacturers are seeing declines, AP’s gross sales elevated in 2023 to $2.7 billion, in keeping with a report from Morgan Stanley. Audemars does not disclose any financials or manufacturing numbers, however analysts estimate the corporate produces solely 50,000 watches a yr, in contrast with greater than 1.2 million for Rolex. The restricted provide signifies that shopping for an AP is a problem, even for many who can afford the value tag of between $25,000 and properly over $250,000. Audemars can be one of many few luxurious watch makers that is remained unbiased and family-owned because the 1800s. Most luxurious watch manufacturers have been consumed by LVMH, Richemont and the opposite giant luxurious conglomerates. Household house owners typically prize long-term model fame and craftsmanship over gross sales development, that means manufacturing sometimes will increase solely minimally from yr to yr. On the identical time, AP has grow to be a preferred wrist-flex for prime athletes, celebrities and youthful collectors, lifting it to famous person standing on Instagram and different social media platforms. Final month, Tom Brady’s custom-made Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Flying Tourbillon bought at public sale for $720,000. AP’s shortage is one cause the model has continued to shine at the same time as a lot of the trade has seen declines for over two years. Swiss watch exports fell 3% via November in contrast with the earlier yr, as China’s financial slowdown and weak point in Europe and different elements of the world has hit demand for each new and pre-owned luxurious watches. Costs for pre-owned Rolexes are down about 30% from their peak, in keeping with the Bloomberg Subdial Index. Just like the broader luxurious slowdown, the luxury-watch recession has created a brand new divide between corporations that went extra mass-market and at the moment are seeing the largest declines, and those who remained extremely unique and are much less affected. Whereas seen as an unlikely option to run one of many crown jewels of Swiss watchmaking, Resta is shifting shortly to adapt to the extra aggressive panorama. One among her prime targets is to drive Audemars additional upmarket, focusing development on essentially the most sophisticated and costly watches. The goal is not larger margins, she mentioned, however a return to AP’s roots, with its most expert watchmakers dreaming up ever extra elaborate and modern creations that set the model aside from its opponents. “Our mission is absolutely shifting from actually amount to larger finish,” she mentioned. “We’ll develop organically, however we will even improve the problems in our watches. We have been born as a extremely sophisticated watch, so we’re going again to how we began.” Resta can be reaching out to youthful and future collectors with innovation — together with a brand new middle for creating superior supplies reminiscent of cast carbon and new finishes — and with a brand new and as-yet-unannounced form of retail expertise. Whereas Resta declined to supply particulars, she mentioned the brand new shops, or pseudo-museums, would praise the corporate’s AP Homes — the luxury, residential-like lounges in prime cities around the globe which have grow to be well-liked with prime purchasers. “My ardour and our perception is that we’ve additionally accountability of divulging the tradition of watchmaking and its completed historical past of serving humanity,” she mentioned. “We’re making an attempt with the brand new fashions of retail to open up the doorways to individuals who can’t purchase and they’re merely all for watchmaking to not less than have an entry to the model.” Ultimately, irrespective of how robust or weak the luxurious market, Resta says promoting five- and six-figure watches is all about creating emotion. She mentioned rich watch consumers must really feel a way of belonging and connection after they purchase a hyper-luxury watch. It traces again to the corporate’s roots within the Jura mountains, its generations of grasp watchmakers creating miniature wonders, and the care taken with every watch over generations, irrespective of the proprietor. “Sure, we promote time items which can be extraordinarily treasured, extraordinarily complicated to promote. However what we actually promote is an emotion, we promote interplay, we promote intimacy to our purchasers,” she mentioned. “Once you hear the tales of how they made that watch, the way it finally obtained to your wrist, you can not assist however have a look at your watch as a present of affection, respect and obsession with element, of somebody who spent months or years making that watch on your wrist.”
A model of this text first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth e-newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly information to the high-net-worth investor and shopper. Join to obtain future editions, straight to your inbox.
Audemars Piguet, the distinguished Swiss watch model, is tearing down the advertising and marketing partitions separating males’s and girls’s watches, as girls grow to be the largest development drivers of luxurious watch gross sales, in keeping with its CEO.
