Watches expert Robin Swithinbank weighs in twice a month with intelligence and insight on the age-old industry as it navigates the tension between tradition and reinvention.
For my latest briefing, I sat down with Ilaria Resta, CEO of Audemars Piguet, who discussed her strategy over over a coffee at the upscale Chedi hotel in the Swiss Alpine town of Andermatt.
It’s little more than two years since the former Procter & Gamble beauty executive took over the family-owned luxury watchmaker. In that time, the watch market has hit the buffers, while sales at AP shot up 10 percent last year, according to Resta.
The Italian executive says she didn’t expect such growth. Under her leadership, the brand has adopted a no hype approach, with gentle paeans to “savoir-faire” and recondite contemporary artists featuring on its website.
Annual revenues of the brand came to 2.38 billion Swiss francs ($3.1 billion) in 2024, according to estimates from Morgan Stanley. A 10 percent increase would bring the figure to around 2.6 billion Swiss francs in 2025.
The company is estimated to have made around 52,000 watches last year.
This would mean an average selling price of more than 50,000 Swiss francs per timepiece. The figure at Patek Philippe, for reference, is thought to be around 15 percent less than that.
Resta said she sees more growth ahead, albeit at a slower pace, and forecasts moderate, high single-digit growth this year. This would mean sales approaching 2.8 billion Swiss francs.
How does she plan to do this?
Future Growth Markets
Resta links appetite for high-end, mechanical watches to increasing wealth in places beyond Europe, China and the United States.
“There are white-space countries like India, Australia, Latin America that are nowhere near their growth potential,” she said.
Production numbers will stay roughly the same, the executive said, with growth coming from selling more expensive watches, and more watches to women. There is appetite, she says.
“Women are still not even close to parity of men in buying watches. These are two white spaces of growth opportunity that will continue, and we will go after those,” said Resta, of new markets and female clients.
There aren’t many watchmakers predicting growth in today’s market. Around 100 Swiss watch companies currently rely on government hand-outs as part of the short-working hours furlough scheme and many brands are bracing for a shock when the scheme’s emergency 12-month extension period ends this summer.
Still, Resta says things aren’t as bad as they might appear.
“What’s happening today is more uncertainty that paralysis, rather than an underlying real financial crisis, which I do not see,” she insisted. “Are people interested in mechanical watches? Yes, they are. Is there saturation of the market? No, not at all.”
In her view, the industry is as much to blame for its current woes as the uncertain global economic and political climate. “We have been, as companies, very lazy in the years when growth was easy for everybody,” she said. While she didn’t offer specifics, luxury watchmakers have faced criticism for raising prices without increasing the material value in their products, and for relying on quick-win marketing tactics, such as investing in influencers instead of innovation.
Last August, AP rode to the rescue of the specialist component manufacturer Inhotec, acquiring a majority stake for an undisclosed sum. In Resta’s telling, the deal was driven by “the need to keep them alive.”
Inhotec supplies a number of brands, not just AP. “Nobody’s insulated, so when we find a situation like this, we move in,” she said. “That’s not a strategy, it’s a necessity.”
Would she buy up other struggling component makers?
Only if necessary, she said.
“Our industrial strategy is not backward integration,” said Resta. “If there is a moment where a supplier that is critical and strategic needs support, and that’s the only way to support them, we will do it.”
Still, it’s a sobering time for Swiss watchmakers, she said.
“Not everybody will be able to survive, so it’s a serious moment for the industry.”
Even as an industry newbie – an outsider, not so long ago – Resta speaks as if she’s ready to take up the responsibility for the future of watchmaking. “Watchmaking is as big as music, culture, art, history,” she said. “And we have a duty to preserve this.”
It’s also true that watchmaking is viewed as elitist, and it doesn’t help that Switzerland is not regarded as a country that lets down its walls easily.
‘Radical Openness’
Resta, of course, isn’t Swiss. The Italian talks about “radical openness” and wanting to break down high-end watchmaking’s lofty reputation and self-regard.
“Exclusive – we don’t like that word,” she said. “It means we’re keeping people out of watchmaking and that’s not our intent.”
The paradox remains, nonetheless. AP makes products it wants us to aspire to, while seeming comfortable with the fact that few of us will ever access them. “Not everybody will own a certain car, but they love and follow cars,” she said. “We are no longer product, we are culture.”
Resta will take some satisfaction in her company’s growth, not least after her future at Audemars Piguet was called into question six months ago by online rumours. But watchmaking is a long game and some will argue the company is still travelling under the momentum generated by her predecessor François-Henri Bennahmias. Will her softer, more erudite approach have the same effect?
With good numbers behind her, her position seems assured. “I feel at home,” she said.
Six Seconds: A New Chronometer Standard for Swiss Watches
It’s one of the oldest quality signifiers in watchmaking, but the days when the word “chronometer” on a watch dial conferred status on a watch – and its owner – have long been on the wane. How excited can a contemporary buyer get by a mechanical watch that’s accurate to 10 seconds a day?
The ISO standard by which chronometer certification is measured was laid down in 1976. Last week, for the first time in the half century since, the Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres, the body known as “COSC” that has issued 57 million chronometer certificates on Swiss-made watches over the past five decades, rolled out a new certification.
The new “COSC Excellence Chronometer” certifies accuracy to six seconds a day. It guarantees a modest degree of anti-magnetism as well as water resistance, which is measured against a brand’s claims. Already dubbed “Super COSC,” it also tests the entire watch – not just the movement, as per the existing standard, which COSC will continue to offer.
The COSC told me the tighter standard was “a question of survival” – a common theme in the troubled watchmaking industry, as it faces headwinds from trade wars, inflation in raw materials and a slump in demand.
Is Super COSC a silver bullet for COSC and the future of the chronometer? It’s a step forward, no doubt, but perhaps too little too late. Brands fed up with waiting for an improved standard have long since moved on. Rolex has its Superlative Chronometers, which are accurate to four seconds a day; Omega works with an outside agency called METAS to certify its watches to five seconds a day, as well as resistance to magnetic fields emitted by brain scanners.
And what can brands expect consumers to pay for this? COSC charges a mere 10 Swiss francs per movement for the existing certification – a fraction of the mark-up brands currently attach to chronometer-branded watches. While a price for the new Excellence Chronometer has yet to be set, it maybe around 30 Swiss francs.
Trials continue, and first certificates are unlikely to be issued before the autumn. My view is that brands using Super COSC should stick with the same mark-up – in actual terms, not by percentage – and move away from the existing standard. COSC says it will continue to offer the old certification, but it feels obsolete. For Swiss-made mechanical watches costing thousands of dollars, consumers expect excellence to come as standard.
