Audemars Piguet sees growth in young and female collectors

[SINGAPORE] The more Ilaria Resta learns about the watchmaking industry, the more she loves it. “You realise how rich it is, the long history, the mechanical inventions,” she confessed, a year after her appointment as CEO of Audemars Piguet (AP), one of the holy trinity of Swiss luxury watches.

“I realise how much this is an industry that grows together in partnership and connections with one another,” said Resta who brings nearly three decades of managing global consumer brands to luxury watchmaking. 

The close-knit network of the business, where watchmakers supply one another components and even watches, was present from the beginning of Swiss watchmaking – and endures despite competition among the watch brands today.

“This word ‘competition’, which exists in many industries, I struggle to use it in watchmaking,” Resta said in an interview with The Business Times last week. The AP boss was in Singapore to celebrate the brand’s 150th anniversary and the official opening of the Singapore outpost of the Audemars Piguet House at Raffles Hotel – an AP boutique, lounge and cafe all rolled into one.  

According to her, the watchmaking industry, including the artisans and designers who beautify the timepieces, is an ecosystem that nourishes watchmaking. “These are people who honestly push the bar higher. When they develop something great, we celebrate it and try to do better.”

There is no collusion. Watchmakers must develop products different from others to win customers. So AP’s timepieces are powered by movements made in-house and crafted from a daring mix of materials, which are then given a superior finishing.

Capturing a new generation of watch lovers

AP is especially keen to woo women and young buyers. Many are showing a growing interest in mechanical timepieces and complications – the numbers large enough to convince Resta they are the key driver of tomorrow’s watchmaking growth.

“The young are coming into it even much earlier than the millennials,” she said. “They are rejecting anything (that is) digital and trying to return to analogue, to rediscovering the past.”  

Women ownership of mechanical watches remains low, but Resta said many more women are now joining men in collecting them. “They are deeper, they are interested in the narrative of the brand, its story and authenticity.” 

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Like most people fond of timepieces, she said, the women and young collectors are drawn to a watch’s look; but they are also eager to learn about its mechanisms and how they work. And, Resta added, while the passion of some of the young watch geeks are passed down from parents, for many it reflects an unhappiness with life today.

“We are living in a world that is extremely chaotic and cluttered, the information (overload) and all,” she pointed out. “We are exposed to so many fake things. The digital world is great for bringing us knowledge. Yet it is so overwhelming for the younger generation.”

Many want to disconnect and they yearn for the good old days – “a return to another time, to the glory of the past”, Resta said. Which, she thinks, perhaps explains why the young have turned to the “disconnected” phone shorn of all its smartness, the rediscovery of vintage and, of course, mechanical timepieces.  

“There is something poetic and romantic about watchmaking that this (young) generation loves, like they do with vinyls,” she said.

AP is very aware of the ballooning presence of these women and young buyers. It is one of the rare few brands in face-to-face contact with end-customers – AP has dropped most of its authorised dealers and sells direct to customers.

Yet, while AP has done a good job in building customer relationships, Resta feels it can do better. One of the first things she noticed after joining the brand was it engaged customers only after a new watch was unveiled. “We did not put them at the start of the process of our thinking of innovation and product. We shall bring them in much earlier in the process.” 

That should be good news for women and young buyers, who seek a deeper experience with their watches and the brands that produce them.