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The international AP Social Club event kicked off in Milan on March 4th in which, until tomorrow, the Audemars Piguet watch brand will show the first models of the year to the media and customers, also opening the doors of the newly created AP House in via Bagutta (see also Il Sole 24 Ore of 16 February). Doing the honors will be the Swiss-Italian CEO Ilaria Resta, who officially took office on 1 January 2024, the first woman in the sector to lead one of the companies in the top five by turnover: in 2023 the maison was the fourth, reaching 2.3 billion Swiss francs according to the latest report by Morgan Stanley in collaboration with LuxeConsult. «My mission in this brand is to continue to preserve the independence and governance of a family business», she explains.
Innovation, focus on customers and enthusiasts: the strategic points
The strategies on which the manager will work to achieve the objective are based on three points: «The first is watchmaking innovation, focusing on movements and complications, further bringing a certain savoir faire back to the centre, such as artistic crafts, and continuing to push on unpublished materials that will become our assets in the future”, he underlines. In the AP Social Club, for example, a never-before-seen alloy, sandblasted gold, was revealed on a new Royal Oak Skeletonized Automatic Tourbillon. The second point continues Ilaria Resta, «is the attention towards customers who, from personal work experience, are very close to me (Resta has worked in other sectors, holding top roles for years in companies such as Firmnich and Procter & Gamble, ed.)» . According to the CEO, «due to the way the industry is evolving, it is important to grasp trend signals well in advance. We’re off to an advantage – she adds –. We are end-to-end from a manufacturing and sales perspective, distributing the watches ourselves in our boutiques and AP Houses. The latter, then, allow us a closeness with the customer that few have.”
The third point of the strategy is to involve not only customers but also other enthusiasts in the world of the brand. The novelties seen at the AP Social Club concern the four collections (Royal Oak, Royal Oak Offshore, Royal Oak Concept and Code 11.59 by Audemars Piguet) with complicated, precious and sporty proposals for both male and female wrists. In the future, the CEO anticipates, «another line could be added. The times of haute horlogerie are more extended, but the project has begun”. In the meantime “the work to be done on the architecture of the brand is to define the role of each of our current collections”.
There will then be adjustments at the production level: «Before deciding on quantities, we will focus on quality. As can be seen from the mix of products we are creating, watches with complications have a very important role. And I wish they had it even more.” She makes choices that will be linked to the economic data of the maison: «At the moment I don’t see growth in production or turnover as the only success factors – explains Ilaria Resta -. For production needs I have a target defined together with the board, but the objective is to consolidate the foundations of the company so that it grows organically to guarantee the necessary investments in innovation”.
A possible return to Watches and Wonders
Finally, the CEO shows an openness towards a return to the Watches and Wonders fair, scheduled in Geneva from 9 to 15 April (the brand was present until 2019): «But not in the current format which has limits that should be discuss again to evaluate our entry. But I like the watchmaking federation idea of being together as an industry, also to support small brands in their visibility.”