Simply Abu Dhabi XXXV

1 0 6 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I A udemars Piguet is a rarity in the modern landscape of high watchmaking. Independent and family-owned, the company has survived 144 years and is thriving. You’ve endured crises and taken great risks…quite a journey, right? Yes… the quartz crisis changed the watch world. Up until that point all mechanical watches were oval or round and made from precious metals like gold or platinum. The Royal Oak, with its sharp angles and visible screws and made of steel, was perceived by the watch industry as completely crazy and against the rules. Our competitors thought it would kill the company. But it became a success and a few years later they all jumped on the train and made steel watches. Whatmight have happened toAudemars Piguet if theRoyal Oakhadnot been a success? It’s difficult to say. But I’m convinced that the Royal Oak is a very strong line and is the long-term future of AP. How did you first get seduced by the world of haute horlogerie? I was very close to my grandfather and one day when I was about five or six, he came home with an uninteresting piece of metal. It was a watch movement. He told me to touch the escapement and suddenly it came alive – it was the beating heart of a watch and I remember thinking, ‘”This is magic.” After that I sat next to the watchmakers in the factory and thought they were magicians. AP treads amasterful line betweenhonouring traditionandbreaking through boundaries…how do youmaintain that balance? If you don’t innovate, or if you innovate in the wrong way, it’s a narrow path to becoming irrelevant. We want to continue tradition but adapt to new situations. You cannot continue with tradition if you don’t innovate. We must innovate in a way that the innovations of today become the traditions of tomorrow. The watch industry is famously volatile, but AP always weathers the storm. Your watches seem to always have a safe audience. There’s no reason to buy art, sculpture, or mechanical watches... but people do, and it’s because luxury provokes an emotion and talks to the heart, not the brain. The CODE 11.59 is a beguiling new watch collection. Do you think in time it will become one of your brand icons like the Royal Oak? We don’t like to put all our eggs in one basket. There’s a risk of being over- dependent on one line like the Royal Oak. The CODE collection was created because the age of our customer has dropped by 10 to 15 years in the last decade. CODE is the second pillar of AP and it was the right time to launch it. Audemars Piguet is true to its slogan, ‘To break the rules, you must first master them’. What sustains the watchmakers at AP to keep striving for the next milestone? We want to reach people on a deep and emotional level. That’s wonderful for a watchmaker because it gives him or her the energy to continue. Watchmakers want to achieve perfection, but they never do it. If they did, that would be the end of the story. Will Audemars Piguet continue to be a family company for the foreseeable future? Future family members who work for AP must develop an emotional link to the company and feel proud of it. We don’t just give them a bag of money, nor do we want to crush them with the responsibility. The company doesn’t belong to the family. It’s stewardship, not ownership. I hope it’s still a private family business in 200 years.