Interview with François-Henry Bennahmias, CEO Of Audemars Piguet

The origins of Audemars Piguet date back to 1875 in Switzerland. The company produced 1,200 timepieces from 1894 to 1899 and from then on steadily grew to become more famous and has become the number one watch brand in China. So what's so special about Audemars Piguet timepieces? Join us for an exclusive interview with François Benamias, the president of Audemars Piguet. So Tatia, how are you? I'm François Benamias and I'm the general manager of Audemars Piguet. So I started with Audemars Piguet in 1994, 18 years ago in Paris after working seven years and I got the position of general manager in France and I stayed there for a year and a half then moved to Switzerland for three years, lived in Singapore for one year and then finally came here in 1999 in the United States where I've been for 13 years being the CEO and I've been here in the United States since 1999 to run the company and I've just been appointed CEO ad interim for Audemars Piguet worldwide in May. Yes, actually a few of them. First, the first one was I didn't know much about watches because I was working in the fashion business and I had to learn the entire collection and all the complicated watches and all the mechanisms and everything and I didn't know much about it so it took me six months to really get into it but I was still meeting customers and retailers on the first weeks so I had to sort of play things like I know a bit what I'm talking about without knowing too much so it was a bit of poker game sometimes where people were asking you questions you were supposed to answer these questions not knowing exactly if you would be right but six months later it was it was much better and I started to do the right things and the last one is here in the United States when I came in 1999 I got a chance to meet Arnold Schwarzenegger and he helped us big time actually to start to generate some awareness for the brand here where we supported his foundation his charity over the course of many many years and still today we are actually supporting his foundation. That sounds amazing like which fashion industry that you work with? I was working for brands like Giorgio Armani or Gianfranco Ferre so Italian brands that I was working for for the French market. So how did that bring you to AP? What kind of opportunity that brought you from a fashion business to launch your watch? A completely different mindset as far as because fashion is a very active world it changes every season you go to eventually four different seasons for a year when in the watch world you launch a watch and the watch could last for five ten years so it's a lot slower in the watch world compared to the fashion business but the fashion business gave me all this opportunity to think out of the box and not to always respect what has to be done in the watch world and go sometimes against the trends and do things differently that actually made us very successful. Compare so many luxury watch brands right why should I go for AP? Can you give me an idea? Very simple if you are a person that wants the difference that wants something that nobody else has that respects true quality and craftsmanship and that want to set herself out of the box that's us strong character very willing people and and you've got something that basically is known by very few when you put it on your wrist very few people will notice that it's another market watch but suddenly when you will have other people knowing it about it there will be connections made in two seconds that are pretty exceptional that's a bit who we are it's not for everybody the purpose is not to be sold to everybody but it's a special it's not even a club because we are much more it's a family we are family-owned company it's the last actually company in the hands of the founding families the chairman of the board is a woman actually she did charter that company she's a great granddaughter of the founder and the fact that we see the family-owned company give that feeling also to the people who are buying our watches we welcome them to the family so what do you think about the AP could bring to Chinese potential customers what kind of essential what kind of things are the best again a complete different set of mind a lot of watch companies respect a sort of very classical trends you know they make their own watches with their hands two hands just a date they make it very simple at Audemars Piguet we always try to do things differently and I think that China is booming like it's crazy economically it's unbelievable what's going on there you see a young generation accessing to everything and say you know what now I don't want to be like everybody else I really want to stand on my own and be my own person and I'm gonna try to look in different ways whether it's in fashion or in watches what watch what particular thing talks to me and especially me not that I want to be like a follower I want to be a trendsetter I want to be before the others and then where this is where Audemars Piguet gets in easily actually we start at 10 000 pretty much and we go up to wherever you want it to be but the most expensive watch we sell without a diamond on it is in the million dollar range and there is not a diamond on the watch it's because of the complexity of the mechanism and the uniqueness of the watch itself we also have a lot of watches with diamonds obviously we are the first brand ever agreed to even put diamonds on the hands of the watches which is pretty difficult because when you put some weight on the hands then the hands have the difficulties to move the normal way so we have to find a smart way of doing it and we're the first brand to do it in the 70s and we're still doing it today we make 33 000 watches a year for the world 33 000 watches a year for the world so it's a very small number when you think about it this year we'll sell roughly between china and hong kong we'll sell 7 000 watches okay so it's still very very exclusive it's what I have to say what's very interesting is recently there was a survey made in china of what was the number one watch looked at by a lot of people with money and we came first with actually that specific watch called the rhino not the exact same one but that shape so we came number one in the surveys okay in china which was for us pretty rewarding when you think about it because we have not been in china for a long time the thing is when the young generation looks at our company and they look also at all these fashion brands and they also look at Audemars Piguet now together say you know what yes I can wear a Brioni suit or a Tom Ford suit and then if I go with Audemars Piguet now it's going to be the perfect fit which is what they want so like from I know AP has so many collections and a series so what's your favorite besides the one you wear I would say the millenary the millenary collection which is the oval shape with a new mechanism that instead of putting it the normal way we put it completely reversed so it's upside down and we've launched the watch at the end of 2011 and the watch actually sells extremely well so I've got one as well and hopefully it's going to be successful in china the millenary 4101 collection is characterized by its unique oval shape its off-centered dials and the combination of sharp lines and sensual curves at the core of its design is a staging of its caliber which reveals the balance wheel that transmits the heartbeat of this timepiece the creation of the millenary 4101 symbolizes the alliance between horological self-affair and design