Monthly Archives: May 2012

If I Were Running Audemars Piguet North America

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Last week, news broke that Audemars Piguet was parting ways with their CEO, Philippe Merk and replacing him (supposedly in interim) with François-Henry Bennahmias, formerly head of AP North America.

AP is my favorite “big” brand.  In fact, the watch I wear most often is an AP.  They have great products, great history, and many great people who work there.  They have the resources to do some amazing things.  So I couldn’t help but think: if they hired me to replace Francois, what would I do?

First, I would listen to the chime of the minute repeater that I made them give me as a signing bonus.  Then I would get down to serious business.

My focus would be on service and value.  The two are intricately related.  I would push them to finally take the jump into online sales and create a technology platform that offered the best user/customer experience in the business.  I would invest heavily in the US service center to the point that NO SERVICE SHOULD TAKE MORE THAN 4 WEEKS, with the eventual goal to turn out routine services and minor fixes in less than 2 weeks.

I would promote transparency and open dialogue.  I, myself, would be available continuously through social media and email and also empower other employees to be as well.  I would answer the tough questions honestly and make my positions very clear.  I would be swift in rectifying any and all instances of poor service from us or our partners.  Any customer willing to spend $10k+ on an archaic instrument deserves to be treated with utmost respect – not propitiation but true fairness.  This has to be hammered into the culture from the top down.

Chris Dixon, tech entrepreneur and investor, posted a great piece over the weekend on how people are now focused on experience rather than product.  Luxury brands have known this for a while, but have lost their way.  They see people tire of the experience, and think they have to focus harder on selling the product.  That’s why you see all sorts of BS claims on materials, movements, complications, etc.  What they’re missing is that the experience is still what’s important, they are simply selling the wrong experience.  The typical arrogance and elitism of luxury is not as effective anymore.  What people want is a company that is committed to doing things in the best possible way, with the utmost integrity, and that treats its fans and customers like family, not suckers.

There are plenty of other things to do, but I believe that if someone were to truly implement these few points with passion and integrity, the brand would rise head and shoulders above the rest and set a fantastic example for the industry as a whole.  The US is different from the rest of the world.  Customers are very savvy, status is much less important, etc.  No watch company has gotten the message right here yet.  It’s not hard, but it can’t be faked and there is no shortcut.

For a nominal (7 figure) salary and a brownstone in the West Village, I’d be happy to do it for them without breaking a sweat.  But do you think they’d make me learn French?

Sunshine

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Yesterday’s post was pretty pessimistic.  However, it’s not all doom and gloom.  So here’s some optimism.

  • Watches are made better today than they ever have been before.
  • The sheer volume and value of the watches sold in the last several years all but ensures that servicing them will be a viable job for many years to come.
  • So many fantastic watches have already been made that even if no more were produced, we could all have something nice.
  • The internet is still progressing in a direction that will make it fun to collect and talk about watches no matter how screwed up the industry itself gets.
  • Huge leaps, especially in sales and distribution but also in production, can still be made that can change everything in a very short period of time.

Ok that’s a few off the top of my head.  What do you guys think?

Are Watches Dead?

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I mentioned in my post earlier this week that I thought very hard about whether I would want to stay in the watch industry or not.  Ultimately I decided not.  I thought I would share some of my thinking.

First, I love watches.  There are great companies, great pieces, and real magic that has come out of this industry, as you can clearly see from the rest of my blog.  However, there are some real problems with it.  I outlined a few of these in my post, An Industry in Danger.

Overwhelmingly, amongst the collectors I have known for a long time, I feel a sense of fatigue.  They are tired of the price increases, the gimmicks, the marketing campaigns, the retailer games, etc.   There are very few have-to-have or impossible-to-get pieces now, so even if something is wanted, they don’t have to put up with BS to get it.  In an extremely niche industry with a shocking small number of potential customers, the trend of killing off the most enthusiastic and supportive of them is incredibly worrying to me.

Next, creativity seems stagnant.  We have just come out of a golden era of independents.  The jump from the Lange 1 (which was groundbreaking when it came out) to an URWERK 103 or Vianney Halter Antiqua happened very quickly and spawned an incredibly important period.  Felix, Vianney, Max, Francois-Paul, etc will forever be historically significant and there pieces continue to be.  However, that period is over.  The new entrants are not bringing anything significant enough to change the paradigm.  Similar to art, the important artists of a particular movement will always be important.  The next important artists are not the ones who follow, but the ones who break completely new ground.  I fear that present conditions will not allow that to happen.

So are watches dead?  I don’t think so.  Rolex and Patek will be fine for long to come.  Felix and Max and the few other genius creators should be fine if the universe has any sense of true art and they are able, at some point to take control of the sales channel.  But there is no doubt in my mind that the watch industry as we know it is headed very quickly towards a brick wall (and this is not even taking into account the upcoming after-sales-service crisis!).  Are there opportunities to start a great, profitable business there?  Absolutely.  But in the end, I want to be in a sector with a happy, expanding customer base.  I don’t see much hope for the watch industry to get back to that place.  So I will watch from the outside hoping to see positive changes, but concentrate my effort elsewhere.

 

An Update

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Hi everyone.  Thanks for all the emails, tweets, facebooks, etc saying how much you enjoy the blog and wish I’d post more.  I apologize for not keeping it up, blogging is hard!  I have a couple posts in the back of my head, so I’ll try to write some stuff soon.  In the meantime, people seem curious as to what I’m up to, so I’ll get that out of the way today.

After leaving MB&F in December, I wanted to take time off to clear my head and figure out what to do next.  First, I thought long and hard about whether I would want to do anything in the watch industry.  I will write up some of these thoughts in a later post, but the bottom line is that it’s not really where I see my future.  I fell into it with the best watch company in the world, and am happy to leave it at that.

That left me with a notebook full of startup ideas that I have compiled through the years.  To be honest, I ignored them all for a few months.  I read a lot.  I played with my son.  I spent time on all the things I know I won’t have time for once I start a new business.

Now I am 90% set on the direction I want to pursue.  I am working out the details and research now.  It is not watch related per se, but I think it will be of interest to many of you. I will update as I have more to share, and hope some of you will be great beta users for me.

Anyway, I hope that answers the questions for now.  Don’t forget about TickTocking.  There’s more to come…