Audemars Piguet’s Ilaria Resta On Growth, IPOs and Innovation

PARIS — By her own account, there hasn’t been a career move that Ilaria Resta hasn’t enjoyed, from the moment she joined Procter & Gamble fresh out of college, all the way to her current role as chief executive officer of Audemars Piguet.

What goes without saying is how many glass ceilings she’s had to smash along the way. Case in point: being one of the first female CEOs in watchmaking, and the first at the helm of an independent brand.

Resta always felt a fascination for the industry with one foot in a storied past and the other in the future. For the self-described problem solver, the sector faces fewer challenges than “opportunity to grow, evolve and change as the world around us changes,” she told WWD.

“I just don’t like brands or companies that are on a linear path, because I think they don’t open up to opportunities,” she continued.

That makes her a great fit for Audemars Piguet, a company she described as “living and breathing innovation in everything it does” in its 150 years of existence, unafraid to launch disruptive designs and filled with people who take their work, but not themselves, seriously.

At a time where the watchmaking industry feels like a climb up a mountain in unstable weather, the executive’s roadmap is not chasing growth at all costs, as much as ensuring the longevity and continued relevance of the family-owned company — for clients as much as those who might choose watchmaking as a career path.

Here, Resta explains why growth isn’t the only path, how the five-year-old Code 11.59 watch opened new avenues and why an initial public offering is not on the cards.

WWD: How have your experiences at Procter & Gamble and Firmenich shaped your path to Audemars Piguet?

Ilaria Resta: Overall, Procter & Gamble has been a great school of leadership, how you can guide, inspire, coach, the people working with you and for you [inside and outside the company]. So you have really a plethora of stakeholders that is quite diverse and quite rich.

Toward the end of my [tenure], I also worked a lot with governance, with nonprofit organizations to raise the bar and the awareness of the brands by also collaborating [and] contributing to communities, especially when I was in the U.S., where the subject of racial diversity, gender diversity, bullying, all important topics were raised in terms of importance. And then I enlarged my impact [in those domains].

I learned everything I knew [in marketing then sales] and at the same time I learned things that nobody talks much about: emotional intelligence, the ability really to relate to others, to [exercise] self-control, to work in a context where you need to get the best out of other people.

My three-and-a-half years at Firmenich were a shorter but extremely precious experience. I moved from B2C to B2B and entered the world of fragrances, a very functional and yet emotional world where you have a combination of chemistry, all the senses, memories and [heightened] emotions.

I had the chance to work with many more companies, because our clients were Estée Lauder, Puig, L’Oréal, many indie brands. You learn through the diversity of business cases you need to solve. In that context, it was a school also of leadership and adaptability, because I started in March 2020, and only a few days [later], we went into lockdown.

And then I went through [the] process of merging Firmenich with DSM, which was a very ambitious operation, [followed by] an IPO.

All this prepared me on many fronts [but] also on developing the agility of learning, the ability to really move fast from one need to the other while still serving my team that, in the meantime, grew in terms of size.

WWD: You’ve had a front row seat to the evolution of female executives, both in proportion but also the skills they contribute. How has the situation evolved?

I.R.: Let me start by saying [that] it’s still very sad that in 2024 we have to talk about diversity, because clearly we’re so far away from reaching equality and inclusion and, frankly, parity.

I hope one day it will be totally irrelevant to talk women and men. I feel the responsibility and the opportunity to open the door and make sure that diversity becomes a subject, [not only] for gender but also in terms of race, style and background.

It’s been proven by multiple studies of business and company results that when you have diversity around the decision table, you make better decisions. You have less risks and, frankly, you have better ideas because you have different points of view.

What I’ve tried to do with my executive teams and the people below is to truly open the doors to new women, but also to different styles and different backgrounds [by] looking at talents, skills and learning ability much more than job and sector experience.

In fact, I believe that sector experience in certain jobs is a limiting factor, because you keep looking at what has been done in the past and the more experience you have, the more arrogant and closed to new ideas you are.

WWD: There’s been speculation that part of your mandate is taking Audemars Piguet public. Is that on your roadmap?

I.R.: Well, I must say that I have a big smile on my face when I read those allegations. And of course, being a woman, there are also questions on whether I will now design only watches for women, which is interesting, because you don’t ask this question to men who deal with the more “female” categories, right?

Nowhere in my agenda is there the desire to take this company public, or to sell it, or to do anything of the experiences I did in the past.

My mission is to keep the independence of this company and I will devote myself to this as well as creating the excitement, the relevance of the brand, of its professions.

WWD: You’ve previously said that growth is only one vector for success. What are the others, particularly for Audemars Piguet?

I.R.: The long-term mission that I have is to truly safeguard and prioritize the brand [and ensure] the perennity of the company because you need to have the solidity of the company to sustain the brand. There are many more variables beyond growth when that’s your mission.

Growing in the short term is very easy. In the next two to five years, we can and will grow, but what is more important is balanced growth, with the consolidation of the foundation of a company that has reached a very big size.

You have the traditional need to be solid on cash, on profit, on revenues. But what matters more is to have a pipeline of innovations and ideas that can serve the next five to 10 years. Are you investing as much in the long-term ideas as in the short-term ones? Are you investing to protect the material, the savoir-faire to ensure that this expertise isn’t lost?

WWD: There has been much conversation about the rise of female consumers and collectors. What is your take?

I.R.: I really do not believe in the distinction by gender of watches. For me, there is no such thing as a male watch and a female watch. What exists is a certain diameter and length of the bracelet that we might need to adjust.

In my product strategy, we are eliminating anything [that] has to do with genderizing the watches.

We really need to break biases that we’ve been having for centuries, such as thinking that the man is the one making [watch purchasing] decisions or that complications are for men, decorations for women.

If there is a difference between a man and woman, we will, of course, reflect the difference. But if there is none, we will not treat them based on their gender. We will treat them based on their desires.

WWD: With this segmentation removed, how are you approaching clients at Audemars Piguet?

I.R.: One of the key pillars of the new strategy is what I call “client centricity,” which is the need and intent to be extremely knowledgeable about what clients want and the way they wear watches. It’s not that we ask them what they want and make it for them, but understanding them and serving them what they will love, which might not be what they think they love.

You don’t ask what kind of watch they like; this is not the way you learn about people. What are your interests? What do you watch on TV? Which musicians do you follow? What are your passions? What do you look for? What makes you happy? It’s like a marriage or nurturing a friendship.

For me, client centricity is also following the generations and not taking for granted [that] the codes of communication, the codes of products, the codes of design of the past will apply today.

All this requires a lot of effort and investment, and we are in a unique position because we really have a proximity to clients thanks to our distribution network, which we control along with some partners, thanks also to the AP Houses, which is a wonderful smart concept that’s not necessarily commercial but is an environment for sharing passions.

WWD: Innovation is also a recurring term in your tenure. How will this be expressed?

I.R.: Long before I came in — for 150 years, in fact — Audemars Piguet has always been a company that has been living and breathing innovation in everything it does.

If you think about it, they’ve always been breaking the rules, being disruptive and bringing breakthrough ideas that were not part of the norm. The Royal Oak was the first large watch — 39 millimeters — in stainless steel, priced like gold. It was a sort-of scandal and yet it became a huge success.

How do we reach clients? What are the ways to engage with them? What’s next in retail concepts? What’s next in the way we talk to people, in how we work internally? Innovation is not only what clients see, but also behind the scenes.

We’re working on a project that, personally I don’t like calling CPO, because the purpose for us is not necessarily to sell pre-owned pieces. When it launches — we are in the final steps — you will see that it’s not CPO as it already exists [elsewhere]. It is a completely different approach, with service and client experience at the center of what we are going to do.

WWD: For many, Audemars Piguet is synonymous with the Royal Oak model. How are other designs slotting into the offer?

I.R.: The Royal Oak has the lion’s share in our portfolio, of course. The Royal Oak Offshore is also doing well and growing.

But the biggest surprise, or rather satisfaction, comes from the Code 11.59, because it continues growing. I must say that [it is] attracting a very different type of client and gives us many more opportunities.

[Its design] allows us to host many more complications….It’s really a wonderful starting point to express a lot of savoir-faire that we cannot do on the Royal Oak [due to] the shape. We are starting to play with mixes of materials, we are now venturing into 38mm to fit certain wrists.

So great progression on Code. We are extremely proud of what we have been doing so far and we have very interesting new launches coming.

WWD: What else has the Code 11.59 brought?

I.R.: Code is really opening the door to another market as an elegant dress watch that is at the same time extremely sporty. It serves different types of occasions to the Royal Oak or the Offshore that were [respectively] more office or leisure watches.

With the 38mm launch, [it brought] women who look for an elegant watch. The fact that we have certain know-hows has enabled us to reach certain types of collectors that want a canvas to express themselves. Let’s call it a dress watch, but it’s a bit understated and part of this quiet luxury trend we see across different businesses and sectors.

I think Code has opened [us] to people who were looking at classicism reinvented [and] gave another view, another window into Audemars Piguet. At the same time, we launched two [Re]Master watches.

They are also changing the shape of Audemars Piguet by bringing back classics we did in the past. Let’s not forget that before the Royal Oak, there is a century of other shapes.