In Conversation With: François-Henry Bennahmias, CEO of Audemars Piguet

One of my favourite things about interviewing François Bennahmias is you have to be on point. You have to wake up early that morning, drink your green juice, blast the cardio to your anaerobic threshold, refresh yourself on AP’s history, and gather and coalesce your thoughts so that when you engage with him he knows you are not wasting his time. He compels you to be at your best, just in the same way he ascribes to Yoda’s famous quote, “Do or do not, there is no try.” In his nine-year tenure at the helm of Audemars Piguet, he more than doubled the revenue, intentionally reduced the price of his gold watches because he found them out of alignment with the rest of the market, transformed several models, the 15202 in particular, into a grail with an infinitely long wait-list, created a whole new excitement over his perpetual calendars with the launch of the 2017 ceramic model, cut a great many retailers, shifted from wholesale to owned and operated boutiques, won multiple Geneva Grand Prixs. In other words, he’s something of a legend in the watch world. It was my pleasure to have this frank and honestly very uplifting conversation with him during the global lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I think that one of the things we’ve all taken away and one of the things you see in the Audemars Piguet family is that it’s a global family, whether it’s @horoloupe in Shanghai or your people in America. So it’s great to hear