In an industry characterized by tradition, tough economic realities have seen luxury watchmakers looking to innovate.
Last year was a difficult one for many luxury brands. According to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, 2025 was a “year of significant uncertainty,” with exports down for the second year in a row.
Some analysts framed it as a correction to the post-pandemic boom, but economic realities have seen luxury watchmakers looking to innovate, in an industry characterized by tradition.
Ilaria Resta took over as CEO of Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet at the end of 2023, just as the market “started changing significantly in comparison to the post-Covid era, where there was this euphoria to buy anything luxury,” she told CNN at the Watches and Wonders trade show in Geneva last week.
She pointed to the impact of China’s economic problems, the rising cost of gold, and US tariffs. “It was really a perfect storm of lots of things happening,” Resta said.
“That was a challenge, but at the same time, it was a blessing in disguise,” she added. “It was a moment of pause and reflection, of, ‘how do we evolve in the next few years?’”
Adopting AI
Audemars Piguet (AP) sells watches ranging from around $30,000 to well over $300,000. The company celebrated its 150th anniversary last year and legacy is key to its image. “Our founders refused to embrace the industrial revolution approach,” Resta said. “They refused to industrialize the production process, which means producing and touching every watch by hand.”
But Resta, the company’s first female CEO, says it’s important to not be bound by heritage. At Watches and Wonders, AP showcased the work of its “Fab Labs” — or Fabrication Laboratories — set up as a space dedicated to experimentation and research.
AP has even been embracing AI. “We service watches (even) from 150 years ago, and AI helps us to recover the design of the watch, the components of the watch. It’s a way also to have an inventory of the wealth of watches and complexity of watches,” Resta said. “In the supply chain, in restoration, in client services, AI is a fundamental tool.”
A recent Deloitte report surveyed 420 senior luxury brand executives who ranked AI and innovation in materials and production as the “most transformative forces shaping the (luxury) industry’s future.” More than 40% of luxury companies surveyed said they were implementing generative AI in selected areas and 12% were embedding it in “core functions across the most relevant areas of the organization.”
Out of this world innovation
British watchmaker Bremont is nearly 25 years old and started out making pilot watches. CEO Davide Cerrato says its youth gives it the freedom and independence to create designs that are “projected in the future.”
For its Supernova Chronograph, Bremont partnered with Astrolab, an American company that develops space rovers. When Astrolab’s FLIP rover explores the moon later this year, it will be carrying a Supernova watch, which will remain there with the rover, permanently.
“We will learn so much more about how (much) further we can push the limit of our technical watches and their durability and their resistance and their strength,” Cerrato said.
Swiss luxury brand IWC Schaffhausen is also looking to space, unveiling the Pilot’s Venturer Vertical Drive at Watches and Wonders. It’s intended to be used on Haven-1, which could be the world’s first commercial space station, and is expected to launch next year.
Simplicity
Celebrating its 30-year anniversary in Geneva, Parmigiani Fleurier, a Swiss brand worn by King Charles III, prioritizes a more discreet kind of luxury. Its Tonda PF Chronograph Mysterieux has a chronograph that is hidden until a button is pressed. It’s a simple concept but technically demanding to implement.
“We are … reinterpreting the chronograph function, which is the most important function in watchmaking, in a way that has never been done before,” said CEO Guido Terreni. “It appears when you need it and it disappears when you don’t need it.”
“Michelle Parmigiani, the founder, has always been about moving forward watchmaking,” Terreni added. “He refuses to believe that everything has already been done in watchmaking.”
Original source: edition.cnn.com