GENEVA — Thierry Stern looked happy when, in an interview in early December, he said 2019 would be a history year for Patek Philippe.
“I’m not running soon after documents each 12 months, though,” Mr. Stern, the main govt, reported, declining to element the company’s turnover. “This is the natural beauty. We never have any shareholders. We really do not treatment.”
Patek Philippe has been in the fingers of the Stern household because 1932 and, regardless of recurring studies of interest from big luxury groups, is however impartial. It does not make its economical effects community, but in accordance to estimates by the Swiss personal bank Vontobel, in 2018 it had revenue of 1.45 billion Swiss francs ($1.49 billion), earning it Switzerland’s fifth-most significant watch firm.
But contrary to the 4 ahead of it, a list that is topped by Rolex and Omega, Patek Philippe’s output is tiny in comparison. Mr. Stern suggests Patek makes 62,000 watches a yr. Rolex is thought to make additional than a million.
Mr. Stern, who succeeded his father, Philippe Stern, as president in 2009, mentioned his ambition was to mature the business by no a lot more than 3 per cent every single yr. “If the economy’s not so very good, we can lower also,” he mentioned.
But there is tiny indication of retreat. In 2005, when I first interviewed Mr. Stern and his father, he said the corporation was generating 30,000 watches a yr, considerably less than fifty percent the existing figure.
And, Mr. Stern said in December, the firm used 460 individuals in 1996 when it moved to its headquarters in the Geneva suburb of Program-les-Ouates. That amount has risen to 1,600, with 600 more staff associates around the world.
To accommodate the development, the organization already has moved into portion of a sprawling almost 1.2 million-sq.-foot developing remaining completed alongside its headquarters. Mr. Stern said the corporation funded the construction charge of extra than one particular billion Swiss francs, introducing with a wry smile, “We don’t like banking institutions.”
While there have been some changes, Mr. Stern, 49, mentioned he carries on to abide by in his father’s footsteps. “It was clear for me and my Dad that we ought to continue to keep the same method,” he mentioned, though Patek has benefited from digital applications like Instagram. In the 2005 interview, he mentioned, “we are not a trend model,” an strategy he has managed.
As a substitute, he reported, he intends to be at the corporation for what he named “many years” right before presenting the keys to a single of his two sons. The elder, at 18, is researching for the hospitality business, but the more youthful, who is 16, has just started off researching watchmaking and doing work section time at the factory.
“I didn’t have two youngsters to consider around Patek,” Mr. Stern claimed. “They have to make their own decision. We will constantly come across somebody that will take care of Patek Philippe.”
Searching to the up coming decade, Mr. Stern explained that he had no strategies to increase into new territories and that he was not pushing hard in China, which his rivals have discovered as critical to conventional watchmaking’s very long-phrase success. According to the Federation of the Swiss Look at Market, Swiss look at exports to mainland China rose 32.8 percent from 2016 to 2018. Patek opened its first branded showroom in Shanghai in 2005.
“I’m not worried to stay powering,” Mr. Stern said. “We are now in 74 countries. I don’t have the potential, and I would not destroy a further sector just to shift watches to China. But also, we go phase by move. This is how we do our company. It’s labored in the entire environment.”
He said the method experienced protected Patek’s company when marketplaces have declined. In December, for instance, the federation described that exports to Hong Kong, which it lists individually from mainland China, had been down by 26.7 percent in November year more than year, eroded by the city’s continued civil unrest and relevant economic economic downturn.
“Hong Kong has not truly influenced us,” Mr. Stern explained. “We are down it’s possible 30 p.c, which is quite superior. Some brands are down 70 or 80 p.c. Which is a catastrophe. But that’s their oversight. They were being focusing also significantly on Hong Kong.”
If he has a problem, Mr. Stern reported, it is the rise of what the view sector calls “flippers,” customers who invest in large-desire watches to resell them at a premium, a practice he says he needed to curtail. But he reported he was not functioning with vendors to fix a difficulty in which rates of items these as Patek’s metal Nautilus have skyrocketed on the pre-owned industry, often to additional than double list price tag.
“Maybe in some cases the retailers are part of it,” he mentioned, but he does not lay all the blame at their doorways. “We buy again a lot of watches each and every 12 months from the secondary market place, since we want to know why a observe is for sale.”
Nevertheless, he claimed that if the organization uncovered that a retailer is providing watches to shoppers included in these kinds of resales, and the retailer did not reduce these exercise, the business would end the retailer’s Patek account. “If I have the proof, then I act,” Mr. Stern explained.
He stated soaring price ranges in the principal current market experienced adjusted Patek Philippe’s client profile. “We are getting rid of so lots of people who are experiencing watches, mainly because they can not pay for it any more,” he stated. “But we are also getting a total new youthful era who are very effective, designed a great deal of funds and who are prepared to invest in Patek. That has seriously adjusted.”
Mr. Stern continues to be bullish about his company’s fortunes.
“I don’t see why Patek Philippe need to be in threat as extensive as we are very watchful,” he mentioned. “The difficult component is to stay unbiased.”