Richard Mille’s Lightweight Luxury
How did a company that was unknown just twenty years ago find itself rubbing shoulders with brands whose value runs into six or seven figures?
We’ll probably look back on it as one of watchmaking’s most meteoric success stories from the turn of the millennium. Two decades ago, it took an awful lot of chutzpah to pull together an entirely unknown name, an unusual watch format, an exorbitant price, disruptive marketing, and revolutionary materials to produce an enterprise that made sense in terms of watchmaking and marketing alike.
Outlasting media hype to establish an enduring watchmaking business is a challenge for any up-and-coming brand. It’s hard enough giving a new lease of life to a historic name like Czapek, Louis Moinet, or Charles Girardier. It’s harder still to start from scratch – having to prove literally everything, including your own legitimacy, without the benefit of a distinguished surname from the past.
Not for The Faint-Hearted
Richard Mille has managed to do precisely that, bringing to bear unusual methods that took the watchmaking world by storm with a technique, design, and radical spirit that nobody saw coming. It’s worth recalling that twenty years ago when a magazine received a Richard Mille ad for publication, the advertising department would invariably call the brand to point out that the picture of the watch had the price marked next to it, a practice so unthinkable at the time that it was naturally assumed to be a mistake. Not so: it was just Richard Mille’s way, brazenly announcing that buying a piece from him would cost you at least €100,000. And that’s how he made his mark.
It was the first disruptive element in his business model, and it was more than hype. For one thing, the same business model is still working just as well today, if not better than ever; the price of the timepieces has actually increased, and by some margin: not a few are on sale in the region of half a million euros.
Lighter Means Stronger
The second fundamental disruption has to do with the weight of the watches in question. Until the early 2000s, the strength of a watch was proportional to its weight. The heavier and more imposing it was, the greater the sense of solidity and robustness it exuded. Richard Mille was committed to achieving the exact opposite: minimum weight and maximum strength. It was a real paradigm shift, overturning an almost instinctive conviction by demonstrating that a 60-gram tourbillon was not simply as strong as a 300-gram tourbillon – it was actually stronger.
The Race for Materials
The third fundamental disruption, closely tied to the first, involved innovative materials. At a time when the watchmaking industry was wholeheartedly embracing the silicon hairspring (at the cost of some extremely expensive fundamental research by Patek Philippe, Ulysse Nardin, and the Swatch Group), Richard Mille was focusing mainly on the materials used to make the case: titanium, carbon steel, TPT quartz, and graphene. All of these were previously unknown in the industry, or very seldom used at most. That opened up a huge marketing opportunity for Richard Mille, as well as the chance to set prices that defied all reason. It was a risky exercise – but it was just the ticket for collectors for whom mere reason was of little consideration in their decision to buy from this completely unknown young brand.
Ruggedized Fine Watchmaking
The fourth fundamental disruption concerned the design of the movement: specifically, the integration of sophisticated complications previously seen as highly fragile – such as the tourbillon – in sports watches devised to survive any and all impacts and more particularly, any amount of acceleration. On one memorable occasion while at his retailer twenty years ago, Richard Mille angrily threw one of his own tourbillons on the ground to prove that it could withstand absolutely anything. The retailer in question picked up the watch in disbelief – and discovered Mille was right.
A Very Close Circle of Friends
The fifth and final fundamental disruption is related to marketing. Richard Mille didn’t simply invite sportspeople to wear his watches; he involved them in the design process. It’s a well-known fact that Rafael Nadal broke countless tourbillons before the watchmaker managed to come up with a near-indestructible piece. Pablo Mac Donough is another such sportsman. What’s more, these partnerships aren’t limited to working on the technical aspects of each model: Richard Mille is also noteworthy for the longstanding personal relationships he maintains with each of his ambassadors. While he has occasionally sought out a few partners in a more opportunistic fashion, most of them really do form part of his inner circle of close friends – thus explaining why the brand is especially active in motorsports, with which Richard Mille has been involved body and soul for decades. It’s perhaps no coincidence that the firm’s new Paris base is just around the corner from the headquarters of the French Federation of Automobile Sport.
Family Epilogue
Today, the brand has become an established part of the high horology industry. Richard Mille and his lifelong friend and associate Dominique Guénat own equal shares. One is based in Paris, the other in Les Breleux; one oversees management and marketing, and the other is a wizard with complications and materials: they’re inseparable.
Their offspring appear to be equally inseparable. The two founding partners are now 70, the age at which they had announced they would start handing things over; and indeed, that’s what they’re now in the process of doing. Three of their children are now heading up operations for the brand, working together in Switzerland and France, just like their parents and under Mille’s supportive – and still watchful – eye. Richard Mille and Dominique Guénat may be leaving their management positions, but they remain on the Board for now.