Tick Talk #8: From Audemars Piguet to Chronext, with Frederike Knop

Frederike Knop joined Audemars Piguet in her early twenties, built the first AP House in Munich and later led Chronext as CEO through its transformation and sale. The longest Tick Talk episode to date is about two worlds that fought each other for years – the brand and online retail – and about what the watch industry could have learned from it.

The following version is an edited transcript of the conversation. The full episode is available further below.

A career change without a passion for watches

You could hardly have been further removed from a passion for watches, she says herself. She grew up in a family of architects, studied with a view to management consulting, completed an MBA in the USA – and came across a job advertisement without a company name: sales of Swiss luxury goods in Germany.

She started at 23 as assistant to the managing director, with a dual role in setting up the CRM. What she did not know at the time: the position had been deliberately designed that way – someone who gains insight from the top but has not yet been shaped by the industry. Ten similar positions were filled worldwide at the same time, all with very young people.

Her first working day took her to the watchmaking workshop in Wiesbaden. Watchmakers aged between 45 and 60 on average, in work coats, calm, a close-knit group – and in their midst a woman in her early twenties who was called “AP Baby” for three years. Today one would see that differently; back then it was above all a door that stood open from day one.

Incidentally, there was no watch to start with. Watches were worn for events and for testing. And paid testimonials were practically unknown to the brand at the time – a few names from sport and film, but no influencer budget running into the millions.

Collectors, waiting lists and the AP Family

At the beginning of her time, sales ran exclusively through specialist retailers. Only with the first AP House in Munich and the Frankfurt boutique, run jointly with Rüschenbeck, did the shift to a mixed model begin – followed by the gradual phasing out of specialist retail.

There were waiting lists back then too, three to six months. The difference: you were allowed to express wishes, and they were noted down. You knew every retailer and every customer personally; the mobile numbers were stored in your own phone – after all, the CRM was what she had been hired to build. Salespeople from those days now attend the weddings of their first customers’ children.

She places the break in the anniversary year 2021, when customers were told which watches they were allowed to buy. Her personal assessment: the brand overreached itself. The real collectors no longer buy from the brand itself today, because they do not want to be treated like a stranger off the street.

On top of that comes a changed customer: younger, and above all no longer brand-loyal. He was AP Family, he is also Patek Family and then Breitling Family – and if the watch costs less on holiday in Hong Kong, he buys it there.

Will specialist retail make a comeback?

She considers it likely, because the trend has happened before: around 2010, some brands relied heavily on mono-brand stores – and afterwards had to crawl back to get into the jewellers’ shops again.

Against this, however, stands the decline of retail. And her own stance as a customer is clear: she does not go into a chain. Anyone spending a lot of money on a watch wants a person who takes their time. That is exactly what is missing there, because sales targets do not allow it – and because the brands themselves have created a dynamic in which the message is: here within 24 hours, or the watch is gone.

How to build an AP House

The assignment came because someone was needed who would walk into an empty room and get started. For six months she was not allowed to talk to anyone about it, because it was unclear which employees would move to Munich – so she invented a boyfriend in Munich whom she visited every week. He was a good friend, just not her boyfriend.

Construction took 14 months: a gutted office building, set slightly back from Maximilianstraße. The basic design lines came from Switzerland – lots of wood, lots of stone – but she chose practically everything herself, from the glass to the curtains. Every country interprets it differently: in London the space has a more industrial feel, in Tokyo there was for a time a wedding chapel, in Spain a pool on the roof.

At 26 she was managing a P&L of twelve million. For seven years she had carte blanche – and still travelled second class by train. She attributes this to the fact that she treated company money like her own: gold-embossed letterhead at five euros a sheet was out of the question for her.

The lounge concept

The comparison with Soho House was entirely intentional. And yes, she says, there are all kinds of customers – some just want to buy their watch, others hype it. In Munich they encountered a clientele that was already used to this private factor.

What emerged was early relationship management: PlayStation evenings with footballers, cocktail evenings, cosmetics brands as guests, customers who also used the meeting rooms. Not the big Formula 1 invitation, but eight people around one table. She is still friends with some of those customers today.

The record is held by an evening in Kitzbühel: a hike through the snow, then a tent on the mountain. More watches were sold on that one evening than in the entire month before – because men egg each other on, and at some point the phone comes out because the brother needs one as well.

Where the industry is lagging behind

Her sharpest statement of the episode: the watch industry is about five years behind. In payment methods, in logistics, in formats such as pop-ups – what has long been standard in fashion e-commerce barely arrives here.

In her view, something else has been lost too: emotion. In the past, half the team would gather in logistics when a watch arrived. The daily stream of social media and the message that it is never enough have flattened that.

The move to Chronext

The industry’s reaction to her move was unambiguous: “You will never have a career again.” Her answer: if you don’t want me, I don’t want you either.

She left at the peak – convinced that one should leave when one no longer adds value. Boutique planned, houses built, logistics centre set up, retail structure reorganised. And when someone in the industry remarked that she was now in her late twenties, the age at which one simply gets married, the decision was made.

She joined Chronext after the IPO that never took place – in the middle of a transformation. What followed was a first round of job cuts, new market segments, the consignment model, investors out, investors in. She began with logistics and the workshop, turned them into a profitable service business and then worked her way through the remaining areas.

Online retail versus specialist retail

This is where it becomes fundamental. She describes a case in which a large jewellery house made it clear to a brand what it thought of granting a concession to an online retailer – and the brand backed down. Her assessment: objectively unfounded. The customer who orders online is not the same one who goes into town on a Saturday. Often they are not even the same generation.

The real criticism is aimed at specialist retail itself. They could simply have bought one of the online retailers, she says – the shop structure built up over years alone would have been a head start. Or poached the right people: not the salespeople, but the e-commerce, marketing and IT people. With the money behind them, nobody could have stopped them. Her conclusion today: no jeweller really sells efficiently online. It starts with the banner being static.

Testimonials – and what Patek does differently

Her verdict on marketing is equally harsh. A watch that was sold through a rapper five years ago rises steeply for a short time – and then that is it. As a counter-example she cites a fashion collaboration whose jackets still cost twice as much ten years later, because it was a statement and not available everywhere.

Her greatest respect goes to Patek Philippe: a campaign that has worked for decades because all you have to do each year is put a new family in front of the camera. And the business stays quiet. She sees the fact that so little is known about it as a good sign – when things get loud, something is usually wrong. She does not know anyone who has sold a Patek because they no longer respected the brand.

KPIs and what investors want today

Perhaps the most important sentence for anyone coming from the brand world: “I had never seen an annual target in my life before I started at Chronext.” KPIs do not exist in the luxury industry, she says – you generate revenue and then even more revenue. What it costs and what margin remains was not calculated in her day. She only learned to be measurable and scalable there.

On the subject of investors, she describes a clear shift from growth to profitability. What is sought today is a lean setup with agencies and short notice periods instead of large internal teams – these are considered inflexible and dependent on individual people. Instead of a thirty-page P&L, investors want five key figures; if those do not add up, the second page is never looked at. And what is of interest is either a turnaround case or a profitable company – anything in between, hovering around zero, finds no buyer.

Her advice to companies in this situation: do not look for new investors, but find a structure with the existing shareholders. And one lever that is almost always overlooked – bringing a supplier on board. If the supplier co-invests, the issue of delivery times resolves itself.

Watch handovers and other recklessness

Finally, the stories that connect all three. During the pandemic, watches were delivered in person – handed over in the Englischer Garten, or in a backyard alley: she in a winter coat with a mask, next to her a security guard, in front of them a Bentley from which the customer steps out.

Added to this is the realisation of how reckless people were. When the company was handed over, she saw in the records how much cash had changed hands – and on asking, learned that someone had driven to a trade fair with one million euros in a private car, so that nobody would suspect there was money inside. She herself crossed the Swiss border with colleagues and goods worth millions; once, at the airport, because of a wrong cross on the customs form, she felt like a hardened criminal. Today, she says, she does not even wear a ring on a flight to London.

The final stations: managing director of the old Chronext until 1 December 2024, then the sale – and on board as CEO of the new structure until June 2025.

Watch the episode

Chapters

• 01:57 – Career change at Audemars Piguet
• 08:16 – Collectors, waiting lists and AP Family
• 11:52 – Will specialist retail make a comeback?
• 13:42 – The first AP House in Munich
• 20:55 – Lounge concept and customer loyalty
• 24:30 – Where the watch industry is lagging behind
• 26:01 – The move to Chronext
• 34:53 – Online retail versus specialist retail
• 39:01 – Testimonials, trade fairs and Patek Philippe
• 44:26 – Marketing between TikTok and agencies
• 49:06 – KPIs and what investors want today
• 53:38 – Watch handovers and anecdotes
• 59:39 – Career stations up to 2025 and outlook

Listen

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