Audemars Piguet Is Lost

Audemars Piguet has a problem. For 50 years, the Swiss watchmaker has been a one-watch brand, and that watch — the Royal Oak — is finally losing its shine.The Royal Oak, designed by Gérald Genta in 1972, was a genuine breakthrough: a luxury sports watch in steel that cost more than gold dress watches. It defined a category and to this day, the Royal Oak and its derivatives account for the vast majority of AP’s sales. And as the crypto money that inflated watch prices to absurd heights has evaporated, AP has been left exposed.Secondary market prices for Audemars Piguet dropped below retail for the first time since 2022 last year. The Royal Oak Offshore now trades at a 23 percent discount. The Code 11.59 — AP’s disastrous 2019 attempt to create a new flagship — sells at 33 percent below retail, six years after launch and has generally been dismissed as a failure.Courtesy of Audemars PiguetEnter the “Neo Frame,” AP’s latest collection, and attempt to diversify beyond its one hit. This week, the brand unveiled the Neo Frame Jumping Hour, a rectangular pink gold watch with a jumping hour complication, available this June for a cheap $71,200.The jumping hour is a charming complication. Popularized by Cartier in the 1920s, it displays the hour in a window that snaps to the next digit on the hour — a mechanical form of digital timekeeping. According to the very enthuastic article in Hodinkee, AP made 347 jumping hour watches between 1924 and 1951, and the Neo Frame draws on this heritage with a case inspired by a 1929 model.It sounds promising. But the execution reveals everything wrong with AP’s current thinking.The watch is tiny — 24.6mm wide and 34mm long — in an era when even dress watches typically run 36–40mm. The movement, Caliber 7122, is derived from the Royal Oak Jumbo’s caliber, which tells you something about AP’s inability to develop anything that doesn’t trace back to its one successful design. And the price — $71,200 for a small gold watch with a simple complication — is delusional.I know this because I have seen the same complication done better, for less. Much less.Courtesy of MaenAt Watches & Wonders last year, the small Swedish brand Maen, in collaboration with Dutch watch YouTuber Nico Leonard, released the Grand Tonneau Jump Hour. It was my favorite watch unveiled at the entire show. A beautiful tonneau-shaped piece in stainless steel, with an integrated rubber strap, elegant sunray dial, and the same jumping hour complication—for $1,139.To my eye, it’s a significantly classier and more interesting take on the jumping our than the Neo Frame—and though its craftsmanship can’t compare to an AP, the Maen is certainly not 62 times worse. It’s more wearable, more stylish, and meets Maen customers where they are — whereas AP is trying to find new customers with a watch that isn’t interesting or polished enough to attract them. The Code 11.59 was marketed as “the most important launch since 1972,” only to flop hard. The Neo Frame will likely follow the same trajectory: effusive press releases, underwhelming reception, eventual markdown. AP will frame it as another “new pillar” for the brand, but it just feels like a small, expensive retread of 1920s design. But hey, at least the Royal Oak is still cool.

Audemars Piguet Is Lost

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