At the launch of its new co-branded watch with Ferrari—priced at an eye-popping 1.35 million Swiss francs—Richard Mille said it had been unaffected by the Swiss watch industry’s recent battles.
“We know the market is tough for some brands, but we are lucky enough not to face that at the moment,” said Maxime Guenat, the company’s general director. “But we know we are not immune to this.”
Richard Mille, an independent brand which makes less than 6,000 very expensive watches each year, had estimated annual revenues of around 1.5 billion Swiss France ($1.7 billion) last year, according to Morgan Stanley, up 200 million on 2023.
Guenat, the 32-year-old son of Richard Mille co-founder Dominique, says limiting production had been key to sustaining demand and avoiding putting workers on the Swiss partial furlough scheme some rival watchmakers have resorted to over the past year. “After Covid, we didn’t produce much because we saw the market going crazy,” he said. “It wasn’t our plan to follow what the others were doing at that moment. We were cautious.”
But he noted some of the brand’s suppliers were in trouble as the Swiss watch industry’s production volumes continue to slide. “Some will close,” he said. “And they will lose their know-how. So we try to help as much as possible, by giving orders 18 months in advance and allowing them to deliver early if they have cash issues. We are not Rolex, producing over one million watches a year, but we try to stick close to our suppliers.”
Guenat was speaking in Paris yesterday as the independent Swiss watchmaker announced it was in advanced talks to renew its five-year partnership with Ferrari, the Italian supercar manufacturer. The news was accompanied by the launch of the RM 43-01 Tourbillon Split-Seconds Chronograph Ferrari, a $1.5 million watch whose production will be limited to 150 pieces.
The announcement comes just weeks after seven-time Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton was first seen in the red race overalls of Ferrari, wearing Richard Mille’s $590,000 RM 74-02 model. This weekend, Hamilton will race for Ferrari at the Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix.
Richard Mille has been in Formula 1 since 2004 and advertises its watches as “racing machines on the wrist”, but the Ferrari partnership’s marketing value to the company is likely to be particularly significant since Hamilton signed. The British driver, 40, has 39 million followers on Instagram, while Ferrari and Scuderia Ferrari, the Italian car maker’s Formula 1 race team, have around 40 million followers between them.
At the same time, F1 fan numbers have increased by 50 million since 2021 to 750 million, according to a report released by Nielsen Sports in December. Nielsen also calculated that last year, Formula 1 attracted a global TV audience of 1.5 billion, making it the world’s most followed sports series.
A multi-brand marketing deal between the series and luxury giant LVMH nudged out Rolex from its spot as official timekeeper, with the group’s TAG Heuer unit reclaiming the high visibility sponsorship. But Richard Mille’s Ferrari is the latest sign that competitors won’t back down from investing in the fast-growing sport just because of LVMH’s prime position.
While Richard Mille declined to put a value on its Ferrari partnership, Nielsen’s report indicated average F1 team sponsorship deals were up 56 percent on pre-pandemic figures, rising from $2.87 million per deal in 2019, to $5.08 million today, and that these accounted for 6.6 percent of “all total global sports sponsorship revenue” last year.
Ferrari reported record sales and operating profits last year — up by double-digits despite a sluggish Chinese economy that pounded luxury automakers. Its watch partnership with Richard Mille comes amid a broader push to upscale its offer in categories beyond its iconic sports cars. Since 2021, a luxury ready-to-wear and accessories collection has replaced a previous fashion line dominated by shiny red polo shirts.
The new Ferrari watch’s original launch date had been last year. But representatives said the delayed delivery date’s timing with Hamilton’s arrival at Ferrari was a coincidence.
“We had an issue with the watch and took the decision to push it back,” said the company’s commercial director Alexandre Mille, the 38-year-old son of company founder Richard. “A week later, it was announced that Lewis was joining the team. The relationship is very easy for us. Ferrari is the pinnacle of history in the racing world, in the car world, and still very relevant today. To be aligned with that is a real plus.”
Neither Hamilton nor his Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc will be contracted to wear the new watch, although Mille said that “if they want to wear the watch, they will be able to.” Richard Mille also works with McLaren and counts the winner of last week’s Australian Grand Prix Lando Norris as an ambassador.
Mille said the watch had taken two years to bring to market. There will be two versions, one with a titanium case and a second in a high-tech material called Carbon TPT that shares many of the lightweight and resistant properties of materials used in a Formula 1 car.
Guenat said around 30 pieces of the RM 43-01 had been produced so far and that the production run be would be completed sometime next year. He said the watch had not been pre-sold and no priority was due to be given to Ferrari customers. “Obviously, we already know that the customer will be interested, because from the moment we signed the partnership Ferrari customers have been asking for the next watch, even without seeing it,” said Mille.
Richard Mille is understood to be one of Switzerland’s six largest watchmakers by revenue, behind Rolex, Cartier, Omega, Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe. Its emergence as a Swiss watchmaking superpower took the industry by surprise. Founded in 2001 by industry veteran Richard Mille, who is French, it built a reputation for high-tech watches with sky-high prices on the back of high-profile sports partnerships.
In 2004, the brand’s first ambassador was the Brazilian racing driver Felipe Massa. Massa, who attended yesterday’s launch, said he had been driving for the Sauber F1 Team at the time and had not been paid by the watchmaker that first year, but that he had been given an RM006 watch, one of around 300 made by Richard Mille that year, to wear while racing.
This set the model: sports stars such as Rafael Nadal, Mark Cavendish and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce have since worn the company’s lightweight, highly resistant watches, while playing, where possible, their sport. Richard Mille has also worked with Pharrell Williams and John Malkovich.
“We’ve always worked in sport because it was an ideal test bed for our watches,” said Tim Malachard, Richard Mille’s global marketing director at yesterday’s event. “And of course, individual sports gave us visibility.”
French and Swiss Racing driver Romain Grosjean was wearing a Richard Mille watch when he was involved in a terrifying crash at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix. Both driver and watch survived the 53G impact and 28 seconds in the ensuing fireball. The watch is now in Richard Mille’s possession.
Last year, according to Morgan Stanley, the average sales price of a Richard Mille watch was 272,000 Swiss francs, more than five times the figure of either Patek Philippe or Audemars Piguet. The entry price for a Richard Mille watch is 95,000 Swiss francs before taxes.
Mille and Guenat declined to confirm Morgan Stanley’s figures, and did not declare the company’s profits, but said demand for its watches continued to outstrip supply. “We want to make the number [of watches we produce] higher because the demand is higher,” said Mille. “But for now, we are going to keep at this level. There might not be some increase for some years. [Growth] will not come from increasing prices, but from bringing novelties at a higher price point. We will never raise prices to increase our margin.”
The tonneau shape of Richard Mille’s new Ferrari watch is a brand signature, as are the sinewy aesthetics of its skeletonised mechanical movement. “We don’t listen to trends, we just listen to ourselves,” said Mille.
