GENEVA — Former Audemars Piguet chief executive François-Henry Bennahmias is returning to the luxury sector after a two-year hiatus with a sprawling new luxury venture called The Honourable Merchants Group.
The 61-year-old, who is widely credited with transforming Audemars Piguet into one of the top names in luxury global, said investment totalling “hundreds of millions of dollars” had gone into the new project, which will span eight verticals: lifestyle, fashion, watches, jewellery, art, sports and talent management, services and brand incubation.
The group will be built around two new brands and a series of acquisitions due to be announced over the coming months. The two newly formed brands were named by Bennahmias in Geneva today: Viiala, a high-end e-bike brand based in Switzerland and Dubai that will sell bikes for over $25,000 from 2028, and Avalon, an asset security and logistics company aimed at what the group called “very high net worth individuals.”
Bennahmias said he was in final negotiations to acquire between eight and 10 active luxury brands, including four watch companies and a fashion brand that he expected to have signed between October and next spring.
In an exclusive interview, the executive told The Business of Fashion that the group had been in development for eight years and was conceived around a vision to fix the luxury industry.
“Luxury has pushed the envelope too far,” he said. “Eternal growth doesn’t work. If you push an entity too far, then it will impact its soul, its DNA and the wellbeing of its employees.”
Bennahmias said his group’s approach had been designed to address what he said was the “disconnect” currently holding luxury back. “What really matters is not the gigantic stores where you spend fortunes to build them. People need to connect human to human. If you look at me as another number that’s going to generate revenue, you’re dead. Slow down, take care of me the right way, because I don’t believe in you any more. Nothing beats a human connection.”
Bennahmias said he had invested in the new group, but would not be drawn on the levels of his investment, nor on his other backers. “I will put my own money in different proportions in all the verticals, for one reason: I’m going to put my money where my mouth is,” he said.
“I’ve got people from my own network who are willing to support this new adventure,” he continued, adding that he wasn’t currently seeking additional funds. When asked if the actor Kevin Hart and retired NFL star Tom Brady — both Audemars Piguet collectors who became close to the brand’s former chief executive — were among his backers, Bennahmias replied: “There will be some people like this, sure.”
He was quick to quash suggestions he might be buying brands from competing luxury groups. “They’re family-owned, all of them, and small enough and with an open mind to this new vision of doing business,” he said of his target acquisitions.
Bennahmias outlined a more relaxed approach to revenue targets. “We will take the time needed to grow businesses to where they could be,” he said. “So if we buy a business today and it does 20 million and I know it can do 100 million, we’ll get there. But if we get there in three, five or 10 years, I don’t care. We will do it in a qualitative way. But if we reach a [smaller] size that is good enough for that company, and it plateaus, that’s fine.”
He also said he wanted to change how employees would be remunerated. “Everyone will get access to a share of the profits, from housekeeping to executives. And if we sell the company, and there will be value created, it will be split across the entire pool of employees.”
So far, the group has employed around 70 people, according to Bennahmias. With acquisitions, that figure is expected to grow to around 250 by the end of next month.
The Honourable Merchants Group will be based in the Swiss city of Nyon to the east of Geneva, where the luxury watchmaker Hublot is headquartered and where Bennahmias lives. “It was expressed we could go to a canton where we pay less taxes, but we said, no, it’s the Honourable Merchants, so we will pay taxes,” said Bennahmias.
In luxury watchmaking, Bennahmias is recognised as the driving force behind the explosive growth of Audemars Piguet in the 2010s. He joined the company in the 1990s and was appointed full-time chief executive in 2013. At the time, the family-owned watchmaker recorded revenues of around 600 million Swiss francs. By the time he exited the business at the end of 2023, Audemars Piguet’s annual sales of 2.35 billion Swiss francs surpassed those of its great rival Patek Philippe.
The brand’s success was attributed to Bennahmias’s aggressive moves to align high-end watchmaking with contemporary culture, and particularly street culture. While running Audemars Piguet’s North America division, Bennahmias created links with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jay-Z. Later, he partnered Audemars Piguet with Lionel Messi, LeBron James, Travis Scott and Marvel, while maintaining high-profile relationships with the art world, and with sports superstars such as Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic in tennis, and European Ryder Cup stars Lee Westwood, Viktor Hovland and Tyrell Hatton in golf.
He said he had first offered his business concept to his former employer. “It’s a very different way to do business and I offered it to the board at AP,” he said. “But I ended up not doing it with them.”
While his time at Audemars Piguet was viewed as a financial success, Bennahmias came in for criticism from some quarters for the close ties he built between the 150-year-old watchmaker and popular culture, as well as the launch of the Code 11:59 watch in 2019.
Now, as in his previous role, he was unapologetic. “I want people to look the group and say that mother****er did it again,” he said. “At the beginning we will have a lot of naysayers. And like I always say, bring them, they’ll feed us.”