Risky business: Max Büsser of MB&F on how pride comes before it all

I got my module back I think around 35 when I said I don't care. I don't care people like what I do or like who I am actually. When you wear what I'm wearing on my wrist today, nobody knows what it is. Nobody knows the price. And when they usually discover the price, they're told, "Are you an idiot? Why didn't you buy a patck instead?" A beautiful mechanical watchmaking is where engineering meets beauty and humanity. Whatever you do in your business decisions or creative decisions they're based on pride, meaning will I be proud of that in 10 or 20 years? You actually cannot really go wrong. You can go bankrupt but you will not have been wrong. Choose the people you work with incredibly wisely. But not only on their competence, on their human facts. Hello, hello, whether you're a loyal listener or tuning in for the very first time. Thank you for joining us here on the Luxury Society podcast. Brought to you by Digital Lecture Group. Great to have you with us. I'm your host, Robyn Swithinbank. And I'm your co-host David Sadi. David, so far this series, well I've made sure to throw the baton straight to you as we kick off the episode, but this week I thought I'd get the ball rolling myself. Hey, excellent. Should. Well, we could talk about Antoine Arlo being appointed to the Elving Mage Board, which is titillating stuff for succession fanciers, or indeed about carrying share price rally, following news Gucci's decline is in decline. But I want to talk about sports again. Well, I do like talking about sports, to the benefit of American listeners. I'm sure you've seen as well the Winter Olympics are in full swing at the moment. We've just had the Super Bowl. Congratulations if you're a C-Horgs fan and indeed to your owners for appointing a British coach. And it's only a few weeks before the Formula One season gets underway. And we saw Brighton going to Formula One for the first time with a team just last week. So Luxury Brands are all over sport. They're absolutely all over it. And last week a couple of deep bites pieces I'd written on the subject went live. And in writing them, I was really hit a fresh by how powerful sport has become as a vehicle for luxury brands. It's become almost like a near-garen tour of success, certainly in terms of reach, certainly in terms of rub off. It's a little harder to attribute sales directly to it. Yeah, that's what we are seeing as well in terms of data. We can see that there are like a couple of sports that are like attracting not only a much bigger and wider audience, but also a younger audience, which makes it very appealing. But something a bit more surprising, I would say interesting, is the fact that beyond just the sport itself, I think you have two trends that are like coming together. One is the one we just described about the boom of interest and enthusiasm for sport. But the second one is also like the experiential luxury. And you can see that you have more and more folks, and obviously like wealthy, affluence and so on, spending a lot of money on experiences. Yeah. And experiences could be around like art, basil could be around like NBA games, UFC, golf, soccer, and so on. And I can see that the price of tickets are going up that more and more clients of DLG are also like thinking at building new packages, increasing the level of experiences and so on. So think about all the watches and wonders, think about all the different watch fair, but also art fair. I think everyone is trying beyond sport on the jump wagon of experiential luxury. How can I create memorable events and things that money can buy? Yes, and sport creates the emotion. So many of the CEOs I've spoken to about it have said that to me the emotion. It's the currency they want to deal in. I've been trying to figure out as well what kind of returns these brands are getting. They're thinking millions if not billions into sport sponsorship. I'm trying to work out what returns they're seeing. I spoke with Amiga CEO, Renald Eshtiman, for example. He told me that during the Olympics visits to the brand's website, double, which is a nice little number. But he wasn't ready to be drawn on what corresponding impact that had on sales. May also spoke to Taghoyas CMO and he told me the brands F1 deal had made it. The most engaged with brand on social media last year. He also said football was up 15% in their boutiques. He said that sales of the Formula One collection were up 20% over the same period. So decent figures that appear to indicate meaningful ROI for brands in sport. But one thing that really stayed with me was a comment from a sports marketing guru, a guy called Merrick Hayden. Hey, Merrick, if you're listening, Merrick is a founder of an agency called 3318. He said this. He said, "Opting out of sport increasingly means opting out of future audiences." It delivers scale, emotion, and cultural relevance that traditional luxury marketing increasingly can struggle to achieve on its own. For most brands sport is now a growth accelerator, not a nice to have wise words. Which I guess makes UBLO's decision to walk away from the World Cup quite significant, right? Yeah, well, I think so. Yes, I still can't quite get my head around the brand's decision to walk away from the World Cup this summer. It's been sponsoring it since 2010. And as we know, it's leveraged football very effectively since to the point where it now, well, it now owns football, certainly in luxury watch brand terms, in the same way that Rolex owns Golf or tennis. Now, clearly, the value of the deal must have got out of hand. And the company CEO Julien Torna, who of course we had on the pod, at the beginning of this season, he told me prices were crazy in another conversation that I had with him. But even so, it's still the biggest sporting event of the year. There were 48 countries taking part. That's too many by far, but that's another day. And the whole shebang is of course taking place in North America, which has become the watch industry's most important territory. And it's very heavily reliant on the US in particular, its largest market now. Yeah, to some extent, and without comparing Apple to Ranges, this remind me also of the Formula One deal with Rolex. And we would have thought a couple of years back that at some point Rolex won't be the official sponsor of Formula One anymore. And I think the reason you mentioned about prices is probably one of the, one of the reason there. And I'm pretty sure beyond the briking decision of joining Formula One, we are going to see more brands, luxury brands, entering sports categories in the months to come. By the way, would you think we'll take the new gig? Yeah, that's a big question. And you mentioned Brightling. I spoke to George Kern relatively recently, and Miguel C. O. Reynolds-Eschlimen as well. They both told me that it wouldn't be them. I can't see who else in the top 10 in Switzerland's watch brands would be a good fit really. And I say top 10 because assuming it costs at least $50 million for the time keeping license alone, that's the analyst view incidentally not mine. And then you got to double that by the time you've added in activation. I've started to wonder who else could actually afford it. If it's going to be a luxury watch company, I guess, you could pick out ReShard Meal, which is in football already and I could afford it. But honestly, I'm not sure whether I see it. And I guess it means we'd be left with the Rolex back chewed, or perhaps sliding in on a nods even basis. It works with David Beckham, who works with into Miami. So there's a connection there, meaning it's not impossible. But again, it's just hard to see it. I think largely because Hubelow owns football. Hubelow's football is a strapline always was. And if any of its competitors are to take the center stage, and they will in some way be compared to it, and they're going to have to do a lot of work to try and steal that territory back. So it's a complicated one. And maybe that's the gamble Hubelow taking, expecting, perhaps to take companies coming and take the reins in the meantime. Because for now, it's some serious unintended real estate. It seems you have been like speaking to a lot of CEOs lately. Did you speak to Mr. Ripper about GLC? That's the conversation that we want to have. I have got a date in the diary with Mr. Lombard of the CEO of GLC. But I haven't had the chance to speak to him. Yeah, I look forward to it. Well, right away, you can say you've got a nice French accent. Nice Swiss accent, I should say apologies. What do you make of that story? Do you think that Jerome Lombard is going to buy out? Do you think Gohan Ripper is going to let me share that look? Go. First of all, I don't have any insider information about that. But I wouldn't see the value of getting read from a rich more perspective of a brand that is as valuable as Gégelle Coulter. My understanding is that this is a brand that has much more value as part of a portfolio of brands. So if this happened one day, it means that it's probably not the last brands that is doing for sale. Personally, I think people are like taking the case of Bo Mémercie as some kind of indication or early market signal that this is a restructuring of the portfolio. But I mean, let's face it, Bo Mémercie is not a brand that was shooting rich more portfolio. Andrew Laval brand, this is a brand that would have been much better fitting with the portfolio of other luxury groups, entry-level luxury groups and so on. So personally, I'm not at this stage buying a spin-off of the beautiful Gégelle Coulter brand. Even though I'm pretty sure there will be lots of investors. Extremely interested that the idea of trying to do a bright clean case with a brand such as Gégelle. I'm I agree. I mostly said it's a precedent, but I can't. And while I can see Lombard wanting it, I can't see Johan Rupert wanting to let it go. There is the Kern Lombard dynamic. They of course were, well, let's say colleagues, but essentially they were rivals that reached more once upon a time and it would be, it wouldn't be a huge surprise to know that Cymes Yolombeur was interested in going alone so that he can prove his worth and his ability to build brands and in in Kern's case now to build what he's calling a house of brands. Anyway, I tussled to come there perhaps, but David, we must, we must crack on with the show. This week we're interviewing Max Bouser, founder of MBNF and one of the leading lights of 21st century independent watchmaking. I'm a big fan of Max's, but you booked him. So what draws you to Max? Our listeners are going to enjoy listening to him for a couple of different reasons. Not only is an extremely good communicator, but he's probably like one of the person was the one of the most interesting view of the luxury watch market. I think he's a jack of all trades, engineer as a background, super good on business. I think innovative risk taker, but also extremely consistent in the way he has been building his business over the last two decades. So interesting character, lots of valuable experience. And hopefully everyone is going to enjoy the discussion we had with him. Yeah, I'm sure they will. Well, I will be talking to him just a second, but then stick around for our latest visit, Shanghai. Well, we'll find DLG's very own Max Perot, two Max's for the price of one in this episode. Max P will be giving us a rundown on the Chinese luxury market, which he believes is going to return to growth this year. He'll explain why a bit later, but for now, Here's our conversation with Max Boosa. So, time to introduce our next guest, David and I are thrilled to be joined on the luxury society podcast by one of the load stars of the Swiss independent watchmaking scene. The founder, owner and creative director of MBNF, Mr Max Bousserv, Max, hello, how are you, sir? Very well, great to have you guys, Robyn and David with me. No, it's great to have you here. Look, if you're all indulged as Max before we fall headlong into our conversation, I suspect many of our listeners will know you already, but for those that don't, we thought it would be good to just do a quick bit of your backstory. Hello, Max began his career in watchmaking in sales and marketing, working for Yisza Jelle Kult, never easy for an Englishman to say, back in the early 1990s, which was of course a very different time for the mechanical watch industry. Before the decade was out, an age just 31, he would be appointed as managing director of Harry Winston's Rare Timepieces Division, where he would stay for almost seven years, increasing revenues 10 fold and introducing the much-fortoted and much-missed Opus series of high-end concept watches. The defining moment in his professional life would come in 2005, when sensing a burgeoning interest in independent, creatively-led watchmaking and recognising his own talent for experimental disruptive watch design and also for business, he would set up MbNF, Max Boussert and Friends. What followed would shape the next two decades of watch design, watchmaking and watch culture? MbNF's radical high-concept, hological machines, as he called them, reframed what a watch could be, breaking through the fog of decades of Swiss watch design conventionalism with pieces that weren't so much time-keeping devices as sculptured three-dimensional kinetic art for the wrist. To then, watchmaking had been a largely corporate affair with a narrow set of rules that for a new generation of iconoclasts like Max were suffocating, if not boring. He was followed inspired by a smorgasbord of natural and man-made phenomena. There were jet engines and 1970s supercars, frogs and space pirates, each watch a unique synthesis of architectural k-shapes and novel, brilliantly unorthodox mechanical movements created in collaboration with equally talented watchmaking friends such as Peter-Speak, Stephen McDonald, Carrie Voodle-Line and Jean-François Mojon. Over 20 years, Max has become one of the most prolific and celebrated of independent watchmakers winning countless awards, including the pre-guyer, often described as the Nobel Prize of watchmaking, and the GPHG's career-defining Aigweed Door. Throughout underlying the company's playful spirit, the line that, "A Creative Adult is a Child Who Survived." Max is a Swiss national but has made his family home in Dubai from where he joins us for this recording. Max is a filthy february here in the UK, so let's not compare notes on the weather. Instead, I wanted to start with that line. A Creative Adult is a child who survived. I had to look up its origins and discover that. Well, there's somewhat disputed, aren't they? The internet attributes it to the American novelist Ursula K. Luguin. She once said she was only ever quoting someone else, a gentleman by the name of Professor Julian F. Fluron. Can you unravel the mystery? Where does it come from? We actually don't know. So it's a phrase which has always been very important for me, because I used to be a very creative kid and a very weird kid who actually didn't have many friends, therefore, then in my young adult age, tried to conform and became pretty boring. And I got my module back, I think, around 35, when I said, "I don't care. I don't care if people like what I do or like who I am, actually." And so it was all about MBLF, it was about recapturing that child to a disparate. And so when we decided that was going to be our baseline, we contacted the agent for Ursula Luguin. She said, "Well, Professor let's say it's attributed to her, but she doesn't think it's her." And so we've used that phrase which is very important. And it resonates with a lot of people. There's something which is really interesting is that all of us as kids were super creative. All humanity is super creative. And then, for whatever reasons, 90% of creative kids become adults who believe they're not creative. And so I think it's so Ken Robinson, who does this fantastic TED Talk about how schools kill creativity. And he says, "All kids are creative because they're not scared of being wrong." And I think that's very much what defines us at MBLF, we're not scared of being wrong. David, were you a creative kid? Maybe not to the same extent as Max was, but yeah, indeed, I'm probably trying to think that quite excited about becoming an adult since a young age. Max, I'm really excited to have you on the luxury society podcast. You and I have known each other for quite a number of years. We had many very stimulating discussions on entrepreneurship and a bunch of different stuff. And at least this one can be recorded, so I'm very happy about it. The first question I wanted to ask is, you left the managing director, Hollard Ariwin's done, as Robyn mentioned, a big, safe job to start something. In fact, nobody had really seen before. What was the moment you decided I'm actually doing this? And was there a point early on where you thought you would got it completely wrong? So MBLF is not a business decision. It was a really dramatically bad business decision, like all of us independents at the early 2000s. It was never supposed to be easier. It was going to be horribly difficult and the best case scenario we were not going to go bankrupt. So what happened is that I met during Harry Winston years, Josepel Jouon, Felix and Martin from Oriver, Vianne Alter, which we collaborated on the offices. And I met people who knew it was incredibly difficult for them, but they didn't care, because that was not the point. The point was not about the business and was not about the financial returns. He was about being yourself, being a creator, being able to express yourself, and that came with a price. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel was the price. And I thought these guys were my heroes. I was like, wow, that is incredible. But I had a chip on my shoulder, I'm an engineer, but I'm not a watchmaker. And so I thought I cannot create my brand. But I thought I would love to create my brand. And in September 2003, a fall, 2004, that's very important. I'm in a plane flying back from Singapore, and I'm scribbling some, as I've always created I created a jeiger, I created a Harry Winston, the pieces. I'm creating something which could be an opus, it's a watch which looks like an eight. And once I was going to be booster and the other one is going to be friends, and I've got best of luck page, booster and friends. And I'm like, yes, that is it. And the idea was that the brand was only going to be watching, looking like an eight, luckily I changed my mind afterwards. And every time the second side would be, I would basically stage well, would invite somebody to create something with me. I resigned in May 2005. That first sketch, September 2004, what exactly happened? I had no intention whatsoever of launching my brand eight months later. And I'd found exactly what I wanted, and I thought it was going to take a year, two years, three years. I don't have enough money. Of course, I'm procrastinating. Of course, leaving that conference not going to happen. And in April 2005, my new management was very happy with me, gives me my new contract for Harry Winston. And in that contract, 25 pages, dot com, 10, 12 months, severance, the whole of dues, beautiful contract. The last page, non-complete, non-solid station of suppliers, and an impossibility to hire anybody from the team. And here I am looking at this paper, going, oh no, I finally found how I'm going to make my dream come true. And if I sign this contract, I'm dead. I'm dead because in Switzerland, we can't really do it, but it's going to be a lot of litigation. And so I take a week's holiday and basically play my Excel spreadsheets, my PLL and my cash flow analysis. It's funny because I've still got it. And you've got product number one, number two, number three, number four, number five. So the one was going to be that eight. The next, I have no idea what it's going to be. And I've put in numbers and prices. And I've no idea. And whatever happens at the end of those seven days is I'm clearly missing at least half the money if I'm going to just use my own savings. And two weeks later, I'm in New York for a board meeting and I resign. 20 years later. I think of myself. I was completely off my rocker. I've never taken drugs. So that can't explain it. It's, I think you just fall in love with an idea. And once you fall in love, you're not very rational. I hope everybody's falling in love once in their life. And you do a lot of stupid things, which when you look in hindsight, you're like, what was wrong with you? And I'm lucky I did that. But there I went. I just went all in. I didn't have enough money. I didn't have a business plan. I had the sketch of my HM1. But I didn't even have the final design. And I go in. That's going to set the tone for the brand and the company for the next 20 years. Flung by the city of your pants as we say in English sometimes. Yeah. Exactly. You're not much more reasonable after that. You are probably conscious of the fact that just these two last two minutes are probably going to entice many young entrepreneurs to follow their dream. Now, I just hope that those who follow their dream and I really would love that because that's the why of NBNF today. And so many years later, the why is to inspire people to be more creative, to take more risk, and to find that true North. Because so many people are basically conditioned by the social environment, by their family. They end up their lives not doing what they really would like to do. So if we could actually help them get that extra little step of courage, we have a purpose as a brand, which is not about creating watches. Watches is our medium. If the purpose is helping people find their true North, I just hope all of them succeed and of course not everybody will, but at least, and that's very important as an entrepreneur. Even if you don't succeed, you will have tried. Which is really better than not trying and ending your life looking yourself going. Maybe we can do it. Personal experience with that. When I used to run my own business and back in the middle of the last decade of the mid-2010s, and I remember signing up for a bank account and it asked for a memorable phrase so that you could prove to the machine that it was you that was trying to log into the account. And my memorable phrase was, "You never know unless you try." And I thought, "If that can be the banking password, then that sort of sets me up for. " "Well, it sets me up for successful failure. I suppose one way or the other." Of course in the last 20 years, dozens of independent watchmakers have become their own brands. It's still happening now. We're still seeing new names coming through. But I wonder, thinking of MBNF as a brand, if we can, I appreciate you talking about your purpose, but you are also a brand. Have you as a consequence of your success become part of the watchmaking establishment? Or do you still think that you're a challenger brand, a disruptor in the space? That's an interesting question. I don't think I have ever thought of myself in the scope of the industry. So we don't do things at MBNF in contradiction or as contrarians, if everybody goes left, we will not go right. That's not the way we think. We always try and find our true North. And it's true that if you look at our business model and what we've done in 20 years, it often doesn't make any sense. I think we're the blueprint of an MBA case study of what not to do. But we did it because we thought it felt right. Some of things flopped, but we're still proud of it because we thought they were right. So coming back to how we perceive ourselves compared to the rest of the industry, we're happy if we can inspire people to take those risks. I think our adrenaline is about getting out of our comfort zone. It's about taking risks because if we feel that we're iterating, we feel dead. We are not, pride is our number one. For me, I created the brand so that I would be proud the last day of my life. So if I am do something and I feel not very proud of this MI, then we don't do it. And what makes us proud? Taking risks. So that's how we define ourselves. Max, 20 years ago, buying a MBNF was an extremely strong statement, almost a provocation. Today you have collectors queuing up as the profile of your client changed. And do you ever worry that success makes it harder to stay provocative? God, you've got really good questions. So yes, as I created MBNF, I had no idea who was going to buy one of these crazy pieces. And I discovered as we went by traveling like a madman, by being in contact with a lot of people. And suddenly from time to time, somebody would go, "Oh, that's so cool." And had the means and was ready to spend the money and it became a community. For sure, the first MBNF owners were absolute outliers. You don't need to be such an outlier today. But you still are. And it's interesting because people who are coming into the community today are still in a world where high-end, be it watchmaking or anything else, is unfortunately very much linked to flexing. MBNF owners are not in there. Anywhere when I'm wearing on my wrist today, nobody knows what it is, nobody knows the price. Why didn't you buy a patck instead?" And so you have to imagine what sort of individual that is and our community, what we call the tribe, is very interesting individuals. Clearly not as much crazy as the first ones, but you still need a big dose of courage and you need to be self-asserted. Now, we are not trying to be provocative. Coming back to a previous question, we are just trying to be proud. And our mechanism of pride is trying something which has never been done before, taking risks. When we come up with the SP1, special project one in 2025 last year, nobody, I drew that watch in 2018, when 44 millimeter watches wear the norm and creating a 38 millimeter classic watch. Nobody wanted that, nobody expected that, definitely not from MBNF. You want to go head on with the greatest names of this industry, definitely not. But at some point you're like, "You know what? Let's take a risk. Let's do classic as seen by us, which is not really classic. And we do it." And we're terrified. And just before the launch we're like, "Oh my God." Even now, because taking risks for you after 20 years, when you are established and I assume there's a bit more money in the bank, it must be easier to take those risks, mustn't it? So you're hitting on something which is even more interesting. The risks at the beginning of MBNF for the first 15 years, de facto, was trying to find the client. It's already. it's three to five years, engineering, incredible work and it looks. we tend to forget that. People just look at the end product. We're in the world of Instagram and you just swipe and something new happens every two seconds. There's insane work to it. But that was one thing. Then it was finding somebody. Now, it's still as much insane work, but the risk is managing expectations. 20 years down the road, 23 caliber, greater. We have the feeling that the day of a launch, whatever it is, we have a community of two, three, four hundred thousand people going, "You better, wow, that's. " And so suddenly those managing expectations are scary and that's actually helped us, because that pushes us to even take more risks. Because if we go look-along, we'll get destroyed by our community. So it keeps us on our toes. One of the things you said to stand is that nobody knows what a watch is when you're wearing it, which I find slightly surprising. I'm back, it's not a Rolex, it's not a Pat Eck, I can see that, it's not an AP. But at the same time, I wonder if that's because of a very deliberate decision that you've made and you've made it repeatedly as I understand it, having spoken to you over the years, and that is very much to cap your volumes. I think I have them. I mean, you're doing three, ninety, four hundred pieces a year, something under the main arm of the business, is that right? So pre-COVID, we were at around two ninety, two hundred ninety pieces, it was about like twenty four, twenty five watches a month. And when suddenly, twenty, twenty-one, we had hundreds and thousands of people coming to us, go, "How do I get one?" And we all thought it was candid camera. We took a very bold decision, that of not growing. So yes, we have grown a little bit. We've gone from about two hundred ninety, three hundred watches to four hundred. And that's, and we've kept it that way, but the company has grown. It's also grown because we had more meat, because we were a start-up for fifteen years, where I'm very grateful for all the people from the first fifteen years were there to work those sixty hour weeks and do everything right left and center like myself, but it was not sustainable. So now we finally can come to something a little bit more normal. Yeah. And you've also added in the mad additions, which of course is a very different sort of product, a very different price point, a few thousand dollars, rather than tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. You've also said that, yeah, I think you're around five thousand watches a year, something like that under the mad additions. Yeah, today. And the plan, as I understand it, is to retain those levels, to say pretty constant at four hundred and five thousand. Is that still the plan? And if so, why not continue to grow? Why not continue to increase the volumes? Because my ideal size of the company is fifteen to twenty team members, and we're seventy two. And as a company owner, and I'm sure David knows that also, there is a moment where it's very difficult. And that's what keeps up at night is to keep that startup attitude. It was interesting. We had our annual meeting a couple of weeks ago where we take the whole team and explain to the everything we're doing over the year to come and the years to come. And it was called back to the roots. And it's like, guys, I don't want to go back to the years where it was so horribly difficult. We have to go back to the time where everybody was helping each other, where everybody was anticipating issues. When you were a gazelle in the middle of the savannah, and you see the grass moving, you're not thinking it's the wind. It could be a cheetah, a leopard, a lion. That's how we were. We were all the time anticipating any issues, because the only thing we were sure, he was going to be one of those predators. When you start getting a big fat gazelle, that's when you're dead. So, we need to go back to that. We need many more initiatives, much more anticipation. And I've got a fantastic team. Everybody loves working in the company. Everybody loves working with their colleagues. But we need to go back to that little bit sense of urgency. And already at 72, it's difficult. I can't even believe what's going to happen if we went higher. And I don't want to go down there. It's interesting that you mentioned this point about the culture, because indeed it seems that it's a challenge that many entrepreneurs are facing. What I've seen, or noticed following a bit, the trajectory of MBNF, is that innovation do not come only on the product side, but also even in terms of like new product, business model and so on. The case, I would like to speak a bit about the Mad Edition. It's an interesting venture that you started out of MDNF because basically for the first time, you took the business in a direct to consumer, with the direct to consumer approach for the first time, selling as Robin mentioned, thousands of pieces directly, no retailer in between. That's a completely different business, right? Then doing like 300 or 400 high and watchers who partners. What did you learn through the process and basically what surprised you about building this new way of selling directly to consumers? Mad Edition has been the most insane learning curve. Most importantly, because it's a brand I didn't want to have. I didn't want to develop it. I didn't want it to be a brand. I basically created a brand around that first product, which was not called Mad Edition in 2014 to 2018. In 2018, before it was launched, I killed it. For many reasons. I had my second daughter, I'd just been born the year before I hadn't slept like in five years between jet lag and kids waking me up in the middle of the night. I just turned 50 the year before. I just lost my mom, become a 51 year old orphan. I just didn't have enough time for my company, didn't have time for my family and looking at myself in the mirror going, "What the hell do you think you're doing?" So I killed it. And in 2020, 17th of March, when we all went to do lockdown, and everything was closed. Our suppliers, our retailers, us, I thought, "That's it. This game over. Nobody's ever going to buy a $100,000 watch ever." And I'm on the very first zooms with my team. I'm like, "Guys, I've left all the little profits of the company in the company. I could probably pay the salaries for next 12, 14 months. If somebody's got an idea, speak now." And somebody goes, "Well, we developed that watch. Remember that?" And I'm like, "Dude, we're not going to launch a new brand now." And we have the idea during that brainstorming, and that's the beauty of having a team, is the all sorts of ideas. And you have to help the team generate those ideas that they feel comfortable in it. And I'm like, "Well, maybe we can call it an addition. An addition you just do 500 watches, get a bit of cash, and that's it. And that's what it was supposed to be. So we do 500 actually 450 pieces. By this March 2020, by September, we realize we're not in jeopardy. The company is incredibly well. And then we're like, "We have to kill this project, because mad addition is going to home MBNF. And I don't anyway don't have the bandwidth." And everything's launched. So we decide to only allocate it to all the artisans who work on the brand and the tried members, the MBNF owners. We don't talk about it, send emails to 450 people. Of course, we're incredibly naive. Three days later, one of our clients puts it on Instagram and then all hell breaks loose. This is another case study of a brand which basically, I say jokingly, it's that dog you want to get rid of. You bring in, in your car to the forest, very far from your home, and two days later, he's in front of your doorstep wagging his tail going, "I'm back." And then you free it to another forest wave, and don't get me right, I love dogs, I would never do that to dogs. But he keeps on coming back. So from that day onwards, from that moment, because there was all this, we were getting eviscerated on social media because we were not selling this product. So we decided to do a thousand pieces for the public. And then we did a raffle and there were 18,000 people who signed up. Oh, no. Since the proverbial rodf you're in back. And it just went on and on. So now, 5,000 pieces, 5,000, that is gigantic. But at every raffle, we have between seven and ten people who sign up with that credit card blocked for every piece we're going to allocate. But that's it. It's 5,000 pieces. And so it's a brand, it's interesting because it's a brand which only exists two times seven days a year. Seven days in March April and seven days in August, September when we do the raffle, every time do a new product, a variation or a new product. And it's just taken on a life of its own. And now I live with that. Has it become the sort of business baseline in a way? It's, I'll say one thing, it gives us a third foot to stand on. And then we were pre-COVID, only MBNF, 98% wholesale. So we'll go through our retail partners. Now it's the brand is three tiers. It's one tier is MBNF wholesale, that's 300 pieces. One tier is MBNF retail, it's 100 pieces. And one tier is the 5,000 mathematicians. And more or less do the same revenue, all three of them. It's allowed us to have basically in the succession plan in making sure that whatever happens in the world, and I think we all realized the world is going to some very weird place. We've covered that a bit in this podcast. And so for whatever is happening, we hope that we will therefore have three legs to stand on and we can play around to sustain our company. I have a full up question on independence. It seems that a lot of MBNF, let's say DNA, creativity, innovation, et cetera, is tied to this idea of being free-spirited and independent. In fact, it's literally in the name of MBNF, you and your friends. So selling a quarter of your company to Chanel feels like a plot twist. What did Chanel offer you that staying fully independent couldn't? So it's very interesting because you never think of your succession when you're on survival mode, which is 2005 to 2020 every year wondering how you're not going to make any losses this year and how you're going to get to next year and how you're going to pay for all those incredible R&D you're putting in the pipeline. And then suddenly it gets a little bit easier because there are more people who want the pieces and that we could start thinking 2021 about it. I think more importantly, I unfortunately started losing friends. Heart attack, pancreatic cancer. I'm 59 now. This was probably about 55 or something like that. That sort of brings you through your mortality. And so there was this whole plan of how can I make sure that this company survives me if something happens? And I had my children late in life. Today, only eight and 12. And I needed to make sure that if they don't take over and honestly, there's a 10% chance they will because they need to want to. They need to have the great, you guys know the difference between an entrepreneur and a day job. We're on seven days a week, 365 days a year. It's great. And then of course, the talent. We've all seen the issues which can happen when the next generation doesn't have those three elements in it. And I'm not that sort of dad who's like, you're going to have to take over the company. So I was wondering what was going to happen if they don't take over or what was going to happen if something happens to me before they can take over. And my wife is not integrated in the company. And there was a very big risk that my family inherits the company. Or at least the 80% that I owned sales had 20% of my technical director's been my partner now for 17 years. And we very much align socialize like what happens if something happens to me. And we started thinking what was a preempting move which could make sure that my family couldn't sell to a private equity or a publicly owned group. And I'm not, it's not about they're not good or good. It's they would clash totally with the values of who we are. And they needed to be a family owned business which has a very long term thinking and enjoys furthering crossmanship and innovation. And we really met on Chanel. And so it was a coffee with the owners in Watches and Wonders 2022 where they casually said how can I help you? And I said well, you're probably not going to expect this. But I have a succession issue. And 20 minutes later, basically we shook hands and more or less two years later the deal was announced. They don't mingle. They don't ask for anything. And when we do from time to time ask for some help, they're always there. It's a match in heaven. It's like, of course, we had asked our friends from Romangote and FP Jean who have got Chanel as minority shareholders. How was going on? Both of them are like, dude, this is incredible. So clearly we knew that there was some experience behind it and it made sense. So here we're talking succession plan. We've not yet seen a watch with MbNF and Chanel in collaboration. Of course you've done two watches with Bulgari. Should we expect at some point in the future to see a collaboration between you and Chanel or is that is that never going to happen? Chanel normally never does any collab. But I know of, they never put their brand next to another brand. So it's on them rather than on you guys. You do it tomorrow. You do it tomorrow. You're going to be like, dude, would you want to do something? Of course with great pleasure. But I mean, I can win for sure since. Let's come back to the influence of independent watchmaking over the luxury watch industry. We've noticed on this podcast many, many times that watchmaking is in the middle of this long season of transition away from volume and towards value. The matter of addition is slightly distorts your position because they are not a value position, but they are by comparison to your other piece of certainty and produced in higher volume. But putting those to one side, given your watch is retail primarily for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, what influence would you say, MBNF, and by extension your fellow high-end independence have had over the industry's current direction of travel? I don't think it's a question of price. I think it's a question of mindset. Now, the biggest enemies of creativity are, well, some of the biggest because I can give you a long list, but are CFOs and CMOs. So your chief financial officer, his job is to maximize ROI. And your chief marketing officer is to maximize the most amount of people who want to buy your product. In both cases, none of them are going to further any risk. They're going to be the most risk adverse animals. And when you're an independent creator, you don't have a CFO and you don't have a CMO and you're basically being an independent because you want to express something. And if you're true independent, because there's some independent business people are really going to do that. And then you're lucky if somebody wants what you do. So that pure creativity comes not only from us, but a lot of my small colleagues, well, small, who just are there because that's their path in life. And it's interesting how I find that so many new and novel ideas and even then micro brands, now we can talk of the high end, we can talk in micro brands. There's some really interesting things happening there. Of course, a lot of our micro brands are just mimicking high end brands for Made in Asia and cheap as business. But you have a few, we've got really cool ideas. And you've got some which are in the middle that take somebody like Ming. Ming started at a price point, which is around three, four thousand francs. And now there's also thirty, forty thousand. I think Ming has gotten an incredible creativity. He's got an attitude, a creative attitude. And he's one of the many which are helping this industry evolve. You're talking about it being part of a mindset. I mean, is it the mindset of the consumer as well? Is it part of the problem for the watch industry that actually the consumer isn't interested to buy the low priced mechanical watch, should we say, because at that price point there are lots of other priorities that they might have, which mean that they spend their money in other ways. Perhaps it's not even on the industry, it's on the consumer. Not sure about that. Look at the end of the day. And I made a bit of a throw a few months ago, because I went online on a television thing, which was seen by 15 million people saying, let's be clear what we make is pointless. I made a lot of friends in the industry saying that. But it is. A lot of your peers have said that. A lot of CEOs have said that. I think that's a fairly, it's a well rehearsed line almost these days. We know that mechanical watches and an anachronism and that there isn't any real point to it. That's what I would be doing. Why would we be doing it? Because for me, beautiful mechanical watchmaking is where engineering meets beauty and humanity. We tend to take that whole humanity out over the last 20 years because of the companies becoming so big and the humanity is not the face of the CEO. It's actually the people who are actually creating the products. And so it's if we can manage to get those three whatever the price point and we can generate the somebody goes, wow, my heart is beating faster. Because at the end of the day, apart from a few people, there is not much fun in buying a British watch or anything which is practical. We don't get a lot of dopamine out of that. But buying something which is pointless but it generates that and the words of passion, emotion, whatever it been used by everybody, it's great. If it could be not to flex, it would be even better. Again, the world is what it is and most people want to flex and find their brands which cater to that and do it very well. But I'm seeing more and more independence and creators who are coming up with ideas which are not about that and they're speaking to the other minority. I like the idea of humanity. We keep coming back to that in this series that the real, the tangible and the human are essential, particularly if you're creating a product which is very high value. It's that humanity which makes the product desirable almost more than anything else, more than the design, more than the mechanics. It's the essence of the products which are really strikes at the heart of who we are and then the heart of what we want and therefore perhaps also the heart of the future that's in the industry. It won't surprise you Max that I want to talk a bit about AI. You are an engineer. As a background, I know you follow and you pay attention to the technological evolution which is unprecedented in my view. We've covered efficiency plenty on this show but I'm really curious to hear your thoughts about the impact AI might have on the watchmaking/looks-through industry. I don't really have an opinion. Come on, you must have an opinion on that. It's a work in progress. Creativity wise, clearly, if you're very good at creating a prompt, you can create some interesting stuff, then try and make it come to life. AI unfortunately get a lot of young designers sending me their portfolio in a week. Don't accept that because they'll have massive amount of IP issues if you do that but sometimes in the email they'll put an image and it's clearly AI generated and you're like, "OK, so AI uses what already exists out there and basically it's a Rubik's cube of what already exists." Secondly, I look at some of these things and how are you going to manufacture that? Ah, that we didn't think of. OK, but that is also, in our case, 20 years of MBNF, 23-calibre's incredible risks and new ideas we had to make come to life. We've learned what we could do but we've also more reportedly learned what we couldn't do and that's what really makes it interesting in watchmaking is that it's not about just having an idea. There is so much engineering, hard work, difficulty, just making a watchwater resistance. That seems very trivial. When you make a horological machine, how do you make that water resistance? So I see all these crazy cool ideas coming people posting on Instagram. They're AI generating products and I'm looking at it. And how is that going to work? Reality bites. No, at the end of the day, anything which helps us have new ideas. Great. I would prefer that they're human ideas. OK, for the rest, of course, it's going to take some workload of a certain amount of people in the company. I don't exactly know how, because if all the press kits start being exactly the same as they already are, but if they're even more the same because now it's AI which has written the press kit, you're the journalist. Robyn, you're the journalist and you get all these press kits and you want to yore after the second phrase, is that with AI going to make it more interesting? I don't know. I don't argue not, but then I'm extremely biased as a man of words. I make my living by writing in the main. So the prospect of machines taking over is not one that I have an appetite for at any level, but certainly at a fundamental human level, I agree. Every time I see a copy that I can clearly see is generated by AI, it's a turn off. And I think that's more than just my own bias. I think that is a human reaction. And we react to what is human, what is real, what is tangible and long-made continue. I don't think it will ever change, and I think we're denying ourselves if we remove that agency to interact with something out that deep innate, inherent level, which is what makes us human ultimately. So all power to your creative elbow, certainly. No, I was like interested on the follow-up of the AI part because it seems to me that we are looking at the overall AI shift as impact on design or press releases and so on. I'm at the impression that we are talking about something a bit deeper and that many of the cases you mentioned like water resistance and other type of elements, those AI are going to become smarter. And if they are able to decipher the human genome, there is no reason whatsoever that they won't be able also to make significant progress in the future. So I was just like thinking about the more future and the impact it could have, do you really think that companies would have to remain like companies with so many employees, so many people do you think that there is a future of like co-creation between human and machine? Well, we're going to have to adapt, to like everything from host carriages to cars, from cars to et cetera. And from concerts to, remember when vinyls came out, a hundred and nine or fifty years ago, they thought that was the end of music, musicians and then of course then there was CDs and then there was streaming and it's still there and we had hapt and that's how we are. That's resilience of human beings is pretty amazing. I just don't think everything has to be clear cut like humanity. There you just have to you adapt with what you're given and AI is not going to take over everything but you're going to have to live with it for sure. And the real question for me is for my children. How what are they supposed to be learning? How are they supposed to be learning? When I went to school, there was no Google. Now they have chat GPT and my 12 year old made me a contract so that I could give her phone because I refuse to give her a phone and she went on to chat GPT and basically created a contract at 12 years old saying is this contract okay we sign this can I get the phone? Are you sure she's not going to take over mbnf max? I would be very happy. That's talent and grit certainly. You're like wow. - Oh, okay. So in one way, my 12 year old is so much more advanced than I was when I was 12 years old. Thanks to that. - Did she get the phone? That's what we really want tonight. - Yeah, yeah, she got the phone. - She got the phone, she got the phone. - She got the phone. - 'Cause the lot in the class, and we were like, she thought our parents were amish. And so we had to cave at some point. - Before starting the recording, with Robyn, I mentioned the fact that I've known quite a number of entrepreneur obviously in luxury, but also non-locturian that to me, you were like probably one of the most versatile and able to talk about a bunch of different topic ranging from strategy, to finance, to obviously product design, et cetera. I was interested because we have many entrepreneurs or soon to be entrepreneur listening to our show. You've been from managing director at Ariwin's turn. You decided to start from scratch. What's the mistake you made early at MD&F that still make you win? - That's a great question. It's always about people. If whatever you do in your business decisions, or creative decisions they're based on pride, meaning will I be proud of that in 10 or 20 years, you actually cannot really go wrong. You can go bankrupt, but you will not have been wrong because you did the right decision for you, and you will not regret it. Now if you're a business person, which is like how do I make more money, and you don't make money, or when you go bankrupt, you're just gonna be bitter. But if you do it because you wanna do the right thing, whatever happens you will have been right. But now coming back to that, it's the people. And I think you really need to surround yourself with people who share the same values, and who trust is something which is built over years and years. And then sometimes I, many times, we got stung because money came in the way, or other things came in the way, and you do everything right, and you get left on the side of the road. So choose the people you work with incredibly wisely, but not only on their competence, on their human values. - Couldn't agree more Max. We could talk all day, and we've David and I very much enjoyed talking to you, but we must ask you one last question if we may. Regular listens will know that in a bid to end each episode on a high note, David and I have been asking our guests to, well, to share their reasons to be cheerful. What's the shining light on the hill that you're looking to at the moment, which is giving you room for optimism? - Typically in our industry, it has never been so easy in so many ways. So if you come back to us creators of the early 2000s where there was no DTC direct to customer that did not exist, there were no blogs and Hodinkie, et cetera, but there was of course no social media. And so I see that youngsters or not so young who want to launch their brands, it's so much easier than it was for us. I had to spend a third of my year traveling around the world to try and meet journalists and tell the story. And if I was lucky, they would give me a little part of a page in a print magazine that maybe nobody was reading. And that's all I had. Today the new generation goes on to social media and immediately take an over by because they tribes now of people who are interested in that and what went happened. That for me, it's so much easier. And I'm so happy about that. I'm not all of those old dudes who think, oh, it's too easy. No, good, great, that's fantastic. And use all that energy that we had to put and stuff which we don't have to do anymore in creating even greater products, even greater ideas taking more risks because it's easier now. Good stuff, Max, what a fun, informative conversation that's been, we must thank you. Thanks so much for carving out so much of your time to speak to us and joining us on the Luxury Society podcast. With great pleasure, thank you, guys. Okay, next up, I'm very pleased to welcome back friend of the Luxury Society podcast, Max Perot, founder and CEO of DLG's sister company, Rehub. Max, good to see you, how's life? Harovin, it's always a pleasure to talk with you. Where are you in the world today? I'm in Shanghai. In Shanghai, where Rehub is based, good stuff. Well, at first up, you've been involved in a project with the management consultant's Bain, a quick explainer, what's the project? Each year, Bain releases a report that looks at the state of China luxury goods market. So for the third year now, we are very happy to cooperate with them on leveraging our insights on the gray market dynamics in China, which as we discuss in this podcast before, is a critical element to understand Chinese luxury goods. Yeah, Chinese luxury consumption has been, China, the China market full stop has been a pretty hard watch these past two or three years, full luxury brands. But as we've been hearing both here on the luxury society podcast and elsewhere in the media, the Chinese luxury slump may just have reached its lowest point and whisper it might even be showing early signs of recovery. You're one of those who thinks the worst might be over I gather. What are you seeing in the digital tea leaves? Yeah, you could say I'm one of those believers. I believe I'm not a Mr. Senator, I'm not a Mr. Always. 2025 definitely ended better than it began. And we see a clear recovery that started in Q3 of 2025. This is not a brow recovery. This is not a V-shape recovery, but it's rather selective, selective on categories and selective on brands, which as a result is bringing our polarization to the market. Interesting. I'm thinking broadly how much of the Chinese spending on luxury now and how does that compare to, well, 2024 to the last pre-coverty of 2019 when it goes luxury brands were investing very heavily in the country. This is a very interesting question and it requires a little bit of context. If you look at the total luxury spending by Chinese consumers, both overseas and domestic, the spending is down around 30%. But if we look only at the domestic consumption, then it's up 15%. This is between 2019 pre-covid and 2025. Sure. So I guess if you ask the China GM, she would say that luxury consumption is up. But if you ask the global chief commercial officer or the global CEO, she will say that the Chinese luxury consumption is down. Yeah, so you've got these two groups, have a new Chinese luxury buyers, have to be considered as two separate groups or at least according to clear metrics. So you have the domestic buyers and you have the tourist buyers, those who buy in mainland China and those who make their purchases overseas. COVID, of course, reorganized Chinese spend so that for a time it was almost exclusively domestic. But how exactly have those spending patterns evolved in the years since the pandemic and particularly in the last year or two? Yeah. So based on the data from the Wayne Report, pre-covid nearly 70% of Chinese luxury consumption happened overseas. Well, in 2025, the share of overseas purchase is around 35%. The key is what happened in between. As you said, during COVID for almost three years, spending was strapped inside China. So during this time, brands invested heavily in domestic retail in network expanding their network of stores, in product offering, in service, in experience. And as a result, consumers adapt. In parallel also, there was a significant price gap between key luxury markets in China during these years since COVID, many brands prioritize what they call price harmonization. So trying to reduce this price gap between China and these are the markets. So as a result, I would say that the motivation for Chinese to shop overseas is lower than it was pre-pandemic. Also, and it is something important to consider, the shopping preference have evolved during these last six years. I think if I had to summarize it, Chinese stories enjoy traveling overseas, but they prefer to purchase luxury in China. Well, that's a maturing of the market, isn't it? If I were a luxury brand, I'd be tearing my hair up because I look at these figures over the last five or six years that appear in the Bain Report. And it's not like the difference is two or three percent in one way or another each year. They're big jumps in one direction or another, either in terms of overall revenue or in the split between overseas and domestic. Spending, how in the world the brands supposed to plan when the market is changing so rapidly? That's a good question. I think that first of all, brands need to be fully aware that China is an extremely dynamic market, more so that these other key markets in the West. And this can be a challenge, but this also presents a lot of opportunities. At the same time, I think we need to acknowledge that, as you are mentioning just now, China is becoming a mature market. So we cannot expect double digit growth for five years, for 10 years in a row. We're gonna see in China moving forward is growth, obviously. There is still a lot of growth opportunities, but not these crazy growth that we've seen in the last few years. So I think that for brands, it's about really understanding that the market changes, that the consumer preferences changes and then being on top of that to really adapt their strategy accordingly. You gotta be able to read those digital TV's on a long, weekly basis, it seems. If we can look at it through the prism of specific brands, other brands to your mind who are winning in this climate, perhaps also brands who are seeing their revenues in their market in reverse, perhaps because they're not responding quickly enough towards happening. Yeah, I think that we can look at it from a segment perspective. And as I said, there is an increasing polarization in the market at the top end, absolute luxury. I think it's still holding relatively well. We see that high net worth in the mid-wills are still spending, and as we discuss, often domestically or more often than before. So I think looking at public available data, looking at the quarterly earnings, brands like Hermes, brands like L'Oropia and Aburnella Cuccinelli, high age jewelry, I would say the fantastic results of Richmond, are still holding very well. In the middle, aspirational luxuries were, the pressure is the highest. So we see these brands that are caught between rising price gaps, between creative transitions with many brands welcoming new designers, and also the same time more cautious consumers, which is why performance among these segments is more uneven. We see some brands performing well, but the majority of brands in this segment are underperforming. And then we have the premium end, where momentum is really strong. This is due to value driven spending. These brands have a clear positioning and more accessible price points that are resonating well with consumers in this cautious environment. Example of coach, exceptional results, local brands like Songmong and so on. How much of the volatility in the market is created by what's happening in the gray market? You're obviously very well versed in the Chinese gray market. Perhaps first of all, just to remind us what the Chinese gray market looks like, how it's structured and what it actually means to brand. The gray market, which is something that exists everywhere in the world, but not with the volumes that we see in China. And I think in China exists for one very simple reason. Price gaps matter. From an official retail perspective, China remains one of the highest price luxury markets globally, which sees the reason why traditionally push consumers to shop overseas. If we were to index prices among key markets, traditionally Europe would be 100. Japan would be 115, and then China would be 130. But at the same time, individuals and more and more corporations can benefit from price arbitrage buying in Europe or buying in Japan and then selling in China below the China retail price. This situation gets even worse. These individuals or these corporations can buy at wholesale price, which in the example of the index would be equal to maybe 50 or 60. So as a result, the gray market in China can also become one, if not the lowest price market globally. And for brands with wholesale channels, we're seeing on-season products or permanent collections that are being sold to 50% discount versus China official price. So they must be losing significant market share to the gray market in which case. They are losing market share. There is a huge impact when it comes to sales cannibalization. But also there is an important dilution in brand equity and in the perception from Chinese consumer. Yeah, understood. What about Priya and how the Chinese consumers feel about buying secondhand luxury in 2026? I think this is interesting because when it comes to absolute terms, China pre-all luxury market is still smaller than other regions, like Japan, Europe or the US. But what is interesting here is not the size, but the speed. The pre-all market in China has been growing at around 30% yearly. So it's going to catch up with the rest of the world? Yeah, it's catching up pretty faster. What's most of these issues? Why are Chinese consumers now ready to turn to the gray or pre-owned markets? When it comes to the gray market, it has existed for years. And I think that the motivation is very clear. It's about price, but it's also about convenience. When it comes to the pre-all market, it's different. This is more recent and it's growing very fast. And there has been a clear shift in the mindset of consumers, especially among the younger generations, that were buying something that belonged to another person before. It's no longer seen as a compromise or associated with stigma, but nowadays it's being perceived as sustainable. It's being perceived as smart, especially driven by price and sensitivity, or even moving from superstitious to being one of a kind. That's a whole other category, isn't it? We haven't really talked much about Chinese superstitions, and what influence they might have at the luxury market. Maybe that's a conversation for another time. I wanted to just ask you one other thing before we end this segment. We've talked a lot on this podcast about Chinese luxury brands, whether that's Chinese EV brands or fashion brands. Are there now Chinese luxury, like the goods brands, handbag brands, etc., stealing market share from traditional European players? Absolutely. We've seen how the premium segment is the best performing segment at the moment. Many of the brands that are leading these are Chinese brands. Brands like Song Mon. I'm not sure if you heard about them. No, you're kidding. Song Mon was that. Song Mon, yeah. They were massively covered in the press because in a recent visit to China by Mr. Erno, he personally went to a Song Mon shop in Shanghai. I believe that he bought two bags to take them back to Paris. Yes, not the company, but some of the products. This is an example that is probably the most famous local leather goods brand at the moment, but there are many others like Grotto or Truzen. They are really growing the market share because they have really good products because their brand is aligned with the cultural relevance, the values and the lifestyle of the local consumers, and also with the value for money and the price and sensitivity that we're seeing at the moment in China. Yeah. Always interesting insights. Max, before I let you go, final thought, what do you predict for this year? What's your forecast for the Chinese luxury market? I think that we are going to see growth in the luxury Chinese market in 2026 between low to mid-single digits, but these growth is going to be an even. You are going to see further polarization across brands, but also across categories in a continuation of what we see in already in 2025. So I think it's going to be definitely an interesting market to watch in 2026 and a market where brands should bet to a religion or aid grow the port on a disc globally in this year that just started. So it's time to head back to China for luxury brands. It is. There it is. Good. Max, pleasure speaking with you. Always, thank you so much for coming back on the luxury society podcast. Good to see you. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you for listening to the luxury society podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to go deeper into any of these topics, check out luxurysociety.com where you'll find stories, insights and profiles that unpack what's going on in the world of luxury right now. I've been your host, Robyn Swithenbank, and this has been the luxury society podcast available on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.