You serve on the Advisory Committee for IMD’s Luxury 2050 Forum and are the CEO at Musik Hug AG. What drives and inspires you the most about your current roles working across luxury and innovation?
At Musik Hug AG, I am working to revitalize the oldest music company in Europe—and one of the oldest in the world. The company was founded in 1807 and is soon approaching its 220th anniversary. That alone is incredibly inspiring. It’s a rare opportunity to transform a legacy business into the modern age through purpose, relevance, and innovation.
At the same time, my role with the IMD Luxury 2050 Forum leads me to think beyond the present—what’s next, and how do we inspire customers, for example, in a changing world with AI? I recently hosted a seminar on this topic, and the essence is timeless: we can never do enough to emotionally engage and excite consumers through experiences, services, and products.
Whether I was working at Richemont with brands like Cartier or now at Musik Hug, the goal remained the same: create an emotional connection. That’s especially important today, when a child might think a smartphone is more exciting than learning to play a musical instrument. And yet, we know how enriching and transformative music can be. If you asked 100 parents in Switzerland whether they’d prefer that their child spend another hour on YouTube or learn to play an instrument, the majority would choose the latter.
Our job is to make that choice for playing an instrument exciting again — not just for parents, but also for the next generation. This is a huge challenge and it motivates me deeply.
You can’t mandate a mindset shift. It takes time, consistency, and trust. It’s about exciting the team about a compelling picture of the future, taking the team along the journey, personally demonstrating change, and motivating the team to follow until you reach that collective sense of belief, ownership, and engagement.
With the luxury sector evolving fast—through AI, sustainability, and changing consumer behavior—what do you see as the next big shift?
Just a year or two ago, many of us were convinced that the future of luxury would unfold in the metaverse. Today, it’s clear that AI is moving much faster and with much greater impact than we anticipated. When I look at what my own teenage son is doing with tools like Manus (an AI-powered digital assistant that helps automate tasks, generate content, and provide real-time support), I am blown away—it’s like having a digital assistant that works for you. The pace of change and evolution is mind blowing. For sure, curiosity, customer insight and the thirst to increase convenience for consumers are what drive innovation. Nobody knows what is around the corner tomorrow.
In the face of such rapid evolution, brands must double down on what really matters: a compelling and emotionally resonant value proposition. That remains at the heart of luxury. But how you define and deliver that value must be adapted to dynamically changing cultural and generational expectations.
For example, in India—a market I know well—consumers are highly driven, competitive, and status conscious. Luxury in India often means visibility: people want to show that they have arrived, want to show that they are successful. They do that by wearing products of well-known aspirational brands such as a Rolex watch or a stack of branded Cartier bangles.
To thrive, brands need clarity: who are you as a brand, what do you stand for, and how can you offer personalization at a scale without diluting your essence? That’s no small task—especially AI reshapes how brands and consumers interact. The role of a salesperson, the nature of marketing, even the way we locate information, services, and solutions is evolving fast. And we’ll need to rethink how luxury brands show up in this new landscape.
Your career has spanned advising clients at BCG, leading regional operations for Richemont across Asia and the Middle East, and now your role at the helm of Musik Hug. How has this professional and industrial diversity shaped your career trajectory and influenced your perspective, both personally and professionally?
One of the most important things I’ve learned throughout my career is the central role of company culture. At Richemont, I led both a business model transformation and a cultural transformation simultaneously—and I can say with confidence that the cultural part is much harder. Peter Drucker was so right when he said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
You can’t mandate a mindset shift. It takes time, consistency, and trust. It’s about exciting the team about a compelling picture of the future, taking the team along the journey, personally demonstrating change, and motivating the team to follow until you reach that collective sense of belief, ownership, and engagement. And that’s something I am working very hard to apply again at Musik Hug. Imagine a company that’s nearly 220 years old with assumptions, beliefs, and ways of doing things anchored in the past. My job is to leverage that history with care and bring it positively into the future. It is like remastering an old song with the same essential melody but with new technology. At Musik Hug, we call this “Musik Hug Re-Mastered.”
Coming from outside the industry into Musik Hug, I knew I had to earn my credibility. People might ask, “You’ve worked in watches and jewelry—what do you know about music?” And that’s a fair question. But leadership isn’t about knowing everything. It’s about building trust, inspiring people, and aligning them around a common compelling mission. At the end of the day, it’s the employees who move a company forward—not systems or tools.
So for me, success is about empowering and bringing along the team. My role is to help create the conditions for them to grow, evolve, and drive the transformation from within their sphere of influence.
Speaking of culture—company culture—you have worked across Switzerland, Asia, the Middle East, and Southern Africa. How have your multifaceted experiences in such varied cultural and business contexts shaped your leadership style?
Authenticity and consistency have been the cornerstone of my leadership approach—especially working across such diverse cultural and business environments. Whether in Hong Kong, Dubai, Johannesburg, or Zurich, I’ve found that people respond to leaders who are real. I am not Steve Jobs—I am myself, with all the good and the other, not afraid to say, “I don’t know or I don’t understand, please explain this to me,” or to show vulnerability. And I’ve learned that people appreciate seeing that real person consistently in all interactions—what they see is what they get, what they get is what they see.
Humility plays a major role for me also. In Dubai, I had an experience that left me with a lasting impression. I started a conversation with an office assistant. Initially, he was very uncomfortable talking to me, due to differences in seniority, background, and perceived standing. He told me his job was not important because he “just made coffee for guests.” I disagreed. I shared with him that his role was very important, as it was the first point of contact for every guest coming to our offices, and that very first impression mattered deeply. He never saw it from this perspective and felt respected and valued. After a while, I understood that he wanted to end the conversation, saying, “I have taken too much of your time and don’t want to take more of your time, your time is very valuable.” I told him that his 15 minutes out of the 24 hours of the day represent the same share of the day for me—clarifying that his time was as valuable as mine.
That moment changed something—for both of us. From then on, he was transformed and showed a new level of engagement, not because he had to, but because he was seen; he was heard and valued in a very human, humble, and respectful way. That experience reaffirmed for me the importance of treating everyone with respect, humanity, and humility.
And finally, Dubai taught me to think big. When I arrived, people told me our market had limited potential. But I saw opportunity—just like the city itself, which built the world’s tallest tower in the sand. I said, “If they can build the tallest tower in the world, in the sand, and without expertise, then we certainly can build the top performing subsidiary of Richemont right here in Dubai … and we will do it so well that the other subsidiaries will come to visit us and ask for advice and we will provide our best practices and expertise.” And guess what: that is exactly what we did. If you believe something is possible and can continuously reaffirm that vision in a compelling and clear manner, people will eventually rise to the challenge and turn the vision into reality.
Looking back, how did your time at BCG inform your approach to business transformation, particularly within the luxury and consumer goods sectors?
My time at BCG shaped me in two ways. First, it helped me clarify what I didn’t want to do, such as conducting projects in the financial sector that focused on cost- cutting in administrative areas. While they were important and intellectually very interesting, they didn’t energize me. I realized that I love to create and build new things, not just to optimize. I also concluded that I love to do this in an environment with tangible products and services linked to emotionally charged brands.
Second, BCG gave me tools I still rely on today: structured thinking and the ability to ask the right questions, analyze problems deeply, and organize complex initiatives. Those skills are incredibly transferable, especially in high-stakes business transformations. And of course, the camaraderie and the BCG network have stayed with me. The network is invaluable—there is nothing quite like it.
What continues to bring you joy, inspiration, and curiosity today?
What brings me the joy and energy today is inspiring people to grow—for them to take that next step, to stretch beyond what they thought is possible. At one of my former employers, every year, new products would be presented with an unbelievably amazing cinematic video launch. Every time, it gave me goosebumps and a feeling of inspiration, a feeling that I was in the right place at the right moment—I felt that I was part of this journey. That feeling of being moved, excited, and proud, that’s what I work hard to pass on to others by myself and through my team.
If someone tells me, “You inspired me,” that’s the highest compliment for me. It means I’ve done something that moved someone and created or enhanced the momentum in that person. Every day, I try to find that right “access point” in my team—what excites them, what motivates them—and use that to ignite or re-ignite a spark in them. When people feel lit up, the whole organization moves forward. That’s what drives me.
