Richard Jean-Louis Mille was born on February 13, 1951, and is a French executive and business owner. He is the co-founder and chairman of the eponymous Swiss luxury watchmaking brand.
In 1974, he started working as an export manager at the French watch company Finhor. In 1981, the company was acquired by Matra, where Mille eventually became the export director of all the watch brands of the group. In 1992, he started working for the French jewelry firm Maubouss in and was later appointed the general manager of the watch-making division of the Place Vendôme jeweler.
He left that job to set up his own watch brand. Collaborating with his long-time friend Dominique Guenat, Mille set up his watch brand in 2001. Their first watch, the RM 001 Tourbillon, was introduced at Baselworld in 2001.
Besides high-end watches, Richard Mille is passionate about luxury cars, aeronautics, and mechanics. He does not consider himself a watchmaker. According to him, Enzo Ferrari was not a car technician either, but he understood what constituted a high-performance car.
In 2002, Richard Mille participated in the creation of Le Mans Classic, a retrospective of the 24 Hour s of Le Mans for historic competition automobiles, held at the Le Mans circuit.
He participates with his personal vehicles in the competitions that his watch-making company sponsors, including the Tour Auto, the Spa Classic, or the Le Mans Classic where he drove his Lola T70 in 2008, as well as static events such as the Rétro mobile show or the automotive elegance of Chantilly.
Mille believes that he knows what a high-performance watch should be like. He credits himself for going “deeper into technique than many others ” while developing his watches
Mille’s brand heavily utilizes sports events and sports personalities for marketing its products. They have sponsored the likes of racing driver Fernando Alonso, tennis player Rafael Nadal, and snowboarder and alpine skier Ester Ledecká. The brand has served as the official timekeeper of the Perini Navi Cup, the Italian sailing tournament.
In March 2015, the industrialist joined forces with Anne-Li se Crémona, his niece, owner since 2010 of the perfumer Henry Jacques created by his father Henry Jacques Cremona in 1975. Together they founded ACRM (initials of its owners) which manages the brand of Henry perfumes Jacques in which Richard Mille is the president and Anne-Li se Cremona is the managing director.
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