Saving the Swiss Watch Industry Again | Hacker News Reader

Saving the Swiss Watch Industry Again

bloomberg.com

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I wasn't interested in mechanical watches until reading this from Marco Arment:

> Logically, I shouldn’t like these. I’m a usually-rational software developer and computer geek. Mechanical watches are ancient technology that’s outclassed in every objective metric — accuracy, reliability, simplicity, cost — by any inexpensive quartz watch, let alone the high-precision timekeeping and unmatchable connected-computer features on the Apple Watch...

A big part of that joy, for me, is that this isn’t like anything else in my life, and the difference is refreshing.

Most of my work and hobbies involve technologically cutting-edge digital electronics reliant on complex, inconsistent software, with a typical lifetime of a few years at most. Almost everything else I use and make is effectively disposable.

As software creeps into ever more objects in my daily life and makes them more capable yet more disposable and less reliable than ever, it’s nice to have something that does less, always works, never needs a software update, requires no cables, doesn’t need to be charged, and whose useful life will probably be longer than mine.

https://marco.org/2016/02/05/watch

Funny that, my interest in watches started /because/ of the smart watches. I picked a cheap chinese automatic watch on aliexpress last year, just to see if it'd still annoy me to wear a watch, as it used to last time I tried a few years back. Idea was, if I can wear a basic watch, i'd buy a smart one...

Lo' and behold, I loved it. My £12 chinese crapiola was actually pretty darn good and I wore it for several weeks, before I bought another 'proper' watch, and I since bough half a dozen, including 'expensive' swiss ones...

The really funny thing is -- it has increased my phone battery life! I'm not kidding, since I no longer have to wake up the phone to check the time, my phone battery lasts significantly longer!

Now that's a side effect people aren't talking about :-)

Do you have a favorite watch?

Actually the one I wear the most is the Steinhart diver one... because it's quite sturdy; and not expensive enough to be scared if it's bumped into stuff... It's really excellent value, I think.

As a full blood nerd, my read favourite is the Bulova Accutron Spaceview from 1964 -- it as ONE transistor, so I call it my smartwatch ;-)

Ah. Steinhart. Good too. Kemmner, another one. Some kind of legend. But communication with him is said to be tricky: http://www.ebay.de/sch/erkahund/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&...

No. But a "good bang for the buck" manufacturer that keeps tempting me. http://www.archimede-watches.com/

I think part of the problem is that just about all Swiss watch brands have taken the realisation that what they offer is a Veblen good to extremes; high price has become a selling point to the extent that the mass market can no longer buy their offerings.

That's kind of bad, as that's where the money is at.

I am a mechanical watch nut - I own a few dozen, mostly bought second hand, I do my own basic maintenance etc - I have to date bought one luxury watch new; an Omega Planet Ocean which close to a decade ago set me back USD 2,700 or so - by all means a lot of money, but doable for a working professional in a reasonably well off economy.

Today, as far as I can tell, a comparable model in the same range retails at $6,000, while cost of living overall has increased only 19% in the same period. Go figure.

Smart watch , and I love tech I own a pebble and apple watch and an Android wear, it doesn't have anything to do with a watch. In fact a mechanical watch is already far far away from a quartz movement watch. IWC , Omega, junghans(German), Nomos , rolex, Patek... all this brands all this watch making houses are something that a smart watch can't compare with. The person that likes watches, will wear a smart watch to exercise. TAG made the smart watch because the CEO is amazing and he doesn't fear anything. But when people confuse smartwatch market with mechanical watch market doesn't know what is talking about and doesn't own a real watch. Btw, one of the problems I see with smart watches is that they are ugly objects, even the apple watch if you compare it to a Hublot or a simple Hamilton is just an ugly object, and watches are more than time keeper devices are objects that when you look at them in your wrist , the give you the sensation of beauty of harmony and also they tell time.

You are describing the current status. That is not where the doubt is. The article worries about the future and how trends will change. As mentioned in the article what "a real watch" means changed a couple of times and it could change in the future. I'm sure the very ornate gold pocket watch wearer of decades ago sneered at those ridiculous little simple looking things that went on the wrist.

I wear a mechanical watch because it looks nice and doesn't need firmware updates or charging. I need another device to plug in like another hole in my head. But it is nice to know what time it is without pulling out your phone and drawing a lot of attention.

I live near TAG factory, the CEO is far from amazing (if you talk of Biver) but the previous one was.

And they made a smartwatch which was outdated before entering the market.

For someone working in the watchmaking industry, there is nothing new here. Another post on this managerial crisis, it's not due to financial crisis or smartwatches entering the market.

It's pretty sad that CEOs doesn't want to speak clearly about the real problems (except one [1], in french).

>> The [Swatch group] recently warned that first-half profit would plummet more than 50 percent. Really?!?

They can repeat THAT again without being bashed?

Maybe they could just shut up and be happy they still have profit...

[1] https://www.letemps.ch/economie/2016/09/28/crise-horlogere-n...

I used to be a watch fan. Not hardcore - I didn't collect or anything, but I liked good quality quartz watches.

Then I got given a Huawei smartwatch as a gift. It's good.

Firstly, it looks nice. Maybe not as good as a high-end Swiss watch, but it's much nicer than a Pebble (I think it's nicer than a iWatch, but YMMV). Also, changing faces is fun.

Secondly, it's amazingly useful. I can be in a meeting or talking to someone, feel my watch buzz and check to see if I need to respond to a message without pulling my phone out.

Also, the battery life is really good. I went away and forgot my charger and got 2 1/2 days out of it.

> Also, the battery life is really good. I went away and forgot my charger and got 2 1/2 days out of it.

I'm surprised that they can sell 2 days battery as a feature and have people swallow it.

What's written behind my watch: "10 year battery life".

Yes, it surprised me too. I've got that written on a number of watches that I never wear anymore.

I thought it would be really annoying - who wants to worry about charging a watch, right?

I was wrong. I've never really noticed it - I never have liked sleeping with a watch, so dropping in on the charger was roughly the same as what I was doing anyway.

I travel a reasonable amount, and remembering the custom charger is the only real annoyance I've found with it.

I'm old enough to remember when phones went weeks between charges. I guess we can adapt pretty easily.

To be fair, your watch can be replaced by a well crafted stick and dial combo.

And throw on a compass to align it correctly. Of course this has been done already, and you can be the proud owner of a wrist sundial for only $40! https://www.amazon.com/Sundial-Compass-Leather-Strap-C-3117/...

Infinite battery life! Eat that, user5994461's watch! ;)

Coincidentally, my watch has a compass :D

There is no place on Earth that gets sunlight 24/7 all year round.

> I can be in a meeting or talking to someone, feel my watch buzz and check to see if I need to respond to a message without pulling my phone out.

You don't need to check your smart watch or pull out your phone to know whether you should respond to a message when in a meeting or talking to someone: the answer is that you shouldn't. You owe your attention to the others in the meeting or the other to whom you are talking.

If there is something higher-priority going on (e.g. your kid is in the hospital), then you shouldn't be in that meeting or talking to that person: you should be attending to that higher-priority circumstance.

It's a bit like GTD or project management: prioritise the calls on your time, and spend your time on the highest-priority. Don't try to multi-task; it works no better for paying attention to meetings or conversations than it does for writing code.

This just isn't always the case. My job is multitasking, and I'm good at it.

I'm not rude, and nor am I distracted. But there are always multiple high priority things going on, and my job isn't to give one of them 100% attention, it is to make sure they are all done.

> My job is multitasking, and I'm good at it.

I'm sure that you think that you are, but I don't believe we're nearly as good at multitasking as we believe we are; indeed, I think that's a truth cognitive science has been exploring for some time now. The time it takes to context-switch from listening mode to watch- or phone-checking mode and then back into listening mode is longer than we subjectively realise, and long enough to miss important information.

I'm on call during work hours, and I also work on other projects while on call. Production outages preempt future planning, that's just the way things go.

If someone was in the hospital, that would preempt both production outages and future planning ;)

I agree with the other poster that says "my job is multitasking". Very few people have the liberty of doing only one thing at a time.

"Aside from TAG Heuer SA, which released a $1,500 smartwatch last year, Swiss companies have been slow to respond this shift. Only 25 percent of watch executives consider smartwatches a competitive threat, according to a survey last year by Deloitte. There's been no major effort so far to design a way out of the current crisis."

And that's because:

"Much of the pain has to do with factors the watch companies couldn't hope to control—including the strength of the Swiss franc and climbing gold prices"

Smartwatches are a niche product, they have little to do with the problems that the Swiss companies are currently facing.

The Apple Watch is out selling every luxury brand except Rolex. Definitely a generation shift here

I don't see how that's relevant. A luxury watch is typically ten times the price, serves a different purpose and should last 50 years.

In fact, regular luxury watch will last a lot longer. Omega will happily fully service/restore any of their watches, no matter how old:

https://www.omegawatches.com/customer-service/service-prices...

In my mind, a nice rolex/omega/patek is something that is passed on to children, while even the top end Apple Watch is a product that one would expect to replace after few years.

That's the motto/line of Patek Philippe . "You merely look after it for the next generation"

Until the new generation of rich drop that money on an apple watch and tesla ii instead

I still wear my grandfather's old Speedmaster from time to time, on family holidays mostly.

I would be very surprised if my grandchildren could still wear a functioning Apple Watch I buy today fifty years from now.

For that matter, I would be very surprised if a non-functioning Apple Watch could be repaired easily 50 years from now.

Mechanical watches are easily "debuggable" and repairable since they are very... physical in nature. A set of small hand tools and a good magnifier usually suffice; and even parts no longer available can be relatively easily fabricated --- maybe even more easily with future technologies.

While true in general, let me present a counterpoint to that.

With mechanical watches, it is not easy at all. Maybe if you take a simple hand wind large pocket watch (fewer parts, larger parts are easier to work with, higher tolerances), then yes, but this is the "easy mode". As in electronics, equivalent of maybe Atari 2600, which you can fix with huge transformer-type soldering gun and 30-ish USD multimeters and 60-ish USD oscilloscopes. But try taking this approach to miniaturized SoC in a phone or even a smartwatch... In watches, take an automatic watch (with weight and gears which winds it up during wearing), date, maybe chronograph, moonphase, power reserve indicator, ... It will come apart to dozens of parts, some of which require special handling (hairspring), you need to lubricate all the required points, each with designated oils (maybe three different oils per watch!). Doable, but you need good knowledge, skills and expensive and maintained set of tools (e.g. look up Bergeon prices). You will also want a vibrograph and regulate the watch in different positions. If you create even a 0,1 % deviation, you are 1.5 minute off in 24 hours, 43 minutes in a month.

Yes, mechanical watch will keep for 50, even 100 years, but you are expected to have it serviced every 5 years or so and the service means disassembling it into parts and putting them back together (starting at maybe 150 USD even for 70 USD automatic watch). If you don't do that, they may work for 20 and more years, but it is hit or miss, they will wear out more and eventually when something seizes up or breaks, it will require much greater overhaul, replacing (more) parts.

An Apple Watch may be difficult to repair now because it is so miniature and modern and it is simply cheaper to throw it away and replace it with new one (this is the same with quartz calibers and mechanical watches with still-in-manufacture calibers priced less than the cost of full service).

But in 50 years, this may well flip around. As for mechanical watches, the watchmaking is somehow in demise. In our (EU) country, 20-30 years ago, a watchmaker in every larger city could service mechanical watches. Now they only change straps and batteries, maybe change entire caliber and many "modern" watch service shops (stalls in shopping malls) only change batteries. ADs (authorized dealers) all work with a single person in the entire country or even send their watches abroad. How many skilled watchmakers will be there in 50 years (two generations)? In how many countries? What will be the prices?

As for smartwatches, in 50 years we may have 3D printers spitting out entire watch-sized circuits, cheap hobbyist home-grade SMT robots, miniature FPGA capable of running entire current systems... Much like you can now repair or rebuild game consoles from 70s, 80s or 90s using cheap tools, easily available parts, 3D print a new case, or even make them into a handheld with no problems (e.g. see Ben Heckendorn's projects).

Or they could end up unused in dresser while they use the latest smartwatch.

In the end, I guess it comes down to how acceptable a real watch is as compared to a smartwatch in your social setting.

For instance, I wouldn't be caught dead with a smartwatch when visiting customers (mostly real estate companies who I write software for) the same way I wouldn't be caught wearing a mankini.

I also would not be caught without a timepiece, simply because it appears unprofessional.

I do think the kind (or lack of)of watch a person wears says something about them, much like the kind of clothing does - and I share that kind of sentiment with a lot of people.

I'd argue the people buying digital smart watches are a new market: they are not giving up their mechanical watches to buy a smart watch. Instead they are smartphone users who have realized that taking a 5" smartphone from your pocket every time you want to check the time is not always convenient...

And I'd add that they stopped being part of the watch market a long time ago, when they realized their cellphones were enough to read the time.

The smartphone removed people from the watch market. Now it's bringing them back aboard the new [expensive] smartwatch market.

This 20 years slow move should be taught in marketing and business courses.

A $349 gadget with a refresh cycle of about two years is outselling a $15,000 gadget with a refresh cycle of 50 years? How could that be.

More amazing is that Rolex outsells Apple, actually. Their watches are not inexpensive.

That said, I feel like the watch companies must be making some money. I've visited a few with my friends looking to buy watches and they are pretty nice places of business; way nicer than the Apple Store ;)

I recently wanted to buy a smart watch. I took a long, hard look at each one of my options, and my final conclusion was that none of them is actually acceptable: they're all ugly or have poor features or too big or whatever.

But I still wanted a watch. So I took a look at some good mechanical watches. You know what? Many of them are beautiful. I want to wear one. Sure, they're expensive but — they're jewelry: there's nothing wrong with that!

So I ended up getting a good-quality mechanical watch, and I couldn't be happier.

There was a time when digital watches were the height of extravagance, but they quit being fashionable because they're honestly not better. Right now, smart watches are honestly not better, and I suspect that they never will be.

I wear a watch to tell the time, and to look good; I have a phone (or, better still, a tablet) to be a handheld computer.

Why saving it? Mechanical watches fall into the same category of crappy swank for poor people as golden jewelry and chains. Swag for salesmans from office ghettos.

Even design of these watches is complete postmodernist nonsense. Lots of clock hands, bells and whistles, glittery things.

I use an automatic watch because I don't want to have to charge it every 2 days (or even change the batteries), and all I need is the time and date. I also don't want to have to debug my watch every time an update or app breaks it, it's just one less thing to worry about.

This. You could buy an automatic Seiko 5 for the price of a Swatch and go decades without servicing. At least 10 years should be possible without any problems for every model.

A $30 solar powered Casio will do that just fine.

I like my automatic watches but when you dont wear them after 3 days, you always have to reset.....eally annoying

Shouldn't the Japanese industry be more worried? They don't have the same prestige to shrink back into. Only Casio is having a stab at the smartwatch category and its not exactly anything more then an also ran.

My annoyance with watches is that I have tiny wrists (even when I was in my twenties and could deadlift more than 500lbs... my wrist have been pathetically small).

I have accepted my small wrists but have yet to see a form factor of almost any watch that is acceptable given that I'm a male and want it either genderless or somewhat masculine themed.

The one exception is the fitbit (which I don't have as I'm still waiting for the tech to improve on those guys).

You would be in luck with many vintage watches. They are often much smaller (30mm-ish compared to today's minimum 40-42) and there is huge variety.

I have several vintage watches (mostly 50's and 60's), and a few are just a tad small for my average-sized wrist. I particularly like two Lord Elgins I have but never wear, sadly.

My Dad had in no particular order:

Audemars Piguet (gold with Moon phase)

Breguet Jumphand Limited Edition

Diamond encrusted Patek Phillipe

Reversible face Jaeger le Couture sports watch

Various 1960s Omegas and Longines with beautiful designs/inlays

And for years I thought of luxury watches as something interesting and worthwhile, even if I personally could not countenance or afford spending £30,000 on one. But I learned something:

They're expensive to maintain. They don't actually keep perfect time. They're heavy.

In fact, they're silly things really, except for the clockwork itself, if you like that kind of thing.

This is the best watch in the world: http://www.staples.com/Casio-A168W-1-Mens-Classic-Digital-El...

I have a cheap mechanical watch (a Seiko) that has a transparent back where I can see the mechanism. I can't say why, but there's something about carrying around a tiny little machine that harvests energy from my movement that I enjoy.

Everything you wrote is true - the watch needs maintenance and they don't keep great time. For me, that's part of the charm. It has quirks like if I leave it face down, it loses a bit of time. When it gets very quiet, I can hear the watch's heartbeat. When I got it, the watch was fast by about 5 minutes every day so I bought some tools to open the case and adjust the machine to slow it down.

When a month has less than 31 days, I have to adjust the date on the watch and that involves turning the crown which is a shaft with gearing on the end that spins the date dial. It's all very physical.

> They're expensive to maintain. They don't actually keep perfect time. They're heavy.

The first and second items are true enough (although I don't know how much I care about perfect time: as long as I don't have to fiddle with it more than once a month, I don't really care), but the last need not be true. My mechanical watch is not noticeably heavier than a quartz watch.

And it looks a lot nicer than that Casio digital. One can see just as well through Birth Control Goggles (e.g. http://media.oregonlive.com/oregonatwar/photo/10469092-large...) as through wireframes, but the latter looks a lot nicer. Function is not the only important thing: form matters too.

And now I find I'd very much like an easily hackable smartwatch built with quality materials. Yet AFAICT none exist yet.

It's interesting. The results are bad but a few things don't really square up for me:

- Sure the CHF is strong, and gold prices are high,

- Nonetheless, it certainly feels like watch price inflation has outstripped general inflation to an unreasonable extent,

- Over the past few months there seems to have been an explosion of YouTube channels dealing with watches and horology (Federico talks watches, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH27JDu8g6tPDIjDikVGPog, and the now sadly withdrawn Paul Thorpe Watch Dealer, to name but two), with healthy subscriber growth,

- Continuing popularlity of watch forums, blogs, etc.

The YouTube channel comment may just be my own perception since my own interest in watches really only started in early 2014 (I'd always liked them but avoided getting into them instinctively on the grounds that as expensive hobbies go, this one seems potentially ruinous).

I do wonder if Swiss manufacturers haven't crapped in their own nest somewhat by over-inflating prices during the period of popularity over the last few years. Sure there are factors beyond their control but, for example, any stainless steel Rolex you're likely to want will set you back at least £6k. I realise the weak pound exacerbates matters, but it still feels like they're taking the mick.

And I can sort of see the perspective on smart watches being no threat: the availability of Apple or Android Smartwatches is going to have no effect on my decision to buy a Rolex, Omega, Ulysse Nardin, AP, or whatever.

Part of me also somewhat objects to spending £500 on something else with a 2 year (ish) useful life (think laptop, tablet, phone, on top of this), whereas a £500 mechanical watch from Hamilton or Seiko will last a lifetime if properly serviced and taken care of.

One of the big reasons I started wearing a watch again, apart from I think they're cool (especially mechanical watches), is so I'd stop pulling out my phone to check the time, inevitably leading to me seeing a notification, and then 10 minutes of my life has disappeared screwing around with twitter/facebook/email/whatever... all because I wanted to know what time it was. From that point of view the Apple Watch, much as I think it is quite cool, would be completely counterproductive. Absolutely the last thing I need in my life is yet more distractions.

But not everyone thinks like that, so maybe smartwatches are a threat to the high end manufacturers.

One thing nobody's mentioned so far: servicing. People talk about how a good mechanical watch will last a lifetime, or even outlast you, and this is true, that can happen. But the keyword here is mechanical. This means wear and tear on the mechanism, and that means that, just like your car, you have to get it serviced and lubricated to keep it running well. Often this is every 3 - 5 years, and for a luxury watch will cost as much as a significant piece of maintenance or repair on your car: i.e., £500+.

It might also take 3 months.

This sucks, and does perhaps cast that £500 every 2 - 3 years for an Apple Watch in a slightly different light.

In fairness to the Swiss manufacturers, some of them are making efforts in this area. Some are improving their customer service (I believe Omega are supposed to be strong here), and Breitling have recently released their own in-house B01 movement which I've heard may only need to be serviced every 10 years (at what cost I don't know). Similarly I believe the Omega co-axial movements also have longer service intervals. Nevertheless Swiss watchmaking is an old skool - somewhat elitist - industry overall and their idea of acceptable customer service does lag the curve.

"The most resilient part of the industry is that you buy a Swiss watch because you want to say, 'I have a Swiss watch,'" said Paul Swinand"

I love mechanical watches. I repair watches. I love all things related to horology.

That said, if I bought a new Rolex, I really wouldn't own the watch the minute it went out of warranty.

What? Yea, Rolex, and 99% of the other Swiss Watch Companies will not sell parts to their customers. They want you to send it back to the factory, at factory prices, when it needs a service, or breaks down.

If anyone from The Swiss Watch Industry is listening, enough with the "quality assurance" bs. Your industry is in a very delicate point in history. If you don't clean up you act, the quartz crisis of the 70's will look like minor stumbling block.

I never though I would say this, but lately, that Apple Watch is looking better. I just don't want to carry around an IPhone.

So, stop abusing the anti-trust act, and be very friendly to anyone whom buys your overpriced hunks of metal. You're in no position to call any shots, or get cute. If I owned your stock; I would short it yesterday.

(Sorry if I sound bitter. In the last 7 years, the Swiss watch companies pissed off a lot of Independant Watch Repairers, by not selling parts. The average dude with the $25,000 watch has no clue that he/she really doesn't own that watch. They are essentially leasing it. Having the right to repair(let the customer decide whom is going to repair) is so essential to the future of mechanical watches.)

It's not the least bit surprising that a company like Rolex would not sell parts directly to customers. I imagine that 99% of the time that would end disastrously, and they would have quite a lot of customers who haphazardly dismantle their watches and then are unable to properly clean, lube, reassemble, and test them. Once that happens, you know who the customer is going to blame. This is exactly why companies like Apple are happy to sell you an iPhone but are NOT going to sell you a single capacitor or wire, or even a complete circuit board. Do you think Apple is going to sell you individual parts for that Apple Watch?

Continuing with your example, getting a Rolex serviced by skilled third party technicians, using genuine Rolex parts (because Rolex is happy to sell parts directly to qualified technicians), is not a problem. There are dozens of highly recommended shops in the US alone, e.g. https://www.bobswatches.com/more/watch-repair-service.

Are those parts patented? If not then the independents should be producing their own clones. And if they are, mechanical watches are supposed to have a very long service life, so they can wait for the patents to expire.

Unless the watch companies are doing something actually illegal I don't see how they are doing anything wrong. Why should they be forced to help their competitors?

Really? I thought everyone that owns a mechanical watch knows that they have to send it in for a $700 servicing every ~5 years.

You don't have to send it to Switzerland or even to a local dealer. There are a lot of reputable, independent vendors that will service, for example, a Submariner, for a fraction of what Rolex would charge.

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