Comment by eo3x0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eo3x0 | Hacker News Reader

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I know you're asking this question as a rhetorical but the answer is not what you think it is.

The answer is "yes" of course a Chinese made Patek Philippe would be an object of appreciation. But there isn't one.

There's actually a rich history of Chinese watch making and it's worth reading up on if you're into mechanical watches at all: http://chinesewatchwiki.net/History_of_Chinese_watchmaking

In fact the project 304 chronograph is still considered collectible, even the reissues: http://forums.watchuseek.com/f71/review-ed1963-chinese-milit...

However, back to answer your question precisely, China simply doesn't have an industry or heritage or history that can support a Patek, which is why it doesn't exist. Even with the history I've linked to above, the Swiss industry is light years ahead and it's not even close.

I don't think you should let your bias, if any, of the very inferior counterfeit movements and counterfeit casing industry color your opinion of watches. Anyone in the know would trivially identify the differences. To your analogy it would be like producing a cheap engine and simply calling it an F1 engine. That's not how it works.

Furthermore, if you asked this theoretical Chinese sweatshop to build a modern highly complicated Patek Philippe, it wouldn't cost 1/100 the price, it would cost 100x the price if not more. They'd have to start by sourcing synthetic materials, reinventing tools, or recreating components that a theoretical sweatshop wouldn't even have access to. Part of why counterfeits are so cheap is because they source really cheap Japanese or local Chinese movements that have had decades of build up to scale to the current counterfeit prices. Meanwhile, the real deal modern watch movements are decades more advanced.

I am sorry to say you haven't assuaged my scepticism.

The watch in question made in 1989 is valued at 6 million dollars (according to wikipedia). OK fine, that might be an extreme example. Lets take a typical Patek watch which costs tens of thousands of dollars.

I can't believe that the price reflects the materials, the complexity and labour that went into the watch. I admit i know next to nothing about horology but as a software engineer i have trouble believing it has more complexity than a similarly priced family saloon or even a mobile phone, or a microprocessor.

My point with the Chinese sweatshop example was its really about the image that they want to be associated with. There seems to be a typical formula: An aristocratic sounding family name of the founder, a founding date sometime in the 1800s and a founding place in Geneva or some town or village with a quaint name in France. A making-off video which features men with Germanic features, wire-frame glasses and who is never smiling(we're portraying gravitas here), delicately assembling the watch components. Oh yeah and make sure you get celebrities, powerful politiciansand pro athletes to be photographed wearing the watch (the fact that some of these people couldn't reasonably afford such watches seems to suggest they were given the watch for free or even paid to wear them).

edit: I know there are examples of watch manufacturers like Richard Mille who break the mould (at least with the historical legacy aspect), but it seems to be an unclear path to convince the gatekeepers of this clique that you're not just another poser trying to pry hundreds of thousands of dollars from the wealthy.

A more "common" Patek like a Calatrava would be a different story and you've changed the goalpost in the discussion. So we're no longer talking about the highest levels of horological achievement -- that's fine, but the answer is still not what you're looking for.

As a software dev, you're aware of diminishing returns. Fine watchmaking is an extreme case of this. The reason it costs what it costs is because everything is done to an extreme, by hand. Engraving, finishing are all unique on each piece. Quality assurance makes sure that it's passed a variety of brutal tests (and if it doesn't, you're on the hook for fixing it for free under warranty). That's not even getting to the raw material costs, which of course is precious metal 18K for the casing and silicons and alloys and synthetic lubricants for the movement. All of these pieces are proprietary and uniquely fit for the watch, so the Chinese sweatshop would need to reach a certain scale before they could produce it at profit. Just take a look at the extreme lengths Rolex goes to manufacture these watches with automation (linked in the original comment post). Patek has to do most of that by hand to keep each piece unique.

Is there a high margin in the business when done right? Absolutely. Should the Chinese all give up the counterfeit industry and move in high quality watches instead? No, because the pricing would be within the same order of magnitude (though no longer out of reach like the earlier example with the highest levels of watch making) with large gains on labor and marketing cost but minus the heritage and history to actually sell the pieces.

I think you're inaccurately making some assumptions about watchmaking that's fundamentally cutting your estimates down significantly to state that a Patek could be manufactured at 1/100th the price by a sweatshop or even 1/10th. It can't be done for the same reason why there isn't a Chinese Bugatti Veyron. The product is that good and true expertise and industry is backing that product.

At the end of the day, we don't need to argue hypotheticals. If this were possible, it would already be done. In the wild, there are plenty of cheap counterfeit watches with Patek written on the dial but there are no "fake" Patek level watches that a person familiar with watches wouldn't immediately spot as a fake.

And ultimately it's disengenuous to make any argument using "image" or marketing as a basis when it's done with fanfare plenty in our industry (a la Apple)

Actually even the tools Patek uses to make their watch are made in house, mostly by hand.

Watchmaking and does take a tremendous amount of labor, a watch made by a sweatshop in China will simply not have the same precision and reliability, let alone the fit and finish of its movement inside.

You are confusing complexity with ease of manufacturing. Some very complex objects are actually much easier to mass produce, such as a family sedan or a CPU, simply because we've gotten very, very good at it by now and the economy of scale makes it easy and cheap.

But for a watch, since there is no such economy of scale, and the customers demand those watches to be hand made, then the amount of man hour and labor that's put into making a perpetual calendar way out weights that of a car.

Is there a huge amount of price inflation caused by marketing? Absolutely. But even a top tier Chinese replica of a Patek can cost a couple thousand dollars, while not being the same quality inside.

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