Issue 190: Ask Me Anything, Vol. 19
Is Genta overrated? Why are Audemars Piguet perpetual calendars undervalued? What might Stephen Forsey do next? Do Rolex shops on cruise ships have better stock? What's the future of watch fairs?
Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that is answering your questions. We have some great ones today, in fact I think this is my favourite AMA for a while. Everything from retail strategy to bulk metallic glass; the future of the indie market to the distressing effect of watch writing on my personal collecting habits.
I also have a minor announcement. This newsletter is going to be the last ‘Free Friday’1. You may or may not even realise that the first Friday newsletter of every month is free to read - my stats show me that open rates and engagement are roughly identical across all newsletters, for one thing. When I came up with this pattern, it was because I wanted there to be a decent amount of TFW content that anyone could enjoy, but the reality doesn’t seem to bear that out - which I can understand. It’s mixed messaging, you’re unlikely to remember it, and some of you probably just assume that each newsletter is paywalled anyway.
What has prompted this change is the launch of Tuesday’s weekly podcast. I toyed with whether this should be paywalled and that felt less sensible: it’s a short blast of headline news with a little bit of opinion scattered in for good measure, but not something to which I want to restrict access. So from now on, that will be the free element of TFW, and Friday will be reserved for paying subscribers - who get long reads, interviews, original stories, reviews, extended rants, the worst best puns and of course the AMA.
If you haven’t subscribed yet, why not see what you’re missing? If you’re in the industry, you can take out a joint subscription for your entire team, which comes with a 15% discount. I might also point out that prices have not risen in three years - which is pretty damn rare in today’s world.
The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!
Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:
Ask Me Anything
Thank you everyone who submitted a question. You never let me down! In a couple of places I have edited them for brevity, which I hope you don’t mind.
“Will the independent craze continue, especially with the likelihood that servicing may become more challenging?” - Birajud on Instagram
I think it will continue, but exactly how is worth exploring. I’ll come to the point about servicing second.
The concept of indie watches as we understand them is give-or-take 40 years old. The sector has survived several peaks and troughs already, so I think it has proven its viability for the foreseeable future. That said, as I explored last year first for the NYT and latterly at Dubai Watch Week, most ‘first generation’ indie brand founders (those from the 1980s and 1990s) and some ‘second generation’ (let’s call that brands founded 2000-2010) are contemplating the question of retirement and succession. That means we are probably headed for a slow-motion but highly significant shift: by 2035 it is probable that a great many of today’s best-loved names will sadly no longer be running their brands. Each has a different long-term plan for the future, but the broader question is what collector appetite will look like for the kind of watches they make. I think it is notable that the most aesthetically rebellious generation of indie watchmakers - Richard Mille, Urwerk, MB&F et al - has not really been supplanted by another wave of disruptors. Instead, the pendulum has swung back towards traditional styles - but rather than replacing existing names, newcomers to the scene intermingle with them. Some micro-trends (and some brands) die out; one thinks of the likes of Christophe Claret, or the most out-there ideas of the 2010s like Devon, with its belt-drive displays - but as a rule, over the last 40 years the indie space has become increasingly diverse. That, to me, bodes well for its future. And there are enough talented young names - inspired by the generations I’ve mentioned - to give me confidence in what will be being produced for the next few decades.
The specific angle you touch on - servicing - is an interesting one. On the face of it, the question of “who will repair this Gronefeld One Hertz2 when the company might not exist in ten years’ time?” is a fair one. But collectors buying indie brands have been ready to accept this level of uncertainty for decades now; it has never been a sure thing that these brands would survive long-term, and customers have nevertheless been happy to take a punt. There must be people out there with high-end watches of the last few decades that are indeed tricky to keep running; I don’t know of anyone who specialises as a restoration watchmaker for defunct brands of the modern era, but it is a niche that will probably be all the more profitable to fill in years to come. In the meantime, I think that if the vulnerability of future servicing has not been too much of a deterrent thus far, that is unlikely to change. Indie collectors are an optimistic and romantic lot, in the main. They’ll find a way.
“Will Stephen Forsey return to the brand if or when there’s another change of leadership?” - Name withheld, on Instagram
Spicy! Give the News Of The Week podcast from Tuesday a listen if you aren’t up to speed with events at Greubel Forsey, but in a nutshell: co-founder Stephen Forsey has left the brand, and without much in the way of a “sorry you’re leaving” card, if the tone of his social media posts is anything to go by.
I’m going to field this question as a broader “what next” and speculate on a few potential outcomes. Spoiler alert: I don’t think reuniting with Robert Greubel is among the more likely.
He could take early retirement, but that’s unlikely, given that Forsey clearly wasn’t planning on leaving and is only 58 years old. He could probably write his own ticket at a number of big brands - the prospect of what he could create for the likes of Jaeger-LeCoultre, Breguet or Vacheron Constantin is fascinating, but would it be a good cultural fit? Given that he’s spent the last two decades working as a proud independent, I doubt it. If I were a newly-minted luxury conglomerate rumoured to be acquiring prestigious indie brand names, I would certainly give some thought to hiring Forsey - Group Head of R&D has a nice ring to it - but that’s just me. If he were to be employed by mainstream high-end brands, I think it would be more likely to happen as a consultant. It’s worth noting that this isn’t entirely new territory; while at Greubel Forsey, he helped set up Complitime SA, a firm that provided complications and movements to exactly those same kinds of companies.
The last and most exciting proposition is whether Stephen Forsey would set up his own brand. I suspect given his track record there would be no shortage of potential backers. I’d be curious to see what kind of creative direction such a brand might head in; never have I got the impression that he was secretly nurturing a portfolio of ideas that Greubel Forsey could never put into production, so it might be a bit of a leap at first. But you never know - find the right designer with whom to collaborate, and the results could be really special.
This is probably the time to share a few thoughts about what makes Greubel Forsey special, in my eyes, and why I think its current and future direction matters. It would be easy, certainly today when there are so many out there, to think of Greubel Forsey as just another really expensive watch brand. To me it is more than that.
The Greubel Forsey that I got to know when I started out in this industry was several things. It was an outlier among high-end indies in that it had sold a minority stake to one of the big groups - in 2006 I believe; the firm bought the shares back in 2022 to return to ‘full independence’ - and this gave it a place at SIHH, which elevated it in the eyes of the press. Not unjustly, either; as I learned about independent brands I came to respect so many of them, but Greubel Forsey’s watches always seemed to be a cut above. Before we became so rigidly obsessed with certain elements of finishing, I nevertheless put GF on a pedestal: to examine one of its watches with a loupe really did feel like you were inspecting perfection. The impression I built of the brand was that of a genuinely uncompromising watchmaker. While naturally they did iterate and improve on their own creations, you got the impression that everything was sweated over for as long as necessary, without anyone asking awkward questions about deadlines or budgets. Of course, this might not paint a picture of commercial acumen, but then again, they were selling watches for three or four hundred thousand at a time when pretty much nobody else was so audacious, save perhaps Richard Mille.
For the sake of balance, I will say that I have always found elements of Greubel Forsey’s design language unpalatable - the dense paragraphs of engraved text for one thing, and the sheer heft of some models for another - but in a way, the subjugation of aesthetic considerations in the name of doing things the way they felt they should be done only served to enhance the impression of horological purity.
There is - or certainly was - an academic nature to Greubel Forsey’s work, bordering on the philosophical. Making watches that extremely wealthy people could buy sometimes felt like a by-product; the real endeavour was taking place on a higher plane, solving problems and developing inventions that belonged in a laboratory, not a boutique. Greubel Forsey, with projects like the Naissance d’Une Montre series and the Time Aeon foundation under which it is administered (together with other noted watchmakers and brands like Dominique Renaud and Ferdinand Berthoud), always walked the walk when it came to really committing resources to traditional watchmaking. There is a seriousness about the whole thing that, yes, I admit, in my younger days I could find soporific, especially in SIHH’s airless halls, but looking at it now I find enviable.
It may be that all of what I’ve just described is at least partly, if not entirely, at odds with running a successful company. It certainly doesn’t sit well with former CEO Antonio Calce’s intention of reducing prices and doubling volumes - unsurprisingly short-lived as a strategy. As Rob Corder notes in a recent WatchPro story, Greubel Forsey is hugely overindexed in terms of watchmaking personnel as a percentage of the total staff, and in terms of expensive machinery that many brands prefer to outsource. The recent redesigns of case shapes, introduction of smaller models and the debut of the Convex line are all signs that Greubel Forsey has been reacting to the market rather than going its own way and seeing what market might exist for that. Brands often have to compromise in order to survive, and even with the most rose-tinted perspective I will agree there is little point making the world’s most incredible watches if nobody is buying them - but what I never want to see from GF is the impression that it has to follow market trends to survive. The Nano Foudroyante chronograph gave me confidence that the brand could find a path that was both mechanically impressive and more conventionally attractive. I hope that can continue.
I’m guessing like most of us there are brands you really have an affinity for and brands you don’t. As a journalist do you find yourself having to moderate your personal feelings (good and bad) about brands when talking publicly - even when its your personal channel (like here)? - Amateur Hour Watches
Yes and no; here in particular I find people respect my personal opinions, when they’re framed as such. Elsewhere, if I’m writing for a magazine or newspaper, my feelings are not the story. My voice, as a writer, is the voice of the publication, and it is not usually there to pass judgement but to tell a story and let the reader form his or her opinions as a result.
The real error is when you let your opinion of a brand cloud your analysis of its success or failure, and it can be hard to overcome that. Most journalists I know tend to avoid writing about brands they truly dislike; as a writer you do have some control over what you cover - for instance as a freelancer pitching stories, or an editor deciding who’s writing up which new releases - and when I’ve worked as a commissioning editor I’ve always held in the back of my mind certain writers’ preferences. Not because they’ll give a brand an easier ride, but because people tend to put more effort into covering something they like and care about.
Have you found being a professional in the watch media has affected - for better or worse - your feelings and behaviours as a watch enthusiast? - AHW
I was a journalist before I was a watch enthusiast, unlike so many who fall in love with the hobby and then start writing about it. So no, not really. But there are some smaller side-effects: I’m so enormously spoilt in terms of being able to handle almost every watch out there that I sometimes find it hard to buy watches for myself - both in terms of knowing I’ll never be able to afford the Lange or Laurent Ferrier or whatever it may be, and in terms of deciding between the watches I can afford.
What are your thoughts on the future of watch shows from the perspective of the collector, consumer, enthusiast?
My take is that with the explosion of online content flooding our eyeballs from every single brand and their paid media partners multiple times per day, the big shows have less value. - Ron Hekier
I wrote not too long ago3 that the marketplace for events is evolving into something more closely resembling the retail landscape: brands can no more expect to exhibit at every event than they can expect to be stocked in every store. They must choose, and consumers will do the same. I think we will end up with a few big events - analogous to a Watches of Switzerland, which carries big names and indies - and a lot of smaller ones, and it will be by no means the norm for people to visit them all. You’ll have your loyalties, either to those geographically convenient or whose vibe you like. To take another analogy, the big shows are like music festivals: you know you can’t see every band playing, but some people will always want to be there for the overall atmosphere and the fact they can see a dozen of their favourites. Others would rather go to individual gigs and get a more immersive experience from one artist. I don’t think one is better or worse - it’ll come down to your own priorities.
As a side note, I don’t know whether it’s all sustainable. Events are expensive and come with a huge opportunity cost for brands with small teams. If they become a larger part of a brand’s direct-to-consumer retail strategy, maybe the cost of exhibiting is still preferable to ceding 40 per cent margin to a retailer. But that won’t work for volume brands.
But you asked about the consumer, and about the dynamic between online and IRL experiences. I think size of brand is really relevant - or to re-frame that, the size of the audience. As soon as you reach a certain number of customers, I don’t know what, but let’s say it’s quite small - a few hundred, maybe less - the assumption is that you need some level of online marketing. The saturation we’re living with right now is the logical conclusion of that kind of thinking - which isn’t wrong per se but thanks to the platforms, their metrics and the risk-averse nature of big brands, has led to outcomes that don’t work for anyone.
I think we will see fragmentation and diversification online and in-person, but it could be a messy process. Smaller brands are good at hosting intimate events but ill-equipped to host enough of them; big brands have the resources but are incapable of being nimble and allowing individual markets to act with autonomy. Third parties - editorial platforms, retailers, influencers, you name it - might provide the answer but then brands have to cede a percentage of control.
Gerald Genta: Genius or overrated? But more specifically, why do you think it is that he the only watch designer that is spoken about and celebrated by brands. If you’re just starting to get into and read about watches, you could be forgiven for thinking he is the only person to have ever designed a watch. Each brand that has one feels the need to state their watch is a ‘Genta design’. Why is this special and why are other designers not publicly spoken about as often? - Daniel South
Quick answer: both. He created some brilliant designs, but he also designed an incredible number of watches. When I worked at QP Magazine, we ran this interview with his widow Evelyne which gave some idea as to Genta’s prolific output.
“From what he told me it was CHF10 [per design],” explains Mme Genta, now Ambassador of Monaco to the UK. “He used to take his car and go to Le Chaux-des-Fonds or Bien or Le Brassus. And he said the people opened a little window and asked what he had and they would choose five, six, 10 or 20 designs and he would come home when he had CHF1,000. That is why you have Genta designs everywhere; Corum had some, Piaget had some, they are everywhere. In those days there was no ‘design’ of watches, watches were either round or square.”
Evelyne Genta has - or had; I suspect it’s all LVMH property now - literally thousands of unproduced designs by her late husband in filing cabinets, all hand-drawn. “You want a chronograph? I have 300 chronographs here,” she told us.
What is less commonly said about Genta - because his name has become tantamount to that of a deity in the last decade - is that his work from the 1980s onwards rarely, if ever, touched the heights of his sports watch classics - at least, judging by collectors’ tastes thus far. There may come a time when his mantlepiece clocks are the absolute must-have item, but it has not come yet.
As to why his name has become so lauded and others labour without anything like the same recognition, well, it’s complicated.
Firstly, he had the good fortune - or good sense - to design two watches for two powerhouse brands; when their values went through the roof, so did his reputation. Of course the Royal Oak and Nautilus are accepted as ‘good designs’ - whatever that means, objectively - but they became commercial juggernauts for their owners before Genta’s name was so vaunted. Naturally, AP and Patek always praised Genta’s work, but the vintage market went nuts for the Royal Oak and Nautilus for a combination of reasons and that precipitated a more general mania for all things Genta - not the other way round.
Other brands saw this success and realised there was something they could share in. They couldn’t achieve the Royal Oak’s success by copying it - but if they had a Genta design in their back catalogue, they could bask in the reflected glory. Once it became clear that Genta-mania was a bubble with room for more than just two brands, it was in everyone’s interests to sing his praises as loudly as possible.
I don’t want this to sound like I think the credit and respect Genta gets is undeserved. The man was clearly a prodigious talent. But there is a curious alchemy to trends and markets that - as mentioned below with reference to AP and Patek again - goes beyond objective worth. Once the majority - or the influential minority, might be more relevant - has decided that Genta is hot property, the idea very quickly acquires momentum.
Other things were afoot at the same time that feed into this, and it’s hard to pick everything apart. Bulgari owned the Gerald Genta name but wasn’t doing much with it; the Genta family were for a time at loggerheads with Bulgari - there was even talk of legal action to reclaim his name. Obviously events proceeded along very different lines: with the establishment of the Gerald Genta Heritage Association by his wife and daughter in 2019, a harmonious resolution between all interested parties and the relaunch of the brand by LVMH in 2023, all the elements finally clicked into place.
There are a few more points worth making. Historically, watch design was not a celebrated profession. There is no grand tradition in horology akin to that of the creative director at a fashion house. During the golden age, bragging to a mainstream audience about who designed your watch would have seemed as bizarre as making a big noise about who printed the dial or provided the strap. This is probably the single most important thing to stress: it simply isn’t, or hasn’t been for the vast majority of their existences, within most brands’ vocabularies to single out individuals for credit. The brands that do it regularly today are often those that don’t have a purely horological background - Bulgari, Hermes - or are younger brands that enshrined Design with a capital D as part of their brand from the very beginning, like Bell & Ross.
One thing I am not entirely clear on is when Genta’s public image really emerged: but we have to think of it as a modern phenomenon. Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe didn’t announce the Royal Oak and Nautilus to the world as Gerald Genta creations. By the 1980s Genta was more than a designer, he was a brand owner, and I think this is key. That was rare, if not unique, at this stage for a watch company, and his instincts as a self-promoter when he was marketing his own creations will probably have sowed the seeds for his modern reputation.
Last but not least, although certainly bluntest: Genta’s cult-like status certainly benefits from his death in 2011. Whatever else happens now - even if Mme Genta reveals new designs from her vault - there is a finite stock of Gerald Genta watch designs in the universe. Pretty much every other watch designer you can name - Eric Giroud, Claude Emmenegger, Jorg Hysek, Guy Bové, Octavio Garcia, Fiona Kruger, Emmanuel Gueit, Marie-Laure Cerede - is still with us. There is also almost certainly something in the fact that so many of the above have worked for AP, indeed worked in Genta’s shadow. No other brand, not even Patek Philippe, has done so much to create - and benefit from - Genta’s profile.
Why is the 5548 not worth anything close to the 3940? Despite its historical importance as being ‘first’ and also being a trinity brand - AP
The 5548, for anyone not immediately on the same page, is Audemars Piguet’s4 ultra-thin automatic perpetual calendar, launched in 1978 and described by the brand’s former historian Michael Friedman as “the watch that reversed AP’s fortunes”. Not the Royal Oak! There is a brilliant history of the reference at Revolution.
It was the second perpetual calendar to be produced in series by any brand, after Patek Philippe, and is significantly thinner (7mm vs 11mm) than the 3448 from Patek, which was the benchmark at the time. The 3940 came along seven years after the 5548, in 1985. As Wei notes in his write-up (six years ago, but still), the AP perpetuals are vastly undervalued by any objective metric. They are much rarer, for a start, than the equivalent Pateks: only 2,138 were ever produced (compared to nearly 8,000 of the 3940, across all three series).
But do we live in an objective world? Not when it comes to prices… My take on things is as follows:
Patek Philippe has had such a head start establishing its vintage market and investing (literally) in the idea that its rare watches can be worth millions. It had its first themed auction all the way back in 1989 and was the first brand (I believe - correct me if you know otherwise) to see that it could create the necessary aura by acquiring its own watches at auction. Consider how easily collectors like Marcus Margulies, for example, could buy historically significant APs in the 1990s and 2000s. Almost every other ‘top tier’ brand today wishes it had had the stability, the foresight and the budgets a generation ago5 to do what Patek did.
Audemars Piguet had to choose which stories to tell and it chose the Royal Oak. So the 5548 was relegated, a niche for super-geeks, not a core pillar of the brand’s identity in the modern era. Patek, at least pre-2016 and the Nautilus explosion, centred its brand on complications.
It’s not represented in the modern line-up. Taking point 2 a step further, you could argue that AP doesn’t even produce a modern successor to the 5548. It has the Royal Oak Perpetual, which has a lineage to the same calibre, but isn’t presented as the direct descendant of the 5548 in the same way that Patek has always evolved its flagship complications. (You can argue that things are more muddied today; which of the 5320, 5327 or 5236 is the Patek Philippe perpetual calendar? But I digress.)
As a result of 1 and 2, it’s easy for a kind of vicious (or virtuous, depending on who you are in this story) cycle to take hold. If the 3940 is the better-known and the more valuable watch, it’s going to attract more attention from collectors and journalists, increasing its value and its awareness.
In many ways, this question is a microcosm of “why is Patek Philippe the brand it is and others only wish they could be?” Got there early, kept it consistent, and spent a ton of money. Simple6.
AP has used BMG for a bit now. But recently I saw the odd micro Fam Al Hut Mobuis guys use it for a case. Is it soon to be more common? Will I want it? I love Ti for lightweight and low thermal conductivity, what is awesome about BMG? - Matt F Walker
BMG, or bulk metallic glass, is a generic term for materials also known as amorphous metal alloys. Their distinguishing feature is that they are formed from molten metal that is cooled very slowly: the slow rate of cooling (and typically the diverse mix of metals in the alloy) prevents the mixture from forming normal crystalline bonds. Instead, the atoms are - technical term - all mashed up together in a manner more commonly associated with liquids, hence the name.
What this gives the resulting alloy is very high strength (greater Vickers hardness than titanium alloys or stainless steel), lower thermal conductivity than conventional metals and greater elasticity - meaning they can sustain greater impacts without deforming. They are less brittle than ceramic (but more so than regular metals) and can fail under tension - but that’s more of a problem for moving parts and less applicable to watch cases. They have good corrosion resistance, scratch resistance and are hypoallergenic. Of relevance to their manufacturing, once formed they can be melted and moulded like liquids - meaning they can be used in similar injection moulding processes to non-metallic polymers.
Typically BMGs are made from a combination of zirconium, titanium, copper, nickel and beryllium, but alloys can include iron, aluminium, vanadium, niobium… you get the idea. Recent developments have shown that BMGs may be compatible with 3D printing methods, specifically selective laser melting - which both TAG Heuer and Audemars Piguet have recently been playing with.
Audemars Piguet has been using BMG for a while, but Panerai is probably the brand that has explored it the most, producing entire watch cases from the stuff. You should also be aware that LiquidMetal is a type of bulk metallic glass, produced by CalTech and licensed by SwatchGroup for exclusive use in its watches - where it has so far mostly been found in Omega’s bezels. As you can see from the various watches that have used them, BMGs seem to be particularly suited to a high polish.
Given their composition and production processes, I think it’s safe to conclude that BMGs are more expensive than steel or titanium alloys - probably at minimum two or three times as much as Ti. Then there is the relatively small number of suppliers and the fact that some watch brands have locked in licensing agreements - I would have expected this to hinder more widespread uptake for a while, but Fam Al-Hut’s use of it shows there is at least one supplier out there on the open market. I still wouldn’t expect to see a sudden glut of them, unless there is a breakthrough in terms of manufacturing that’s not been widely publicised yet - but they are on the face of it exceptionally well suited to watch cases (and who knows, one day maybe bracelets as well).
How do Rolex boutiques survive in tourist destinations? Presumably, most of the potential customers walking through their doors are visiting for a short period of time and would like to buy a watch as a remembrance of that vacation/holiday. From my limited experience, Rolex boutiques have nothing (or next to nothing) to sell a walk-in customer. I recently read about the first Rolex boutique on a cruise ship. I would think that boutique would have stock to sell, or what’s the point?
Steve - first, I hope you don’t mind me truncating your question just a tiny bit. It’s a great question, and I love the idea that booking a cruise holiday might be the hidden cheat code to accessing desirable Rolexes. Gives me this great image of a troupe of tool-watch die-hards signing up for five nights on the Splendour of the Seas just to ambush the on-ship watch shop.
I’m covering, in part, for the fact that I have no idea - at least, I have no concrete knowledge of Rolex’s tourist retail strategy and the allocations you might find therein. But let me make a few educated guesses.
Rolex doesn’t do anything that doesn’t work. Ergo, if Rolex is doing it, it’s probably working.
There is a PR value to being present in the right locations, and that counts for top hotels and holiday towns as much as Bond St, Fifth Avenue and so on. There’s a reason there are so many watch boutiques in ski resorts, for example.
In 2024, Heathrow made £442m from retail revenue. That was actually 14 per cent down on its forecast, but nevertheless, if there’s nearly half a billion going through one large airport (and that represents a larger figure of turnover for the concessions within it7), what percentage of that might be watches? Roughly one in seven shops across Heathrow sells watches or jewellery (nine out of 64). Globally this leads me to believe there must be a decent volume of watch purchases happening airside - and I will extend what happens at the airport to what happens on vacation, for the following reasons…
People travelling are predisposed to treat themselves - the “I deserve something nice” factor is not to be underestimated. On a more fundamental subliminal level, tourism hotspots and airports turbocharge your exposure to branding and opportunity; you have a captive audience that may walk past your store dozens of times in a single week, if you are positioned in a hotel lobby. It would take you a long time to rack up that kind of repeated exposure to an audience that’s already guaranteed to have a certain level of net worth, rather than just tyre-kickers, out in the ‘real world’. Add in the likelihood that tourists are often celebrating life milestones, or are with their loved ones that like dropping heavy hints, and the possibility that you’ll be able to reclaim any sales tax when you return home, and it’s becoming quite convincing, I think.
However! Ironically, I think all of the above points to a scenario whereby tourist-trap Rolex boutiques might actually be less likely to have allocations of GMT-Master IIs and Daytonas. If the marketing psychology works and the captive audience builds themselves up to deciding that they’re going to buy a Rolex while they’re there, there is a higher chance that they’ll buy whatever the boutique has. Of course common sense dictates that they should just wait until they get home and go back to the local AD (for a rejection, of course), but common sense is getting its behind handed to it when faced with heavyweight emotional drivers like pride, greed, impatience and that tasty dopamine hit of self-reward.
I agree that this all runs counter to the ‘textbook’ watch collector - retailer relationship, where loyalty is
exploitedencouraged and waiting lists are king. But I would bet good money the teams running these Rolex outposts are given license to operate differently.
And Finally…
I had a play with Swatch’s AI-DADA design tool this week. It’s good fun! I haven’t pushed the boundaries too far, but I get the sense that as with most freely-available AI image generation, it will struggle with anything particularly fine and detailed. But that’s not going to hold it back from making designs that suit a Swatch. Here are some prompts I gave it and the results. See if you can spot where I might have infringed the terms and conditions…
Not bad for a first try. A bit “Action Man” maybe, but what do you expect? Let’s try something a bit more specific.
I don’t mind this at all! Would have been nice if the writing ran along the strap lengthways, but apart from that… I’m very tempted to refine this and buy it for a laugh. You only get three prompts per day, however, and I wanted to be a bit more mischievous with my last one.
Uh-oh! You can’t make a Patek Philippe Swatch, of course. The terms and conditions expressly forbid it (oops). I could have been more descriptive of the Calatrava Cross that I wanted, as well - but what interests me is that it totally failed to interpret Cotes de Geneve and perlage - there’s no sign of the former and for the latter I’ve got a kind of shagreen effect instead. These aren’t protected designs; maybe they aren’t in the AI’s dataset, but if that’s the case, how did it know that perlage means ‘lots of little circles’ at all? Swatch’s claim is that AI-DADA is trained on 40 years of Swatch designs, and we should not underestimate how varied a dataset that is - but the experience of using it doesn’t make me feel like the image generation is constrained by some Swatch-brand-approved guiding principles, more that it is exactly as capable as a generic AI tool. Still, it’s great for mucking about, and imagine the fun you could have making a gift for your kids that’s tailored to their obsessions, for example.
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! Join me in the Substack chat for any follow-ups, and I’ll be back next Tuesday with another news round-up.
Chris
Why did I coin a snappy phrase JUST as I’m bringing it to an end?!?
To take one example at random; I am hopefully not hastening Gronefeld’s demise!
I can’t find it right now though!
Despite the initials, this question was not asked by AP the brand…
And the rest…
I mean there might be more to it than that - whole books have been devoted to the subject, after all. But if you really want the TL:DR version this isn’t far off.
Stores in airports typically pay the airport either a percentage of sales or an annual minimum agreed sum based on expected revenue.
Cheers for addressing my BMG Q - much clearer. One item missed - is it similar to, or lighter than Ti? When I hear Ti and Alu may be in it, I get hopeful. Yes, the crazy good polish it takes looks like tungsten (which is heavy AF and a pain to shape, so not better I don’t think)
Re Rolexes on boats .. I’ve an idea.. well, 2 of them.
1. My AD here in the city will put you on a waiting list for infinity for any steel sports watch. One friend has waited years in vain for an Explorer and a Sub.
BUT - you can walk in off the street and buy 2 tone or full precious metal of some men’s watches and most small women’s models
I’d assume cruise ships are stocked with these pricey big margin watches
2. Most ADs are now getting CPO. Mega cash cow. Probably cruise ships and resorts get the dregs of the CPO program.
Like you said - a captive audience feeling spendy and often well to do. Who else needs only a gentle push to buy a white gold CPO Sky-dweller?
One more bonus - you buy a dog at your local AD and they kind of start to owe you some basic steel model. At a resort or on a ship, you sell dog after dog all day and nobody can come back and demand a Starbucks since you won’t see them again - #winning !!
I come here *mostly* for the puns...
As someone who lived in a major world tourism capital, I have had rather disappointing experiences with Rolex ADs. I get the impression their main stock in trade is wealthy Asian or Middle East clients for whom taking a trip to city X three or four times a year is normal and they are able to build AD relationships that way. On one visit I heard the clerk tell a walk-in tourist they had watches to sell...but nothing under 50k. When I asked about being put on an "interest" or "waiting list" for a steel sports model I was told it would be a minimum of 5 years, and not even for one of the hype pieces like a GMT or Daytona.