MIDO, YAY OR NAY?

Recently I've been seeing a lot of buzz around MIDO Watches , they are everywhere on social media, and in stores.

On a first look, it looks truly attractive sturdy watches, with ETA movements which is standard in affordable watches, and the case looks very well constructed, with beautiful dials, I don’t own one therefore I didn’t test it in rough place, but just from aesthetics point of view and handling it a bit.

On a deeper dive into MIDO, I started to resonate the watches with different brand watches, which almost felt like non original, and it started bothering me, how can a brand live on copied watches and nothing is their own idea.

The more I saw the watches, the more I saw Glashütte Original Seventies Panoramic date which is a beautiful watch which I wrote in the past about it, and hope to have it one day priced at $9,000 or moreover the Patek Phillipe Nautilus, but here its called Moltifot TV for $1,200 bucks.

Another watch is the Ocean Star tribute, the watch resembles the BREITLING super-ocean with a price tag of $6,500 to paying by MIDO $1,100, or some of the watches resemble Rado Watch Co. Ltd. or the Montblanc 1858 ICED SEA AUTOMATIC DATE which is also more expansive .

This brought me to start looking into the history of the watch company and their inspirations, on a first note I have realized the company is 100 years old, not a yesterday company with no history, in fact they have a rich history of watchmaking and producing that I can almost attest that some of their watches were copied by more prominent brands.

In 1920 when people were starting express themselves, not even the 60s revolution, MIDO started making enameled dials (let me see if you remeber the meaning ??, its a way of making a dial from glass and putting it in a fire in order to shape it and glaze it), moreover MIDO produced watches in the shape of radiator grills of a wide range of brands such as Buick, Bugatti, Fiat, Ford, while having very modern straps, in order to get car enthusiast excited for their watches.

Going in deeper in their heritage, I found a square watch that looks a bit like the Patek Phillipe or like their moltifort TV watch in 1970, three years prior to Gerald Genta giving the design to Patek, which shows they had their own TV look inspired watches, at that point and now in 2020 they just sophisticated it more, while in 1959 they made their waterproof diving watches which didn’t look like diving watches of today, but they were deeply inspired by diving, and we see the entire industry has gone more towards the same watch looks.

Therefore I Must conclude that it has to be that they are more or less original, of course brands take inspiration from each other, but here we have a definite original company, plus their price range or super affordable, most of them in the $1,000 range which definitely captures a very wide audience and beginners.

What do you think, is MIDO original or not?

See you next week

BH