Warmth of nostalgic Wristwatch

The abbreviation ‘WWW’ was first popular for ‘Waterproof Wristwatch’ during 2nd world war. In fact, watches gained wide usage and popularity due to World War I and World War II. Watches were among the initial economic traded items and facilitated increasing trade volumes among economies.

Started with Sundials and later Water clocks, watches got condensed to table clocks size. In due course came the new formats as pocket watches for men and wrist watches for women. Initially watches had a hand only for hours but hands for minutes and seconds got added from year 1700s. Thanks to the need of the soldiers, wrist watches became unigender. It may be a surprise but few communities such as Puritan communities in UK and America, and orthodox Jewish communities oppose watches.

Themes of precision and accuracy evolved with reference to watches and widely permeated into all the other manufacturing activities. A watch has about 1,000 parts and some watches have up to 2,826 parts. Many topics in science and management find several and suitable examples in watches.

There used to be about 15,000 watch manufacturing companies in the world, but the number has almost halved now. Many persons lost employment and many who used to run watch sales and repairs shops lost their livelihood. At present, the global watch market size is $100 billion. There are basic watches sold at $1 to most expensive watches at $30 million. Switzerland, Japan, UK, US, India, and China are known to have many watch manufacturers. Australia and African countries have low volume of watch manufacturing. About 25% of total watches manufactured in Switzerland are exported to USA. The recent tariff decisions of USA may severely impact this market pattern. China has its dominance in this space too. It has about 60% global market share and supplies many parts to most of the major watch manufacturers around the world. In value terms, Hong Kong is the biggest market for watches with close to 15% global market which is due to low duties and allegedly shadow markets.

Ever since mobile phones became popular and particularly since year 2000, the market dynamics of wrist watches underwent interesting changes. The basic watches lost huge market share to other watch types. Luxury and fashion watches hardly had any negative impact. Meanwhile, the smartwatches and sports watches evolved and have been increasing their market shares. However, in volume sense, basic watches still have a share of 45%, whereas fashion and luxury watches have 40%, and smartwatches and sports watches constitute about 15%.

Watches are among the top items being smuggled. Premium watches are among the most expensive wearables. The most popular items used in bribery are expensive watches. Watches are part of many film stories around the world. Close shots of expensive watches are used to convey richness of the characters. Watches are part of high-end fashion industry. Many celebrities including Richard Branson, Elon Musk, John Mayer, Tom Cruise, Bradley Cooper, Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra, Emma Watson, Angelina Jolie, etc. are known for their watches collection or for flaunting their expensive watches.

Wrist watches have an important chapter in every life and every family has a story related to wristwatch. For millions of persons, it is one watch for one life. Many persons purchase wristwatch with first earning and feel proud of the possession. For some it is a style statement and a matter of confidence. For thousands, watches are friends to spend long time watching the operation of the hands or the parts. For many couples, wearing the gifted watch gives the comfort of togetherness. In many families, when a child graduates an important standard or crosses an important stage in life, it is a practice to gift a wristwatch. For millions of persons, watches of their parents are memories and either the watches or the memories or both are preserved and cherished for generations. Someway or the other, a wristwatch would continue as a wonderful nostalgic wistful warmth.

Disclaimer:

Dr. Kishore Nuthalapati is an Economist and a Corporate Finance Professional. Dr. Kishore is serving as the CFO of BEKEM Infra Projects Pvt Ltd, Hyderabad, India. Views are his personal and do not reflect those of any of the organizations he is or was associated with.