Why do we wear Watches? Part 2

Final Chapter

The early adapter of wristwatches were extraordinary women and men, pathfinders who took watches with them to the depth of the sea, broke car racing records, went to the moon, orbited the Earth, scaled the highest mountain peaks, took watches to the frozen Antarctic, faced the unchartered seas, these were the true pioneers, risk-takers, innovators who have helped to shape the view of the world. This was followed by the sports fraternity which relied heavily on timing and yes then there was cinema, even 007 Bond relied on his watch to surviving bad guys, then there were businessmen, statesmen, Head of States, and the list continues. This buildup of non-paid endorsers would leave a strong mark on generations to come.

Ask any wearer of a mechanical watch about her, his watch and you will spark a passionate conversation. You will talk about the brand, its history, story, romance, case diameter, functions, oscillations per hour, and so on. Try building some conversation on smartwatches and hope it goes beyond “How many circles you closed today”. It's delightful, but not enough to build a sustainable chat on smart gadgets. We can go on and construct various other hypotheses and can even invite imaginary Freud to take us within the realm of our inner selves, but we leave it for later.

Thanks to Pebble which started the new revolution, Fitbit which tried taking on the Goliath, Apple the greatest disruptor as of now, and many other visionary brands, people across the world are wearing smartwatches and wearable devices. Moreover, its seen as a lifestyle gadget with the counting of steps, breathing pattern, workouts, heart rate, and so on, with every new update more features are added. Ask a wearer of a smartwatch and this is what you will hear, “health and wellbeing”, which is great. Now the mechanical watches don’t serve any of this purpose, both automatic and winding watches are things of the past, have a daily deviation of time, and are not as accurate as a smartwatch, agreed.

Let’s take 2019 as a base year, the revenue of Apple stood at USD 260.17 billion, in the same year, the Swiss watch industry exported watches worth USD 24.1 billion, Yes! that’s the collective Swiss Watch industry. What does it tell us, the mechanical watch industry is a niche, and even at USD 24.1 billion it’s a fraction of Apple’s revenue and we are not considering the global smartwatch industry here, we delve deeper and ask what it means to watch enthusiasts and specifically to the Swiss watch industry? Swiss mechanical watches are going to be in business for a long time, thanks to the mythical, brands, watches, centuries of longstanding heritage, consumer sentiments, traditional values, and fashionably old timekeeping, either smart fraternity or Apple are not going to build mechanical watches any time soon, it’s a genre world apart and the only common factor is “Time”.

C.     ROLEX VINTAGE ADVERTISEMENT

If you travel back to the not-so-distant past, to an age when the basic habits of childhood are formed, the age of innocence. This is the time when major imprints of our personality, persona, and behaviors take shape. One of the memories embedded deep into our subconscious is that of the wristwatch worn by our parents, older siblings, cousins, neighbors, we move to school and watches were on teachers’ wrists, the sports coach, classmates and before we realized, watches had become part of something which we owned or wanted to own but couldn’t define, it was just there. Eventually, most of us ended up possessing the first wristwatch, at this point, the brands didn’t matter, as long you had a cool wristwatch, now if you were a pre or 70’s kid then probably it was a manual or automatic version, 80’s kids had quartz and 2010’s onwards have smartwatches.

D. SMITH’S TIMEPIECES VINTAGE ADVERTISEMENT

Watches followed you in college, the first job and by the time you realized you had a solid history of 20 plus years of wearing watches. This has been building up slowly unrealizing just like Levi’s jeans, Nike sneakers, and Sony Walkman, if you have any doubt then open your treasure chest and you will find one of this stuff, unknowingly watches became part of our identity. Then you moved up in ranks and occasionally you will buy a Swiss luxury timepiece depending upon the paycheck and the glory you seek.

When we wear a mechanical watch, we wear a part of history, in days of being digital when even relationships have gone online, the mechanical tick of your watch keeps reminding us that old values are still in place, no matter how modern or futurist we have become, the mechanical watch is a secret bridge to our past.

Historically, the watch lovers, aficionados, collectors had always existed in small pockets all over the world but then the world wasn’t the global village it has become now.

Traditionally people would visit the local retailer and chat with the store owners, salespeople and will leave the store with a brochure, catalog, and at times with the watch. The so-called watch bug was still very much there but didn’t have had the global reach.

 Slowly internet was picking up speed and connectivity, the global outreach was still due. By the mid-’90s net got slightly better, prices of desktop computers started easing, the internet cafes popped up in each neighborhood. Watch sites, blogs started cropping up, by 2000s and beyond people had higher reach to www, thanks to scaling up of its speed, more web sites, blogs came up, people were sharing ideas on movements, historical references, tradition, story and it kept on beefing up, the global watches community finally was coming of age.

F. SONY WALKMAN VINTAGE ADVERTIMENT 

The sun of social media finally dawned upon us, and instantly one had 5000 friends on Facebook. Then came the mothership AKA “Instagram” which single-handedly created so much content that Insta audience which earlier was indifferent to watches started taking notice, this was a segment of people who earlier were not into watches and now wanted to be a part of this amazing community. Watches were not elegant or cool anymore but became “Obsessively Desirable”.

The Instagram community churned out thousands of watch posts per day. People overnight became Influencers and Watch Guru. A parallel industry came into being, and for the first time, the position of serious journalists on horology was dented. New and upcoming brands with great ideas, minuscule marketing, and communication budgets arrived on Instagram and many became an overnight success. The depth and intensity of Instagram’s watch community reach are yet to be determined but taking an educated guess, it touched a few hundred million people, and if a tiny percentage of a few hundred million wants to own a Swiss-made watch, then its globally sold out, considering its small production.

Now, some people think that watches are a tool of investment and as Warrant Buffet talked about “Value investing” they instead chose “speculative investing”, I can’t recall any official site of a watch brand calling its watches as investment tools. Ironically, thanks to auction houses and their clever sales technique, the emergence of flippers, profit makers, parallel market, the momentum is still on.

 Though auction results are mostly positive for few brands and only time will tell the impact on long-term results. Slowly the auction houses are running out of old quality watches, and are inventing terms like Holy Grail watch, Unicorn watch, and so on to attract new buyers, meaning more speculation.

For the many admirers of horology, watches are to be worn, looked at, admired, the dial, the running of chronograph counter, moon phases with almost perfect cycles, the calendars which are manmade marvels, the strike of a minute repeater, the beautiful cases. Discussion on fabled references and calibers, just like the admiration of collecting Art and cars.

The passion of collecting watches is growing, remove few adventures who think watches are speculating objects and on par with Apple shares, majority of us wear watches for the love of it, for the mystery of bygone ages, and the days of romance and chivalry.

So why do we wear watches?

Notes:

A&B. For the revenue, the year 2019 was taken as base as 2020 was challenging for luxury retail. We keep in mind that the revenue of Apple is the total turnover of its product line, offerings and not exclusive to o Apple watches, though the total market capitalization of smart products from all brands offering was also not considered. Only the turnover of the Swiss watch industry has been taken as the base, we have not considered other markets like the USA, Japan, etc.

F. For ones who remember the launch of Sony Walkman in 1979, it was a revolution which took the world by its frenzy, suddenly, each genre of age group had something personal, they could finally get lost in their own world while being in-crowd, the smart gadgets have aptly replicated the same pattern.

C. Rolex was among the most visionary watch brand which capitalized on ace marketing, the watches were built to survive the harshest conditions, many early pioneers wore Rolex as it hardly failed them.

APPENDIX:

A.     statista. 2021. Apple revenue. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/265125/total-net-sales-of-apple-since-2004/. [Accessed 7 February 2021].

APPLE REVENUE 2019 AT USD 260.17 BILLION USD

B. www.fhs.swiss. 2021. No page title. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.fhs.swiss/file/59/Watchmaking_2019.pdf. [Accessed 08 February 2021].

A.     Swiss Watch Exports 2019

C. Famous Vintage Rolex Ads Throughout History. 2021. Famous Vintage Rolex Ads Throughout History. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.bobswatches.com/watch-resources/vintage-rolex-ads-the-history-and-heritage-of-rolex. [Accessed 08 February 2021].

D. Gentleman's Jotter. 2021. Collecting: Smiths timepieces – Best of British – Gentleman's Jotter. [ONLINE] Available at: https://gentlemansjotter.com/2018/07/09/collecting-smiths-timekeepers-made-in-great-britain/. [Accessed 08 February 2021].

 EPocket-lint. 2021. Remember these? The most iconic computing print ads of all time. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.pocket-lint.com/laptops/news/148775-the-most-iconic-computer-adverts-of-all-time. [Accessed 09 February 2021].

E. SINCLAIR POCKET CALCULATOR VINTAGE ADVERTISEMENT

F. Thrifty Dreams. 2021. Oh What Was : The Walkman — Thrifty Dreams. [ONLINE] Available at: https://thriftydreams.com/online-thrift-tips-shop-journal/2017/8/24/oh-what-was-the-walkman. [Accessed 08 February 2021].

G. OLD SNEAKER POSTERS. 2021. Nike “MAN VS MACHINE.” | OLD SNEAKER POSTERS. [ONLINE] Available at: https://oldposter.sneakerlab.net/nike/nike-man-vs-machine-1978-1979-20141221.html. [Accessed 08 February 2021].

G. Nike 1975-76 Ad- Man v/s Machine