All is not rosy in the Swiss mountain valleys

[wls1971]

Is a re-run of the dark days of the 70's about to unfold on the Swiss, who will save them now Swatch ?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-25/richemont-cuts-send-shockwaves-from-geneva-to-mountain-valleys

[SSTEEL]

Just been reading that with my morning coffee.  Heard some whispers about it a little while back too.

[clockboy]

I have written a lot on this subject in this forum ,other forums & also had a article published. As I predicted and many who have been in the industry for a long time also predicted this. Unfortunately this was ignored & the Swiss are beginning to pay the price. Instead of spending a lot of time and lots of money in the courts defending a non sensical policy of non supply of parts they should have been developing a standard,replaceable smart watch unit. This would have maintained their dominant position in the horological world.

[Cad101]

Yes supply and demand plays a big part in this there's only so many £100,000 watches you can sell. As usual the company,s are run on profit. Lets be greedy lets screw everyone who was nice enough to buy one of our watches by charging them an arm and a leg and only allow them to be repaired at approved service centers. Did i read somewhere that a group of watchmakers had already had the idea of a smart movement which could be tweaked to include different complications or did i dream it.

[wls1971]

6 hours ago, clockboy said:

" they should have been developing a standard,replaceable smart watch unit. This would have maintained their dominant position in the horological world"

The proof of this is that Tag Heuer  part of the LVMH group have invested in smart watches are reaping the benifits from this and had at one stage to double production of their connected smart watch, it comes in at price point acceptable to the younger end of the watch buying spectrum and is still considered a luxury item as a result LVMH has seen a 6% rise in profits on last year.

Edited November 29, 2016 by wls1971