"Swiss made" cheat

Lots of discussions on this. As far as I know, Tudor makes all their bracelets in house and are largely fully integrated short of distribution (for now), like Rolex. They have pretty strict and secretive manufacturing processes and I can not see them outsourcing much besides actual materials, which even then they make much of their own (ie steel, gold, etc) in house.

You mentioned Seiko. They have their own manufacturing arm in China with several factories. GS, different story.

There are a lot of brands that are fully Swiss made; Besides Rolex and Tudor; Zenith, Patek, VC, Parmigiani, Moser, perhaps even Oris. Lots of brands. There is even a certification brands can apply for if they want to prove 100% Swiss made. As far as others, it is widely accepted 60% to be Swiss made, while being assembled in Switzerland is the standard, so I do not really feel deceived.

As I mentioned there is a weekly thread on the topic of Swiss made, here is a recent good one.

I suspect not a single brand makes all of their watch pieces in Switzerland.

Swiss made doesn't mean everything is sourced in Switzerland, just the 60% of the value of the watch is made in Switzerland.

Swiss Made is still an indication that the watch is made to a high standard, so it's still matters to me.

I believe its 60% of the watch case and internals, bracelets and straps can be made anywhere and not affect the 60%

In the articles (hodinkee for example) and reviews from the Tudor manufactory, I did not notice any mention that they produce bracelets themselves. I think, for a reason they removed the inscription "swiss made", if it was before.

In this story, as I wrote, I am surprised that Omega and Tudor brands allow themselves to do this, given their price. You are right about Seiko, but at least these factories in China belong to them and they do not order parts on the side. I also doubt about Zenit, but I will look for information. I hope that at least Rolex, AP, Moser, Patek and so on are more honest with customers.

Yeah, I get @DinoZaur's concerns, but like anything it is worth researching and determining what matters. Personally, I realize that most brands, rely on third parties for certain parts. As long as they are honest about it, I really do not mind.

This is very sad to realize. Brands use reduced standards.

Grand Seiko should consider making their bracelets in China.

I feel you OP. I was in this same rabbit hole before learning what I actually produced where. I learned some companies like a very popular micro brand was basically just a catalogue watch company that picked generic designs etc. and didn't really have any true ground up design etc. They have since shown they can make very nice models but their more basic watches (I suspect are still only assembled in Switzerland).

One company I recently dropped $ on blew me away with what they were doing design/engineering/and transparency wise. @HORAGE is an independent in Biel/Bienne. This is taken from their website

"For one to be officially Swiss Made, 60% of production value must be Swiss, while the movement must also be assembled, tested and regulated in Switzerland.

That minimal threshold allows many brands headquartered outside of Switzerland to have “Swiss Made” watches. Our watches far exceed this standard, ranging from 87% to 98% Swiss, and we again operate in the heart of Swiss watchmaking. Our movements are almost entirely Swiss Made, making them reach the 98% Swiss Made valuation.

....  The newer generation timepieces are marked with our hometown of Biel Bienne as over 50% of our movements parts are sourced in town with upwards of an additional 48% coming from partners within a 45 kilometre radius of our production facility."

When it came to packaging for their latest Supersede watches, they made sure that the boxes, included travel case, etc. were also sourced locally. That really spoke to me and I wear the new watch proudly.

HORAGE are great for talking about it so transparently! This is how it should be!

We'll have to search their catalog now)

I hope they never do, they are probably 1 of only a few companies that are completely in house, they even grow their own quartz crystals, make their own boxes, produce their own sapphire crystals, etc

Most customers don't care that much about where the bits and bobs are made, they care that the watch they buy works as promised, and looks good. Hence "Swiss Made" still carrying weight in the wider world.

It's only enthusiasts who dig deeper into this sort of stuff, and get picky about essentially meaningless distinctions.

I would stay tuned for their next release coming soon. Apparently another dive watch is coming out and I hope its using the K2 movement. the micro rotor is so thin and efficient. Apparently 1 hr on the wrist = 10hr of power reserve and it spins so well just from basic movement of your wrist. mines currently running a strong -1.9s/d which beats the hell out of any of my Seiko Sarbs and Tissot's I've owned.

Money makes the world go round…no one should be surprised that companies will take advantage of the rules to make more money.

GS and JLC are my favorite watch maisons. Always wanted a GS but in my perfect life, I'd want to tour the studio in Japan and then commemorate my trip with a GS while in Japan.🍻

There are strict requirements that legally allow a watch to put “Swiss Made” on the dial etc. But, and this is the big But, as long as your watch is designed with patents etc in Switzerland you are good to go. But if you allow Jimmy the meth head to use your designs, patents etc to make your Swiss watch in a bathtub in Coweeta, Georgia then legally he can stick “Swiss Made” on it. This is the reality of today with China and watches, your accountant tells you “Boss our fixed costs per watch is 41% but if we source through China it would be 3% and no one would ever know the difference.” The reality of horology today.

Sounds like an advert for them...

I really don't care if the Swiss outsource some parts. That's not a big deal. Sourcing them from China IS, though. China is not our friend on a global scale. They do want to dominate the world. I do realize that there's no way, unfortunately, to avoid their products, but I'd say if you can intentionally avoid some, that's a good thing.

As to the "Swiss made" and everyone going all gooey in the britches for that, it's marketing. Watches can be made, and made well, anywhere where someone sets his mind to make the best possible watch.

The German brands like GO, Union Glashütte or Nomos are exellent

Finding anything with all parts made in one country these days is pretty much impossible.

I will say it is better now, from a Swiss made standpoint, than what it was a few years ago before the Swiss starting clamping down on Swiss made.

That’s a misconception. Machines are used in parts of the process, but most of them are operated by human hand. The watches themselves are hand-assembled (not hand-made). I know when I purchased my Milgauss a year ago, it stopped working within a day and when I took it back it was sent to Rolex. I got an explanation from their London office apologizing and explaining it was a human error in the assembly of one part of the movement. This surprised me, because like many I had somehow been misinformed to think there were a bunch of R2-D2’s buzzing away in a lab somewhere running the entire show.

https://www.bobswatches.com/rolex-blog/resources/how-a-rolex-watch-is-made.html

https://www.ramsdensjewellery.co.uk/guides/how-rolex-watches-are-made

I was led to believe that the only interaction with human hand was putting movement into case. So much rumour so little facts 😂

Good question and the response is very informative

lol just a customer very pleased with not just the product but the way the team handled the importation and dealing with customs and fedex to get me my watch with no extra cash out of pocket.

I go to the local ADs often that carry everything from Omega, Rolex, Tudor, Cartier, Longines, Blancpain, Zenith, etc. all the time to chat with a friend down there and try on some pieces. I am just not seeing anything with the COMBINATION of engineering, movement, bracelet, finishing, and function on a watch than the supersede for example. Some have great finishing, some have great bracelets, and so forth, but there are a lot of trade offs.

With that being said, if Horage wanted to sponsor me so I can wear their watches around and get paid to do so, they have my email 😂

The biggest problem with the "Swiss Made" branding IMO is the degree to which it's wielded by brands (and many enthusiasts) as a de-facto mark of quality and an alibi for high prices. Think of how many times we read comments and reviews for higher-priced watches from brands like Seiko, Shinola, or Bremont that say things like "for that money, you can get Swiss" as an implication that Swiss watches are inherently of higher quality and value and that watches from the UK, America, or Japan exist only as lower-priced alternatives/compromises.

The reality is that Swiss laws allow so much of the parts and labor to be outsourced that"Swiss Made" has become a marketing method to protect the Swiss watch industry and, ultimately, unfair trade competition in this space. Remember, it's not 60% of the parts and labor that need to be Swiss, it's 60% of their value, and considering the vast disparity in manufacturing and labor costs between China and Switzerland, the price of locally sourcing and installing a hairspring and branded rotor alone could more than constitute 40% of the cost of a movement otherwise made in china. Because Switzerland's laws around this are far more lax than most countries, Swatch and Rolex, etc., can market their watches as being traditionally manufactured in Switzerland with all the old-world craftsmanship, quality, and commensurate labor costs that implies even if the majority of the watch, its bracelet, and its movement were mass-produced in the far-east. Add in the complete lack of any standards about what constitutes an "in house" movement or even what constitutes a "manufacture" (i.e. why do we still pretend that Hamilton or Longines actually "make" anything?) and it paints a larger picture of a government working with its primary export industry to protect it against competition.

For example, If the American FTC's laws were as intentionally vague as the Swiss, many American watch brands would be able to put "Made In USA" on their dials and lean on America's history as a watchmaking center in their marketing, but because the FTC's laws around what can be called American-made are so strict compared to the Swiss, they can't compete on equal footing. Instead, American brands are required to call out the degree to which parts and components originate outside the US. The very same Ronda movement that Shinola is required by law to label "Assembled in Detroit from Swiss and imported parts" is inside watches by TAG and others with "Swiss Made" on the dial and no mention anywhere of those "imported parts." Shinola (and others, such as Weiss, Vero, etc) can't call their watches "American Made" even though they design, assemble, and case watches, assemble and regulate movements, and even print dials in-house. Meanwhile, TAG sells watches with solar-quartz movements made by Citizen (the Aquaracer Solargraph) that can still say "Swiss Made" on the dial and Rolex and Tudor are so deeply hidden behind their classification as a "charity" that there's no way to verify where any of their products or components originate, forcing us to just kinda take their word for it.

As many have pointed out, Seiko does own factories in Malaysia and China, but they tend to be transparent about where their products are made: Cases, bands, and bracelets made in China are clearly labeled as such. Their movements also have the Seiko factory of origin (Japan, Singapore, or Malaysia) clearly engraved on the rotor.

Does any of this inherently determine the quality of a watch (or any product)? Of course not. But it does determine price and perception. The Swiss laws are designed to allow Swiss companies to outsource most of the work to Asia to protect profits while the American laws are designed to force American companies to manufacture domestically if they want to claim their products as Made In USA. Japan is a little more lax than America in this regard, but not much. None of this would matter at all in this hobby if people didn't take the "Swiss Made" mark on the dial as a mark of superiority or crap on brands who are more transparent about their origins (either by their local laws or by their own ethics), but I think it's important that we're at least honest about the alibis that drive our perceptions of value in this hobby. Rant over!

Not your fault — not every actor in this community is operating without bias, and at some point the term ‘mass-produced’ erroneously got conflated with not being hand-made by many as a result. With the numbers Rolex produces, dwarfing several competitors combined, it’s in their interest to streamline the process: what is best achieved by machine (mostly human-operated) is, and what is best achieved by human hand (eg, the movements) is. And everything, from R&D, to jewels, to metallurgy is in-house from scratch; very few brands can lay claim to this. And yes, it’s all Swiss — not that that last point matters much in my opinion. Once you filter out a lot of the misinformation and bs, and stop erroneously attributing shady AD practices to the brand, there’s a lot to love and respect about Rolex.

No my bad it’s easy to believe and repeat something that reinforces your own belief without digging in to see if it’s correct. You’d think I was old enough to remember that 😊

The truth is almost all luxury products everywhere from watches to handbags to shoes are at least partially made in Asia ...sorry to tell you thats the way of the world now...its all about the money .. Personally i still dont mind paying extra for swiss made quality control and assembly ..

You’re on the money about much of this except one, when you mention both Swatch and Rolex as examples of having many parts mass-produced in Asia: Rolex is manufactured across their four factories in Switzerland. There was a time when some bracelets were made in USA and Mexico (and they were transparent about this, some of these vintage bracelets are marked as such), but that’s moved in-house for some time now. Before they switched to Swiss Super-luminova in 2008, they sourced Luminova from Nemoto Japan (and then finally moved to their own proprietary Chromalite lume, produced in-house). The hour and minute hands used to be the only parts sourced externally, not sure if that’s changed, but at this point, in Rolex’s drive to maintain a fully vertically integrated business, the only things that are confirmed to be manufactured in Asia are the watch boxes and hang-tags.

Totally in agreement that geography does not necessarily determine the quality of a product.

Thanks for the info on Rolex--I've heard conflicting things about where their various factories are based (even if they're all owned by Rolex rather than the third-party suppliers many use) and due to the opacity they can operate with as a "foundation" it seems impossible to get a clear and verifiable peek at their supply chain. It doesn't ultimately matter, of course--the quality of their products aren't seriously questioned even by folks who aren't fans of the brand--but with all of the obfuscation that defines both the watch and luxury goods industries at large, it would be great if Rolex was actually making good on the image they project.

https://www.watchpro.com/rolex-boosting-production-with-three-pop-up-manufacturing-facilities/