Do we have a WatchCrunch Echo Chamber?

Why would you assume a message board for watch nerds would be representative of the overall market?

This is a more specialized group than even the Reddit boards because we signed up for a site specifically about watches. It's not a controlled study.

I wonder how it might look if you limited the graph to just micro brands.

Swatch group is just killin' it!

Omega among the watch nerds, Longines and Tissot riding the trend in the middle, and Swatch among the "uninitiated"

Off the cuff take. Statistical bias. Hard to believe the crunch membership accurately reflects the watch buying population. No adjustment for serial posters.

Also: "Units sold" is not really an appropriate metric here considering how vastly price can vary between say, a Swatch and an AP.

Well, obviously, this isn't a controlled study. Rather, this is an interesting look, given the data we have available at how this community compares to the rest of the world.

I thought about that too, but there's no way to get microbrands to disclose their sales volumes, so we're left with the Morgan Stanley report. Noticeably absent because of that Swiss industry limitation are the Japanese brands.

I mean - you're right, Watchcrunch is not the rest of the world, otherwise the whole planet would be full of totally studly geniuses. 😉

We collectors and enthusiasts are such a small percentage of watch sales - almost insignificant. We might inform watch companies on what might have mass appeal - but what sales in the malls and luxury jewelers/ADs informs much more on what type of watches do best with each market segment.

It is an appropriate metric for the question I wanted to explore, which was: what is the relationship between how often a brand is discussed, versus how often people buy those watches?

I wasn't interested in the relationship between how much people spend. Units sold was a deliberate choice for the question I was thinking about. You're welcome to create your own charts based on the data you want to include.

Very interesting.

I mean - I thought you were inviting conversation about your chart?

I guess I'm just confused by your use of the term 'echo chamber' like, I agree that the conversations here are not congruent with the amount of units sold, but I don't think that's necessarily because this is a community that is insulated to the point of not receiving outside influence.

I am interested in your chart though! Certainly not trying to be negative, I just thought you were starting a dialogue.

The tell is use of the term hyped. It implies some sort of exaggeration or embellishment about Tudor, which was not the intention of the OP I think.

If you graph Toyota Supra vs base model Corolla reporting vs. number of units sold, you’d likely get a similar result. 🤷

Actually kinda impressive how many Rolexs they move.

Really fun idea to plot it all out. Not sure why there’s an assumption here that you’re spinning this into a scientific test, feels more like a “here’s a thing I’ve done, look!” which I’m always on board with, thanks for putting the effort into making this.

Omega doesn’t surprise me there actually. It’s probably the watch brand I see the least of the top brands out in London. Rolex and GShock are everywhere. On the tube, I’m seeing the Tissot PRX on a lot of fellas in their 20s, probably more than any other specific watch!

Great perspective, thanks for your time on this. Thought provoking for sure.

I guess generally, as the money gets more serious, the market becomes more discerning (though Hublot proves this isn’t always the case).

I think the quiet stars of the show are Longines and Tissot. Balancing price with geek-approval.

Another fun fact (not a rationale for the results) is that a lot of us with knowledge about watches will be more confident in buying pre-owned - so funnily, the watch nerds are not even contributing as much as the general public to these sales figures.

The answer to that is likely quite complex. But i’m wondering if Tudor sales dropped 4% relative to all watch sales or just in pure numbers? (Emphasis for clarity.)

Thank you for this interesting chart and your time and effort 😇🙏👍

Lol, that’s a generalization and a half. Speak for yourself and your circle buddy.

Wouldn’t this data would be skewed unless it was certain that every post would be tagged, and that individual frequent posters were adjusted for? But I LOVE a good statistical analysis 👏

With Wilsdorf wares rammed down our throats continuously and constantly by the watch media it's not surprising they're the most talked about & the most sold..🐑

Maybe I missed it but how did you pull the data on number of WC posts. Really interested to learn. Web scrapping is new to me.

All this conversation got me to thinking… what percentage of posts on WC are hashtagged, and hashtagged correctly? I would suspect that a great deal of WRUW posts are not and would be surprised if it were greater than 20%. What additional value could Max derive from improving that metric? That would eventually tap out, right? Then you gotta figure an AI process of auto-identification would/should be applied. Then what is that data worth to the various brands?

Defensive bluster to deflect criticism not even target at you?

To paraphrase Shakespeare;

The poster doth protest too much, methinks.

Interesting information. FWIW, on any given day I might wear a vintage Swatch or a vintage Rolex, or a new Swatch or a new Rolex. I just like watches. I made this post in reference to one of the earlier posters differentiating the wearers of either of those brands. I own and wear all of the above and love them all.

Thanks for sharing. Interesting to see. It does give one some pause as to what to derive from it…. It seems clear one would not want to conflate the fact that one buys something with the desire to talk about it, but rather whether some watch is more intriguing or interesting might weight heavier against something more common.

This can kind of already been said, but I would like to see this dataset organized in a few ways:

1. Remove outliers (swatch) - This would give a bit more visibility into the rest of the brands.

2. Microbrands - Remove major players to see how the conversations on WC correlate to sales. Ideally this would be taking out Omega, Tudor, Rolex, Swatch, and “maybe” a few others to start. Then start removing more niche larger brands (AP, PF, etc). Maybe there would be some correlations.

3. Linear Regression - I will just leave that here for the other geeks who are nerds too.

#geek #nerd

I guess in hindsight the trendline would have been useful just to highlight the degree to which Omega/Tudor deviate.

re: Microbrands— the X axis is units sold, and I don't think Baltic would take my call and disclose their sales data to me.

First of all…this is great.

And you’re right…Baltic isn’t on the radar! 😂