Correction overdue?

It’s like anything else. I like bikes and the conversations over there are similar. High end bikes are super pricey and the ‘entry level’ bikes are a significant investment for a beginner. The thing is everything gets pricier and they’ll keep pushing the limits. Even the Chinese products are becoming expensive and offer a competitive quality after they were considered the cheaper alternative threat to the traditional luxury options. I don’t have the answers but I don’t foresee a market crisis anytime soon. I’m eyeing my next, more expensive watch - and bike. I know many of us are. Let it burn.

Rich people are going to continue to buy watches.

This is true . . . And yet luxury brands aren’t stupid and realize that a good chunk of their sales aren’t coming from the super rich. The middle and particularly upper middle classes have always been a key part of luxury business models. Maybe they aren’t buying the top end, but they are buying the lower and mid-tiers, the marketed icons . . . The must haves that are aspirational but still attainable with effort. And not to mention that the financial realities for younger millennials and Gen Z is just dramatically different bc the world is different. These people who might aspire to own certain watches one day simply aren’t following the same career or financial trajectories as their parents bc that world is quickly fading. The fact that some companies keep raising prices seems very short sighted. Maybe I’m wrong here, but there has to be a limit where collectors or would be collectors just throw their hands up and say “it’s just not worth it . . . You’ve made it impossible”

Great video. Thanks for sharing. This just pushes me even more to the preowned / grey market for my purchases over a certain price point. These markets even things out for the most part.

This man talks great sense & there's no doubt in my mind that some of the heritage brands are going to suffer further down the line due to their actions today. As the reviewer says, which I happen to agree strongly with, when the consumer's perception of value changes & the price goes beyond what they're prepared to pay, they lose interest.

The IWC Ingenieur is for me a perfect example of where I am with the recent slew of new models/upgraded existing launched. The Ingenieur in its new iteration is a watch I would absolutely love to own, I think it's near perfection in a dress/sports watch. Can I afford to buy the stainless steel model? Yes, I can. Do I want to pay £10,500 for it? Absolutely not.

No matter your financial position, I think we all have a price that we just don't feel comfortable with spending that amount on an item that we can buy elsewhere for significantly less, albeit probably a lesser product. £10,000+ is the Rubicon for me that the IWC Ingenieur has crossed & therefore it's fallen off my radar completely. The only way in which I will own this watch is when it's a few years old & the price asked comes down to somewhere in the £7,000-£8,000 range, until then it doesn't exist.

My guess is we’ll see a few things in the coming years:

• For anything already released, there’ll be a price bump of a few percent in the first couple months (like Rolex has already done). Otherwise, prices will be fairly level for most brands. No one will lower their list prices on anything already released.

• Some brands will see softening sales as a mandate to go further up market and trade volume for price. We’ll probably also see a ton more “special editions” in an effort to juice sales with hype. To use IWC as an example, this would mean more products launched in the Ingenieur price range, more Ceratanium models, more AMG models. Most will be unsuccessful with these approaches, and will find themselves squeezed, ultimately. We’ll have a lot of executive turnover at the end of 2024 and into 2025/26 due to failed pricing strategies.

• Others will start offering “value” models and lines. In IWC parlance, more Spitfires, more Mark XX-prices models. Bremont’s new CEO has publicly said he wants the brand to be lower in price with its new models, for example. Assuming we don’t just fall into recession globally (everyone is screwed if that happens, but it depends who you ask if that’ll happen) these brands will tend to find more success, as their prices are more in line with expectations.

• The days of getting a 20% discount at an AD without any effort will return. Already, at 2 different Omega AD’s in the fall, I was offered 10% off without asking on several models I tried on. List prices won’t go down, but effective retail prices will.

• Consolidation comes for more brands. Some are going to be in a really weak position in the next year or so in their inability to react properly to changing market conditions, and will get sucked up by private equity funds or PE-backed companies like Breitling. It’s going to be weird and unsettling.

I've watched that video today and it was a grwat conclusion about the current situation.

I'm also aware about the heavy price increase as all of us do.

I think the most problem for us is, that we are focused on the old established swiss brands and have too high expectations on a watch.

For example the old Seiko 5 line was long time standard. Rattly bracelet, mineral glas, no hacking, no handwind, few little hours power reserve, pressed clasp. But for 80 bucks only.

To be fair most Rolex models were quite similar till the 90s.

Now we want everything on premium without paying premium prices but also iconic models from brands with heritage.

On the other hand when Stakeholders (swiss watch brands) are leaving a market (for affordable watches) they will always leave a gap behind which will be filled by other/new brands.

It's on us to accept this and give these brands a chance and or accepting that some brands have no premium specs. But we are often afraid thst someone could criticize our watches for having no sapphire or 5ATM only.

I see also that other established old brands which were know for cheap watches do also atart to offer better quality and design. Of course for more money but still reasonable.

In future we should look more for micro brands instead of big brands, german watches instead of swiss, Orient instead of Seiko.

I'm also betting on discounts are coming back. It's very annoying in our "economy" that it seems to be impossible to lower prices once they are raised tremendously.

Wise words. Micro brands are offering often times similar specs but lack (by definition) heritage. Maybe with more focus on value the attention to heritage will decrease.

Yeah, the problem with cutting list prices directly is the signal it sends customers. Customers will take it as a sign that the watches aren’t worth as much, and that the company doesn’t have confidence in their product.

It’ll also irritate existing customers. You saw this with Tesla when they cut prices on Model 3’s: a lot of customers were pissed off that they could’ve saved thousands of dollars by waiting a few weeks, and that their car was worth less if they wanted to sell. You see this pretty much every time a mainstream automaker issues new large public rebates, too.

That’d be the case with luxury watches if IWC, JLC, or Omega cut prices, but even more so (since they’re not exactly essential): secondary market prices will drop commensurately with any price reduction. WatchCrunch would be unbearable for a few weeks with people whining about how much less their Seamaster, Reverso, or Ingenieur was worth due to the (hypothetical) price cuts.

With manufacturer-funded discounts at AD’s, it’s not the same, as it’s not public. Sure, cognoscenti will know that it’s easy to get a discount on a watch, but the general sense of value won’t necessarily be degraded.

That's the problem with discounts in my opinion. They are shady and not equally accessible to everyone. But of course I see the argument. Some people are too obsessed with value. Interestingly the many people who are pushed out of the market by price hikes are sacrificed as potential customers happily over the fear of pissing of old customers who might have overspend.