Is the industry flooded with too many new, independent, and or micro brands?

I don't mind discovering new and innovative microbrands, but there are some that are just money pits.

I agree if they are in fact innovative

That’s def one way to make lemonade😉

Mechanical watches are a dead technology being dragged along for entertainment by people with too much money... There is nothing "new" worth doing, so variations on a theme is the name of the game.

More choices for the customer increases the likelihood that the customer gets what they actually want. For example, I like the Tudor BB, but I dislike no date watches, and I'm not a huge fan of the snowflake hour hand. CW came along and released the Dune, that had a similar style, while removing the hour hand I disliked and adding a date.

I've only experienced a few that weren't homages and had an interesting design in comparison to what's currently available.

Interestingly a good point about “dead technology”, I’ll concede.

Counter point: more choices means less revenue and lower quality as the same Dollar spend is spread across or divided amongst more brands vying for a piece of the pie, this inherently has to lead to brands not being able to sustain or lower quality and in the end providing a more disheartened experience and actually not giving the consumer what they what as the product is junk, falls apart, and or doesn’t last and leaves a money not well spent taste in the mouth or simply the brand dissolves and can’t support their product.

Competition leads to innovation, or something like that.

Maybe not too many microbrands, but very many homages and copies. There's only so many ways you can slice an onion so it gets tedious after a while. But microbrands or independents that pop out signature designs are what keeps me coming back to places like this to gawk at the diversity in horology.

Your counterpoint is demonstrably not true. Watches today costing $200 from Ali Express are built better than luxury watches from two decades ago.

Options at the lower end of the market force established brands(Seiko, Citizen, Tissot, etc.) to up their game to draw those dollars from new customers entering the market.

People who might have stuck to only cheap quartz get introduced to affordable mechanical watches, which causes some of the to aspire to own more expensive watches. Some of that smaller pool continues to "climb the ladder" of cost, bringing new customers to brands all the way up into the mid-higher priced luxury brands.

The average guy who buys 5-10 watches from Ali express over the span of a couple of years, is unlikely to ever be the guy to spend $5K on a Tudor or Grand Seiko. They exist, but far more people put more money into the lower end of the market, and that money would likely be going to other hobbies if the lower end brands didn't exist.

I think we’re heading towards over saturation, but aren’t there just yet. You can only do so much within a watch’s design.

Sort of, but at what point is it positive.

My rough thought here is that there is a finite amount of “watch brand seed money”. Only so much startup cash, VC, PE, or whatever you want to call it. Due to the high costs of entry to design, manufacture, build, market, distribute and sell a complete watch (not even diving into designing a movement or escapement and R&D), if you spread that finite dollar over many brands, they each get less money to create, be innovativee or competitive with and in the end they either can’t be competitive with the already established brands or they are essentially competing to see who can create a watch the cheapest for the hope of it being different and diverse. Generic often ends up being the cheaper route (think bulk production or mass purchasing power) so the brands end up using the same generic parts be it a case or quality of handset and ironically in the end create a more similar than unique or independent watch.

I think auto racing specifically F1 is a good comparison when I talk about dollar spend. F1 usually runs a similar number of teams every season. Not because they only allow it, but bc it is extremely costly (read difficult) to be competitive

Against the likes of Red Bull or Mercedes and so on. If three new teams combined their dollars and general efforts they could better compete with the established stalwarts and long time competitors in the sport. Heck, NASCAR was created and a set of standards established so that all teams and cars were forced to be the same

So it was essentially left up to the driver and team’s skills. This would be like ending up with a bunch of micro or new independent brands all being the same because it’s competitive.

This all makes sense in my head late at night typing this and to reiterate, this is light hearted and just spurring interesting discussion I hope. 🍻

I’m probably referring to more homage pieces like you mention after reading your post. I must admit, just the other day I was thinking about the diversity in the community and watch world, however I was a bit narrow in only thinking about it from a taste standpoint. Someone could get 10 different Submariners and call it diversity or someone could get 10 different watches and styles from Hublot, Rolex, Seiko, C Ward, to digital, to hand wind to dress to sport and call it diversity.

My sense is the watch purists are being phased out by neo-watch opportunists.

It depends. Do we need more brands that are just sourcing the same components from the same suppliers and making the same watches with slight differences beyond the logo? Of course not.

But new brands that can bring something new to the table? Sure, that’d be great. We need more of those, for sure. I just heard of a brand out of Singapore called Constellar that has a very cool looking dress watch, and another called Hz Watches that’s leaning into quartz with designs that may not be entirely original, but have some promise. One of the writers at Fratello is launching VPC, which has a pretty cool design for its first watch. While none are for me, they all seem like they’re additive to the market, and not redundant. Seeing more of those kind of brands is awesome and welcome.

A lot of junk out there 😳

Would you agree that modern mechanicals are more an art than technology?

The are and have been countless boutique/micro brands around for ages. Most build watches for the passion and to express creative designs. Most are small local shops that never aim to be mass produced. Which is a good thing in my opinion. Watch collecting would be absolutely DEAD if everyone walked around with the same looking watch. This let's us (the consumer) express our stylistic freedoms unhindered.

(Side note) I think we have enough homage brands and don't need any more. They have their roll to play, but oversaturation is never a good thing.

Ah... so the argument you were making was as shallow as I first thought.

It essentially boils down to "I don't like them, so people that do must be getting fooled by marketing, because anyone as smart as me wouldn't like them."

Fair enough if you feel that way...

Indeed, particularly when looking at the higher end of the watch world.

Yes, agree mostly, especially with “homage” brands.

I see micro brands differently too, I think a company like Weiss watches is a perfect level and size micro brand or Anordain to an extent.

I think there are examples of both. Some purely are artistic expression while others combine materials science, engineering, manufacturing and computer aided design and build or new forms of technology in the form of extended wear technologies, shock absorption, water resistance, longer power reserves, indifference to temperature, accuracy, thinness or complications not previously possible and so on

Overall I think there is room for both.

Agreed. I don’t see a MB&F creation as anything but art, albeit wearable art.

But what I was thinking is when something is done extremely well, people tend to say it was artfully done. And if it is artfully done, doesn’t that render the product art?

I suppose there could be a big philosophical debate about that. 🤔

In my opinion, many that are colloquially called micro brands are more of an independent. Of course the are no rigid formats for terms and labels anymore. Ya know what I trying to say?

Absokutley

The bigger picture is, as I have just explained, that a lot of microbrands are nothing special at all. Break them down to their core components and take away the fairy dust that many of them like to liberally sprinkle in their marketing and there's nothing there. The Emperor has no clothes. But, again as I have just explained (so not sure why I'm having to repeat myself?), some people get really carried away with some aspect of a microbrand, or some aspect of a particular model from a microbrand, and that's the attraction.

(Emphasis added)

Isn’t that the case with just about every watch (certainly every mechanical watch)? The story - and how you connect with it - is the almost the entire point. Why else would we buy and proudly wear something obsolete? What are the “core components” of a Submariner that make it so someone has to sit on a waitlist just to pay 2x a Black Bay 58, which you can walk in and buy? It’s marketing, status, story,pixie dust, etc.

Kristian, you make all these snarky replies, but you don't seem to really understand what I'm saying in the first place.

My comment boils down to, some people like microbrands, and some people wouldn't touch them with a bargepole.

You aren't seriously trying to argue that's not the case, are you? That's a rhetorical question, btw. I don't need to keep hearing from you.

It can be the case with watches that aren't microbrands, yes. Some are way more egregious in how they go about things than others. But the point is, when it comes to microbrands, that can't lean on heritage, or a large R&D division, or sponsorships of worthy causes around the globe, or any number of aspects which appeal to watch buyers that the large watch companies can, I find microbrands generally lean into the fairy dust a lot more and, again, some people buy into it... and some people see right through it in seconds.

In an oversaturated market, well managed companies look to differentiate themselves from competitors by offering innovative products, focus on pricing and target audience and amp up marketing. I don’t think it will be different for well run micros in a saturated market. You ask what do micros bring to the table? Plenty. Here’s an even handed review of one of my favorites and it also addresses micro-brand growth. https://www.ablogtowatch.com/hands-on-the-halios-seaforth-iv-the-return-of-the-microbrand-watch-icon/

I say bring them on. Most of the good ones will grow and succeed. Most of the garbage ones will fail. The good ones will have something that makes them good.

Very interesting 👌