Watch expert Benjamin Clymer, founder and executive editor of luxury watch site HODINKEE, writing for The Verge:
With Apple Watch, the price differentiation between the entry-level Sport at $349, the standard Apple Watch at $549, and the Edition at $10,000 is about perceived value – what materials are used in the case, bracelet, and straps, but also how much people believe they should be paying for the product. In addition to perceived value, mechanical watches are also priced by human value: how much of the work is done by hand (in many cases using 200-year-old methods). For example, a watchmaker named Philippe Dufour makes just 12 watches per year, alone in his one-room atelier in the mountains of Switzerland. A simple, time-only piece can cost $100,000. Whether the case is gold or platinum, the price of a Philippe Dufour watch remains (roughly) static – you are not paying for materials, you are paying for Mr. Dufour’s time and touch. The Apple Watch has minimal human value, and that is the biggest difference between it and its mechanical counterparts.
Just how much human value can a customer expect from a mechanical watch, relative to a similarly priced Apple Watch? The difference is startling.
I’m linking this excellent piece not because I believe the Apple Watch – or any other smartwatch – competes with mechanical watches; I link to it to illustrate why it does not. No matter how much Ive-narrated gold you encase your smatwatch with, at its core, it’s still just a machine-produced mass-market gadget that will be obsolete only a few years down the line. This is antithetical to what traditional, high-end horology is all about.
As I’ve detailed before, I love watches. I’m not rich, so I buy watches in the ^a‘not150-200 range. However, I dream of one day owning a watch from my favourite watch brand, Officine Panerai (something like this one). This company doesn’t make a lot of watches, and many models are only sold on invitation. It’s the kind of brand where if you have to ask about the price, you can’t afford it. Luckily, the used market is a bit more forgiving.
Buying a watch like this is not something you do with your mind – but with your heart. It’s like buying a beautiful painting or a classic car; something that can eventually be passed down onto your children and become part of the family heritage. That’s either something that appeals to you, or it doesn’t. It will take a long time before smartwatches can achieve that kind of status.
This, however, does not mean the gold Apple Watch models will fail – quite the opposite. I’m only trying to illustrate that high-end mechanical watches and the golden Apple Watch do not really compete with each other; they kind of exist on a plane where money doesn’t matter. It’s a world that us non-rich folk do not understand. A golden Apple Watch will not take the place of a high-end mechanical watch in the same way that someone’s BMW 6 series isn’t taking the place of her classic Jaguar E-Type.
Humblebrag.
First – euros.
Second – 150 to 200
Third – watches
Not rich? Yes you fucking are.
I’m not rich by the standards of the environments of the average OSAlert reader, which are almost all from Europe and the US/Canada.
Thom Holwerda,
I doubt any of us are rich, but it still seems like you have a lot of disposable income to be able to afford those gadgets, no? Do you plan on having kids? We spend close to $23K/year in childcare alone, after that there’s no disposable income left…especially not for frivolous smart-watches from apple or anywhere else!
Edited 2015-03-10 13:47 UTC
Having disposable income and being rich are different things.
Well, it’s all relative, isn’t it?
150-200^a‘not is the sweet spot for quality watches. You get the best materials and the best precision, but not the brands.
You end up buying new ones because you lose or have one stolen every 5 years or so. At least I do.
Backing up Thom, seen from a western european perspective he is not rich.
To put it into scale, a fairly average house in a not too big city here (Denmark) is about ^a‘not200,000. You can live in that with 2 low income wages or 1 slightly above average wage.
Most average people would be able to buy a watch for ^a‘not150-^a‘not200 every month without really feeling it in their budget, other than maybe they might buy less of other “junk”.
Now if someone could do this with the $10,000 apple watch, then they would be rich.
I’ve no issue with people loving watches, and if you’re going to be passionate about something (with the heart rather than the head), it’s probably best for it to be a bit irrational.
But with watches I don’t really get it. The examples in the article — Apple Watch and Officine Panerai alike — both look uninspiring to me, and I feel poorer for not getting it.
Clearly wearing a watch is about making a statement, so I’m curious, and perhaps someone here can fill me in: when you wear one of these watches ($350 Swiss Army, $1500 Tissot, $5000 Rolex) what’s the message you’re intending to give?
For the record, I like the idea of having a computer strapped to my wrist, and also love the genius internal gear mechanisms of analogue watches.
I wear a watch, and don’t feel it’s about making a statement at all. I wear it because I like it, and it’s convenient to be able to check the time when I want to know, without pulling out my phone and pressing buttons. That’s not an entirely new concept, by the way. Pocket watches
As it happens, my daily-wear watch retails in the $1200 range. It was a gift from my ex to replace the $200 watch I’d been wearing, and which had bit the dust. It’s not a statement, it’s a high-quality timepiece that feels good on my wrist and serves a useful purpose. It’s steel, not gold, and I wear it in the inside of my wrist, not showing off the brand. To the rest of the world, it could be a $200 watch or a $5 one. I wear it for me, not for them, and I don’t care what they think of it, if they do at all
Thanks for the upfront reply. I appreciate what you say about a watch being useful, but there’s presumably a reason for not choosing a much cheaper watch with similar functionality?
If it’s not about making a statement it sort of leaves me back where I started, unsure about the motivation. For example, I read through the article but still couldn’t figure out the value of having all of the components built in-house. The suggestion from the article is that it’s ‘aspirational’, which I didn’t find very satisfactory.
I don’t mean to be dismissive, and perhaps “making a statement” is too strong. Unless there are very personal reasons (e.g. in your case as a gift), it still sounds like it has something to do with identity.
[Edit: typo]
Edited 2015-03-10 15:11 UTC
I enjoyed reading your questions and the responses. Since I know very little about watches myself, I found the r/Watches FAQ to be an interesting read:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Watches/wiki/faq
Whenever I see ‘FAQ’ I always expect the worst (it’s usually a list of questions someone wishes other people would occasionally ask!).
This one was really helpful though, especially “Why do some watches cost so much?”. Thank you!
The problem here is that you’re trying to make sense of something where there is no sense involved. People buy these things for status, whether they like to admit it or not. As Thom said when comparing a smartwatch to a mechanical one:
It will take a long time before smartwatches can achieve that kind of status.
Same reason why they purchase overpriced cars and other such nonsense, trying to impress others. If you’re not interested in any of that, just buy a $40 Timex (which has at least 5x the functionality of any of these mechanical watches) and replace it every 5-10 years.
Edited 2015-03-10 16:20 UTC
I think you’re right: I’m just trying to find logic where there isn’t any. I don’t know why I draw such a blank with this though. For myself, when buying a phone or laptop, I definitely factor in how others might view it, so it’s not like I lack vanity. Somehow I struggle to make the same judgement with watches.
Actually, I am even more baffled by it with computers and phones than I am watches. ESPECIALLY with desktop computers. Why anyone would give a shit about the cosmetics of a ‘beige box’ that usually sits on the floor and out of sight is something I’ll probably never understand. Most aspects of human stupidity I can overlook, but this one REALLY bothers me for some reason …
Maybe because watches in general, and these luxury ones in particular, really only does one thing: keep time. “Unfortunately” this is a problem that we have sufficiently solved and made affordable a long time ago so spending crazy amounts of money on it seems not all that smart.
Maybe the message is “I’m so rich that I can afford to ignore the last 100 years of technical advances in time keeping”.
This all somehow reminds me of a cartoon titled “When status backfires” that I read a long time ago:
Person A: My shirt costs more than you pay in rent for a whole year.
Person B: That’s because you’re an idiot.
Edited 2015-03-11 03:22 UTC
Perhaps what I am going to say is a bit sexist.
Women buy jewels. My mother and my sisters have a lot of brazalets, rings necklaces. I have a ring from I was a child, a silver chain necklace and little more.
Watches are fashionable accesories for men more than for women.
That being said the last two watches I bought were a 150^a‘not G-Shock six years ago and a 5^a‘not one (for things like goint to the beach, swimming pool,etc).
I don^A't care very much about fashion or if my phone looks like shit but I like wearing a good watch on my wrist.
Edited 2015-03-11 09:33 UTC
A mechanical watch of great value implies that you are a stable person that thinks about the future. It’s not always a case of – oh look, I’m so filthy rich. Not all people that buy expensive watches are millionaires, just like a lot of average people buy expensive jewelry.
Thanks for that JAlexoid, that’s exactly the sort of thing I was wondering about. By the way, by mentioning prices I didn’t mean to imply it was just showing off about wealth. It’s just that price was how they were differentiated in the original article.
Stability and forward looking makes sense. I thought it might also be something to do with looking professional (e.g. ascribing importance to good timekeeping), but no-one mentioned that yet!
Holy crap what a load of rubbish. It’s like saying having an expensive necklace implies that you’re a stable person who thinks about the future. It implies no such thing whatsoever. All it means is that you have an expensive watch that you like for some reason.
If an apple watch lithium ion battery lasts 2 days now, within 4 years it will last 1 day. Not long after, it won’t last 1 day, and that will the end of that apple watch. Disposable culture.
And you can’t replace it.
If the gold iWatch comes with a lifetime battery replacement service – then it just might be worth $10000
While I agree that the Apple Watch (any model) does not compete directly with mechanical watches, both are competing for ONE place on the wrist.
I think that in 5 years, the Apple Watch (and other smart watches) will be so useful in so many uses cases that even watch lovers may prefer to wear a smart watch rather than a mechanical watch most of the time.
And most watch lovers are not going to buy a Apple Watch Edition: the stainless Apple Watch is what wealthy people will choose. Only the richest will buy the Edition, because they can.
Well, it’s the same world where someone pays $100k for a handbag so it’s really a mindset I can live happily without.
Edited 2015-03-11 02:56 UTC
Ha! I first read that as $100 and thought: yeah that is pretty expensive for a bag.
The Apple watch (and all smart watches) are nothing more than over glorified digital devices. Like all digitals, they are disposable. In my view the only reason for the high end models is for the ego of the 1%. “Watch me burn 10,000 dollars.”
So they’re exactly like any other excessively expensive watch, only with more features.
I always find very funny in discussions about status and status-signalling items those who insist “I don’t care about status”.
Yes, you do care, you just tried to show us you are holier than the rest of us.
They care so much about not caring about status that “I don’t care about status” has become status in itself.
All this stuff about hand made watches is total BS.
No individual watchmaker has made a complete watch since the early 1700s. [Even the very rarest of handmade watches use a large number of mass produced components such as mainsprings and bearing jewels.]
Virtually every watch made since the 1850s has involved some sort of production line.
All watches under $100K are semi-mass produced.
Rolex makes nearly a million watches per year on automated production lines.
Many premium brands including Omega, Panerai, IWC and Tudor use inexpensive mass produced ETA movements made by Swatch.
Back in the early 70s a Rolex Submariner watch was far cheaper than a LED Pulsar digital watch. [They were made from solid 14K gold in Switzerland by Hamilton. The brand was later sold to Seiko.]
Edited 2015-03-12 09:08 UTC
Officine Panerai is just one of dozens of “phoenix” brands that went broke in the 1970s and was later reborn under Swatch ownership.
Panerai were (in)famous for making very crude bronze dive watches fitted with cheap pocket watch movements. Now they make massively overpriced watches with cheap mass-produced ETA movements (made by Swatch).