If the appearance of the 12-foot-tall skeletons at Home Depot hadn’t already tipped you off, the fall holidays are right around the corner. For those more focused on horological hardware than the nuts-and-bolts variety, August 2024 had its own hints that spend-frenzy Q4 was nigh. While plenty of brands launched watches last month, the real headlines were at Geneva Watch Days with brands like Bulgari, Frederique Constant, and Doxa announcing new pieces as part of the watch world’s second-biggest annual show. Meanwhile, non-participant Longines preempted the event with its own exciting launch of the titanium Zulu Time and Urwerk blew everyone away with a special “Blackbird” watch. Beyond the new releases, the horological news cycle picked up steam with Chanel taking a surprise stake in a beloved brand and GPHG announcing award nominees for 2024. On the editorial side, both aBlogtoWatch founder Ariel Adams and editor-at-large David Bredan shared their thoughts on trends in watch pricing. Let’s get to it!
Geneva Watch Days 2024: A Challenger Appears?
Underway at time of writing, the 2024 edition of Geneva Watch Days has shown that the watch world’s appetite is still surprisingly hearty. The general excitement from fans and cadence of releases from brands like Breitling, Alpina, and Oris hints that from an industry tradeshow perspective, the post-Baselworld landscape doesn’t wholly belong to Watches & Wonders. While the headlines this week are around specific watch releases (Jacob & Co.’s Oil Pump deserves a closer look) the overall story is that competing shows mean good news for collectors who don’t want to wait 12 months between launch-a-paloozas.
Source: aBlogtoWatch
Tracking The Stars: Rounding Up The Hottest Watches For The 2024 Olympics
Over at Watchonista, Rhonda Riche’s comprehensive roundup of the watches worn by Olympians in Paris should put to bed any burning questions about who wore what while winning medals this summer. If you found yourself rewinding the broadcast and squinting at the screen to ID watches, just know that whatever you’re looking at, it was probably an Omega. The official timekeeper of the Olympics extended its contract with the IOC until 2032, just in time to celebrate 100 years of Omega at the Summer Games. And just as the Bienne-based manufacture soft-launched the white dial Speedy on Daniel Craig’s wrist in November 2023, Omega ran it back, giving Bond another unreleased piece to wear. This time, it was a mysterious black-dialed Seamaster 300M. And while Noah Lyle’s Speedmaster stole the show during his 100m gold medal run, our favorite moment was U.S. tennis star, Tommy Paul’s unlikely choice of wrist gear: a De Bethune.
Source: Watchonista
Hands-On Debut: Longines Spirit Zulu Time Titanium Watch
Had Longines launched this watch last month, it likely would have been the biggest headline during a very sleepy July. While it’s not technically the first time the Zulu Time has appeared in titanium (Hodinkee had a 500-piece limited-edition collab last December) it is the first time the popular 39mm flyer GMT has been widely available in lightweight construction. Senior Editor Sean Lorentzen goes hands-on with the matte black dialed piece, explaining exactly why this is the watch collectors have been calling for in recent years.
Source: aBlogtoWatch
Haute News: Chanel Takes A 25% Strategic Stake In MB&F
Chanel made two surprising decisions this month. One was to make this thing. The other was to take on a 25% stake in independent brand MB&F. Until a few weeks ago, Maximilian Büsser & Friends belonged fully to Max and his business partner, Serge Kriknoc but with the extremely well-capitalized Chanel taking a quarter share of the operation, it seems that as long as Büsser and Kriknoc remain aligned, it ought to be business as usual for the collector darling. Also encouraging: Chanel is independent too, operating outside the conglomerate fray of Kering, LVMH, Richemont, PPR, Prada, and others.
Source: Haute Time
Latest Trends In The Watch Market From The Bezel Report
Calling to mind the can’t-look-away dating insights published from time to time by Tinder, the Bezel Report is fun (and at times concerning) reading. Presented in a slick, easy-to-read format, it helps explain why that watch you’ve had listed for 9 months hasn’t generated a single inquiry. Connecting watches with the people who love them, Bezel has found quick success in a crowded field of pre-owned watch retail and its readable data reveals that the watch archetype most in demand are 41mm black dial pieces sold in 2021. Remind you of anything?
Source: aBlogtoWatch
Swatch Group Half-Year 2024 Results
Continuing the insights into the inner machinations of the watch biz, the folks over at SJX helpfully break down the most recent financial stats from the behemoth Swatch group. While overall revenues of CHF 3.44 billion might sound like a lot, it represents a 70% plunge in terms of operating profit from one year ago. Swatch Group blames a steep drop-off in demand in China but also reminds concerned readers that amidst softening demand, it did not make layoffs. It’s in line with the long-term thinking that has helped the modern Swiss watch industry survive with slow, conservative movement taking precedence over knee-jerk responses common in other industries.
Source: Watches by SJX
Challenging The Conventional Wisdom That Luxury Watch Brands Should Keep Raising Prices
This month, aBlogtoWatch founder Ariel Adams penned another thought-provoking piece connected to the health of the watch industry. Are you noticing a trend here? In challenging times, everyone from brand presidents to watch journalists retrench to examine the best way forward. One piece of low-hanging fruit brands can pick: look closely at pricing. More specifically, brands should challenge the belief that they must continually raise prices to stay relevant. Increasingly, luxury brands have shown a desire to woo the most high-income buyers which means (intentionally or not) restricting supply and/or boosting prices. Leaving large segments of buyers out in the cold seems ill-advised, but welcome to the world of Veblen goods.
Source: aBlogtoWatch
GPHG 2024 Nominations
If there’s anything more subjective than assigning value to watches, it’s giving out watch awards. While the process of determining the “best” watch in any category is an absurd proposition even under the most controlled circumstances, it’s somehow irresistibly fun anyway. So when the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) Academy announced its list of approximately 100 pieces nominated across 15 categories, it was hard not to immediately fill out a scorecard. The team over at Revolution has plenty of insights on the nominees, but be sure to click through to the full list of watches to see them all for yourself.
Source: Revolution Watch
Grinding Gears: You’ve Never Paid This Much To Be This Bored With Luxury Watches
Once again this month, ABTW Editor-at-Large David Bredan’s Grinding Gears is must-read stuff for anyone feeling victimized by price hikes by time-only watches whose design hasn’t evolved for 20-plus years. Pining for the days when good money afforded compelling aspects like “cases with compressor keys, bezel locks, and swiveling crystals you could interact with,” Bredan’s screed on greed (and lazy watchmaking) is enough to make you stash your credit card and grab your pitchfork.
Source: aBlogtoWatch
Marin Instruments Takes An Interesting Approach To Storytelling
Just as a Formula 1 team’s success is 90% car and 10% driver (apologies to Max Verstappen), the appeal of watches has a lot to do with storytelling over technical specifications and design. It’s an unavoidable fact that a watch that’s been to the top of Everest or worn while winning a gold medal gets a boost that money can’t buy. Conversely, a watch with a story that’s later proven to be inaccurate, embellished, or downright fabricated is open to criticism. But what about a watch that has a story that’s transparently false by design? This month Bay Area microbrand Marin Instruments sent out an email telling a strange “story” about its latest limited edition dive watch. After several paragraphs involving a sun-soaked Mexican dive shop and a mysterious aquatic research program from the 1980s, the gents at Marin disclose: “This story is fiction, but our goal was to create a cool story about these 10 watches that would capture the imagination of the wearer.” Points for creativity, but it’s a decidedly odd approach.
Source: Marin Instruments
New Release: Urwerk EMC SR-71 Watch
Urwerk and unconventional design? No surprise there. Using components from one of the most revered planes ever built? Compelling. Incorporating a miniature hand-crank that powers a timing machine to help ensure accuracy? Now that’s next level. The EMC SR-71 is one of the strangest and most interesting watches we’ve seen in a while and Ripley Sellers has the full report including exactly how this $175,000 USD watch works.
Source: aBlogtoWatch