Timex Is Making Watches in America Again
bloomberg.com
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Further, it completely misses the point of what made Timex famous to begin with; excellent quality at a low price. This is neither.
For $500, they are going up against some vastly superior products. For example, this cannot hold a candle to any similarly priced Seiko.
The price is, frankly, insulting. It would be an iffy sell at $50, but at $500, this has complete failure written all over it.
Since then, you've been able to get a cheap, reliable watch for next to nothing. Quartz movement, combined with mechanization of production, ensured that. The whole industry had to adapt to making watches themselves sort of an aesthetic statement, not a practical tool to keep you from being late.
At this point, any watch costing more than $25 is itself an aesthetic piece. Part of that aesthetic is where and how it's made. There's probably a market for watches made in Antarctica because of whatever sense of taste that "story" appeals to.
That’s not true at all. There have always been a lot of reasons to wear a watch that have nothing to do with getting the time. Cheap movements expanded the market to the low-end, but didn’t really change the reasons that people buy watches.
Fundamentally, watches are jewelry. That’s been true forever, but it also isn’t something that can be reduced to “aesthetics” alone (for example, people pay handsome premiums for better mechanical movements, even though it has no impact on the look of a watch. The idea of wearing a well-crafted, tiny mechanical device is itself an attractive prospect.)
It’s the equivalent of people who talk about Windows machines being “better deals” than Apple machines. After all, they both flip bits, right? If all you do is fixate on the function, everything becomes a commodity.
Maybe watches have always been somewhat aesthetic, and while they were made to be pretty in the 1920s, they really did exist as timepieces first and foremost. Now a mechanical watch's main function is the way it makes you feel.
As adornments go, I also think that handing over $500 to a local jewelry artist would get you a better bracelet.
The mechanical-movement wristwatch is obsolete. Bring on the Pip-Boy.
Wristwatches do tell the time, and a decent mechanical one will do so far far longer than any electronics device, even high end quartz wristwatches.
Not having any moving parts would generally mean a quartz movement will be more durable.
Barely, and replacement parts (and sometimes even appropriate batteries) can be extremely hard to source.
> Not having any moving parts
Electronics are brittle and do degrade over time. As I observe them, they last about 20 to 30 years realistically. Early mass produced commercial quartz watches are prized collector items, whereas mechanical watches from before the quartz revolution are easy to find in perfect working condition.
Equally technically, non-functional mechanical-movement watches from before piezoelectric-movement are also easy to find in garbage heaps and bankrupted watch-repair shops, and the "perfect working condition" of the functional ones are possibly a result of Ship-of-Theseus-style maintenance. Note that mechanical timepiece repair is a somewhat less viable business than it once was, and able to support only a tiny fraction of workers as it once did.
Quartz watches have fewer individual repair parts available, because the typical repairs are to replace the battery and to replace the entire movement. Now, it is reasonable to consider the repair part for a broken quartz watch to be a newly-manufactured watch, and the repair procedure is to remove the broken watch from your wrist and replace it with the working new one.
Mechanical watches are certainly useless when removed from Earth, whereas electronic timepieces may be reprogrammed to display the numbers of a different timekeeping convention.
More realistic: fleece suckers who think “Made in America” make it worth spending $500 for a $50 watch.
>More realistic: fleece suckers who think “Made in America” make it worth spending $500 for a $50 watch.
Most $500 watches are worth way less, even $50, so nothing special about this (regardless of where they are made).
Besides, getting domestic jobs for people is still worth something. Those laid off factory workers of old aren't gonna "reinvent" themselves anytime soon and get into Silicon Valley, but if they could get a new factory job that's something - and beats homelessness or low-end shitty gigs like Uber.
Why not make everything you can make? Would there be a problem is the US manufactured CPUs and phones as opposed to sending them to be made in China/Korea/Taiwan/etc?
To outsource externalities (e.g. environmental costs)? Or to stifle any labor demands (by moving your production to wherever you like any time they are raised somewhere)?
Why doesn’t everyone buy Toyotas?
It’s not being a sucker, unless we broaden the term where most all of us are suckers.
Because nobody can afford 'em?
Ok - I'm speaking mainly of their pickups, which are (overall) great vehicles (disregarding the earlier frame-rot issue they had in the early 2000s).
But they're so great, that even used ones sell for absurd amounts...
I entirely agree with the FTC, their claims were dishonest. As a point of comparison, Switzerland regulates what percentage of the watch must be Swiss before it can be claimed to be "Swiss," but it's not an easy question. For example, with completely made up numbers, low wage Chinese manufacturer sells mostly finished movement for $20 that required 4 hours to make. High wage Swiss assembler puts in another hour, at a cost of $40. Total time is 5 hours, 80/20 Chinese/Swiss and total cost is 60, 33/67 Chinese/Swiss. From time perspective, it's a Chinese watch, but from cost perspective it's Swiss.
[1] - https://www.truthinadvertising.org/revisiting-shinolas-made-...
Most watches are like that. In the high end, it's $1000 product being sold for $30000.
>Further, it completely misses the point of what made Timex famous to begin with; excellent quality at a low price.
They already do well in that market. It's not enough for them, they want a market with better margins.
It's not like they're the only: Casio G-shocks are now having a "high end" brand, selling $100-$200 worth of watches for 1 to several K dollars. There's a basic square (the classic 6510 and co mechanism that sells for 30-50$) that goes for $800 just because it's now in stainless steel.
With the Tissot you're just getting a pretentious overpriced crap (whether it has this or that custom movement, the margins are still stacked way against the buyer).
Brands change, particularly fashion brands. Many high-end brands become debased and low end brands slowly scale up in quality to become high-end a decade later. Timex doesn't need to make a lot of 500 dollar watches because they wont sell a lot of 500 dollar watches.
It might however move the perceived value of the brand outside of the discount bin, and earn some cheap goodwill advertising while it does so.
My wife and I have noticed this kind of trend with fast food. At one time, certain fast-food brands were considered "higher-tier" than other fast-food brands, but over time, they have swapped places (in some cases more than once).
The only ones which seem to "stay where they are" have been McDonalds (not for trying, though) and Taco Bell (they know their spot and market - smart choice, I'd say).
The others seem to migrate around, depending on the market, etc.
Beyond that, Timex is a brand name relegated to disposable $20 watches. Trying to fluff up their mind share with a poorly made and laughably priced product is not going to work out for them.
It's from Ronda and it's a good movement.
I used to have a fun 24 hour analog quartz watch that I stopped wearing after I got a ~$150 Garmin fitness watch. This thing always tells perfect time because it syncs off my phone (including time changes from traveling or DST), has a GPS tracker for runs and bike rides, can measure heart rate, and pairs via Bluetooth and reads me incoming text messages.
It's crazy how, at much cheaper price, you get so much more functionality with a smart watch. And it's even better at being a watch! It just doesn't look as nice.
This is just based on watching both pricing and availability at watch retailers. So when earlier this year I saw an attractive new Timex design listed at a bit of a stretch price considering it's a Timex, I decided to buy it. I own other reliable and discontinued Timex watches that never reappeared on the market. Nothing _really_ high end though--and for that reason I think they noticed the room for additional profit.
It's getting a bit worn unfortunately, as a word, but IMO good "design" still moves customers and this moves products.
I'm glad I bought my new Timex (nothing super high-end, just around to $100 but not a design I had seen before) and I bought it from a watch retailer who up until recently refused to carry them. Something's changing.
Looking at the $500 price, a lot of watch collectors look for that thing that the other guy doesn't have, which also gives them brand nostalgia, etc. They know that when it's gone, it's usually gone. And $500 is nothing to a lot of these guys. They will spend $500 on a pocket knife that stays in their pocket all day.
Because they saw Shinola doing the same thing, which proved that 'Made in the USA' on a watch is all it takes for suckers to pay premium for a mediocre product.
I'm guessing their strategy of engaging non-watch companies to supply parts (and it shows) has something to do with the price and likely low production volumes it will receive.
But I agree–the hands look terrible even for a $50 watch, and those movements are certainly costing Timex less than $10 each. The only value here is the story, and nice (if underfinished) brass caseback insert. The rest of it is positively terrible at that retail price.
I don't doubt there are plenty of really cool watches out there that are "worth" $500.... but generally they seem to be fashion products where even the price seems pretty disconnected with the actual product / utility.
Plus, nobody is buying a $50,000 Patek because it solves the problem of showing what time it is. It's about appreciation of artistry and craftsmanship and letting other people know that you are the kind of person to wear a Patek.
Complaining that the watch isn't "worth" something when it comes to fashion... not sure that jives exactly.
A Kia works exactly the same at driving, so therefore with your logic, it's worth exactly the same.
High-end watches are extraordinarily complex machines, and yes, generally have a "luxury" look which may be un-necessary in your eyes. Though, the market for "incognito" luxury movements within cheap watches is way too small to be sustainable.
What do you mean by that? In what way are they better at measuring time?
That isn't generally true.
Here's an analog quartz chronograph that has 1/10 second dial: https://youtu.be/mPP3EeWdJsA?t=97
If you are talking about a sweep second hand, there are plenty of quartz movements that do that.
If you go for digital quartz, you can get 1/100 second accuracy in a $10 watch.
The longer you time something, the worse the mechanical watch is going to be. Most of them gain or lose several seconds every day.
Zenith is the only manufacturer that I know does significantly better than this, but that particular movement is pretty rare and extraordinarily expensive.
I want slightly more expensive products made in the USA and I'll pay a premium for it, but nothing astronomical.
If I can pay 20% more on coffee and chocolate to make sure the farmers were paid a living wage, we can do similar things in the US. I understand that US wages are much higher and make this more difficult, but it would be a step in the right direction. Globalism has brought down prices and made many things very cheap and affordable, but at what cost?
I'd like comments from anyone with more understanding of the issues.
That said, mostly you are right, a 5 million dollar patek will sell a few copies to someone...
It's good to be king I guess.
This is just "normal" price. For a large production you can get an even larger discount. It's still a cheap movement.
Still ~10x more accurate than a mechanical watch, but not ~200x more accurate as thermocompensated ones are (as mentioned in the message you were replying to).
Yeah, and this "weird and very rich" market pretty much exclusively steers clear of anything that says "Quartz" on it. Hell, even state of the art mechanical movement like Seiko Spring Drive suffered from being associated with Quartz watches, even despite the fact that it had nothing to do with them. So there goes that theory.
More likely this looks like some executive at Timex finding some Shinola garbage at some local mall and going "Do that, just replicate whatever these guys are doing!" without first asking themselves "Is this business model even viable or profitable?"
They have a quartz oscillator controlled by an integrated circuit! Replacing a motor with a generator is neat, but the real trick is that there's no way for mechanical imperfections to affect the rate, making it easier to manufacture.*
* Caveat being that I haven't made them, power reserve is the real game there, and they don't seem to be cutting corners.
>> Despite bringing in $124 million in annual revenue, Shinola is not yet
>> profitable. “We’re bleeding cash,” Panis admitted blithely. “It’s
>> costly to do what we’re doing. Everything is at top-of-the-line
>> quality. We’re cutting no corners.” However, Panis said Shinola has a
>> strategy for reaching profitability within the next few years, if
>> everything goes according to plan.
We had the most confusing ride home.
I honestly don't know the answer to this. If it's "yes", then bring on us production!
I ask because I'm in Australia, and we're a wierd case when it comes to global logistics.
There are fewer jobs than in the past in part due to automation.
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/article91482...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/04/why-i...
The more a factory produces the more automation pays off: it takes a big up front investment to pay for the machines, but once the machines are working it costs very little to make more.
Shipping has a bunch of other issues. Wars, border issues, weather, [long list skipped] all interrupt shipping, and the farther something needs to go the more likely it is one of these interrupts your shipment. Everything that depends on that is in turn disrupted.
Cars are best assembled near where they are used because when fully there is a lot of empty space (the cabin). The alternator for that car can be made pretty anywhere, it is small and dense and so shipping costs are not high. Most other products have elements of each along the way.
Large companies often have a large department dedicated to mapping out logistics. It is no easy to make sure that all the parts needed to build their widget arrive on time.
These things are 100-200 lb steel things, so it makes me wonder if this is what those tariffs were about, or if it's the labor, quality, or what.
Your 20% markup is one thing, but 2x or 3x the price is hard to swallow.
The main reason for this is automation.
I think the right question to ask is how to make the productivity from automation benefit more the workers?
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/25/most-americ...
https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-...
See this oped by James Rebanks, a sheep farmer from England https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/opinion/an-english-sheep-...
A lot of the competition in the UK comes from New Zealand lamb where they have a better climate for raising sheep. It doesn't have much to do with industrial farming, it's more about their ability to grow grass year round.
That depends whether you consider an American job more valuable than a Chinese one. America has the wealth to provide a safety net, it's not the fault of globalism that it doesn't.
The US has an enormous safety net. What are you referring to? On total net social spending, the US ranks just below France at the very top in the OECD, with 30% of all economic output directed at that. For comparison, Sweden and the UK are at 24%. For strictly public-based social spending, the US is ranked with New Zealand and just below the UK, and ahead of Canada and Australia.
On strictly public social welfare spending as a share of the economy, the US ranks in front of: Canada, Australia, Iceland, Netherlands, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland.
At the rate US public social welfare spending is increasing, it'll surpass the UK and Japan in the coming decade.
Most of the total governmental budget in the US (local, state, federal) goes to its various social programs whether entitlements or traditional welfare state spending. For one increasingly large example, the huge entitlement programs in the US involve very large welfare funds transfers to prop up the social safety nets.
Just the taxpayer funded healthcare systems for free healthcare services (mostly for the poor and disabled) in the US cost $700-$800 billion now when all levels of spending are accounted for.
$7.6 trillion in total government spending. Roughly 3/4 of that is social program spending directed at various safety nets.
The US increased its Federal budget by 9% most recently. That's something like a $330-$350 billion increase in one year, at just the Federal level. The vast majority of that is social safety net spending increases.
While most developed nations are aggressively restraining their welfare states at this point due to cost, the US continues to expand its welfare state (thus the permanent near trillion dollar budget deficits that are looming, of which ~20% is excessive military spending and ~10% is recent tax cuts (some of which resets), the rest, roughly 70%, is to fund social programs).
The myth that the US doesn't have any social safety net really needs to die given the trillions of dollars the US spends every year on it.
On top of all that, it's $500. Now $500 for a watch isn't that much in the watch world considering how many watches are $1-10K+, but compare this watch to a Seiko SARB. The SARB has 100m water resistance, a 50hr automatic movement, and comes in at >$100 cheaper.
Unless you're a Timex fanboy or collector, I really can't recommend this watch over other similar options.
I bought a replacement in the 1980s. It was fantastic. It was identical, lost the same ten minutes a month, had the same sweaty stank on the NATO strap. I lost it in a swimming pool in Swiss Cottage London.
I bought the Timex Watch Will Farrell wears in the film, the ironman. It was fantastic. Somehow, I haven't managed to lose it in a swimming pool. Unfortunately, indiglo kind-of sucks, and it lost its alarm function, and I had to move to another watch
(I went J Springs, and I love it and it loses 10 minutes a month...)
I think it’d be awesome to see a USA made movement again in this price point, but I’m not holding my breath.
There are other Swiss automatic movement makers though, like Sellita (the SW200 is basically an ETA 2824[2]).
Someone above mentioned Shinola which is, sadly typical of "US products" -basically they're LARPing at "quality" -selling to the type of people who pay $100 for a trip to a 1950s looking barber shop, or who go on expensive trips up the coast on the Jeremiah O'Brien liberty ship.
https://wornandwound.com/an-introduction-to-russian-watches/
...but then with everything that has happened politically, my one purchased has remained that; I don't have a real good logical reason for not continuing my collection.
But I started out well (I think) - I ended up getting this particular one (not from this shop - I found it on Ebay):
https://www.russian-watches.info/shop/raketa-24-hours-watche...
...somewhat unique, because it was a 24 hour movement, which I'd never seen before. Plus the unique face color, etc.
I guess premium-ish-but-not-really PBR is next, brewed by some previously "craft" brewer gobbled up by a mutual parent company. Oh man. A little googling reveals the horrifying plausibility of that.
As the watch connoisseurs have pointed out it's not really a moderately priced premium product. It's a cheap product with pumped-up margins so it can get internally green lighted because the margin contribution will be enough to move the needle a bit.
You see a lot of the same in clothing e-commerce: Stuff that's not unique, not especially high quality, and shockingly expensive for what you get because it hit a hip vibe.