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Comment by dharmab | Hacker News Reader

To give you an idea of margins:

- A real Rolex dive watch costs $5k-15k.

- A similar Swiss-made dive watch from a less famous brand costs $2k-4k.

- A similar Japanese-made dive watch from a famous brand costs $500-1000.

- A Chinese-made replica/fake Rolex, mechanically identical to a real one, and only distinguishable by an expert under high magnification, costs about $400-800.

- There are some low-volume watches that are sold for 4-6 figure sums to repeat buyers. Richard Mille in particular has done one-offs for celebrities in the range of 7-8 figures.

As you can imagine you don't need a high volume with margins that large.

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    > A real Rolex dive watch

The "dive" part is a red herring these days, as the use of watches to manage decompression strategies has declined since the 90s, and by early 2000s dive computers became the default tool. Use of a dive-watch for diving is almost non-existent these days.

Some example dive computers, for those interested:

- Suunto Zoop [1] - Shearwater Perdix [2] - Garmin Descent [3]

[1] https://www.suunto.com/en-gb/Products/dive-computers-and-ins...

[2] https://shearwater.com/products/perdix-2

[3] https://www.garmin.com/en-GB/p/632320

It's simply a description of the style of the watch. Just as most people wearing a bomber jacket aren't flying B-52s, and most trench coat wearers aren't fighting in trenches, most dive watch wearers aren't diving. They are still useful terms, despite their relative professions moving on to newer tech.

Think of it like “art”

You’re paying for time. Seiko make great watches with cnc machines under the orient brand. They cost about £150-300.

In terms of watch, it’s the same type of parts and accuracy as a base Rolex.

Rolex you are paying for the name. Yes, they are better quality than an orient, but not much. There is better QC, and more people looking at the watch before it’s sent out, but in terms of precision of manufacturing, or amount of cnc machine used, it’s mostly the same.

There is a thriving scene in small watch producers, spinnaker, holthinrich, de ryke and co, vortic, Weiss, lorier to name a few. Some are sub £300, others not.

I will say there is a easily noticeable jump in build quality from a $300 Orient or Seiko to something like a Tudor Black Bay, or even some of the microbrands in the 2-4k range. You can especially feel it by rotating the bezel and feeling the play in either direction.

But after that tier the quality increase to price ratio pretty much drops to zero.

That's the price, but as someone ignorant of this area, I don't know enough to even guess margins from that. How expensive are the parts? I would assume that grade of mechanical components aren't cheap. And we should probably price in the labor.

Panerai is a good example to estimate margins. When they were unknown, watches costed $1-2k. This was in the mid 90s. Same models now, distributed by a big luxury conglomerate, cost 5-10x more. Quality and components on comparable models are virtually the same.

Likewise, long ago, Rolex was a toolwatch brand and their products were relatively affordable. They are still great, but prices are insane. Vacheron Constantin is on a different class, though, as they sell lots of watches in the high horology category. Insanely complex and difficult to produce. Some similar brands have had financial issues or gone bankrupt.

I’d imagine a single one of your watch makers dying/quitting would be catastrophic to your business with something that requires this level of skill.

I was unsure how to word it, but I think there is a pricesless aspect to the talent that this took. Even though they were probably paid a wage, sometimes outputs by individuals at a company a literally irreplaceable.

The labor and design are probably the most expensive parts. Think hundreds if not thousands of hours of many ultra specialized people's time.

The actual raw material has to be a fraction of the worth.

Hopefully steep tariffs on Switzerland will bring watchmaking and watchmakers back to America.

It’s already back in America. Plus fr high end customers, there are many ways to avoid tariffs

> Hopefully steep tariffs on Switzerland will bring watchmaking and watchmakers back to America

It’s actually a good case study. It no longer makes sense to buy a fine watch from an American retailer. The tariffs incentivise a trip abroad. (I’m seeing something similar happen with skis.)

You risk paying a tariff when you return to the US though.

> You risk paying a tariff when you return to the US though

Not really. I’m bringing back a few thousand dollars of mounted, probably lightly-used, skis. Nobody expects to declare random purchases made abroad. Much less an article of jewellery on their wrist.

I've bought watches overseas.

Hypothetically, one could simply wear the watch on their wrist on the flight home. Personal jewelry is not subject to duties.

These are luxury products. That's not the point. They use precious metals when steel would work just as well, and the really high end ones take hundreds of hours of hand labor to very finely decorated the dials and movements. Why? Because it's luxury. It's art.

And let's not even get into how much money they spend on marketing and sponsorships ..

>How expensive are the parts?

They make the parts.

Chinese ones are down to $100-$300

Is that for an homage, or a superrep?

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