Quote:
Originally Posted by marvin100
Yeah, nice innovation. Very cool, for sure. Not likely to be many people's "first" $15k+ watch, though. Wonder how big their market actually is.
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Probably less than 400 watches total between the two models -- Type 1 and Type 3 -- they currently offer. FP Journe after all only makes ~400 of his C. Bleu watches per year. (At least that's what I hear.) Patek Philippe's total production is only ~40K. Last time I saw numbers, supposedly the difference between Rolex's total production and the next highest upmarket brand, was something like ~200K.
Here are some figures from 2010:
Tissot >2,000,000
Rolex 1,000,000
Omega ~700,000
Tag Heuer 700,000
Longines 500,000
Baume & Mercier 200,000
Breitling 110,000-290,000
Cartier ~100,000
Panerai ~70,000
PP 40,000
JLC 35,000
IWC 30,000
AP 26,000
VC 20,000
Piaget 20,000
Breguet >17,000 (up from 6,000)
Glashutte Original <10,000
A Lange S 2,000 (I saw ~5K was the 2013 number)
Damasko 1500
Schauer 500
Lang & Heyne 125
Stowa 3000
Zenith 30,000
F.-P. Journe, 1000
Here are some 2012 figures from Armbanduhren Katalog 2013 (company name/employees/watch production volume):
A. Lange & Sohne / 450 / <5,000
Audemar Piguet / 900 / 30,000
Baume & Mercier / n/k / >100,000
Bell & Ross / 50 / 90,000
Blancpain / n/k / 5,000
Bregeut / 500 / 25,000
Breitling / n/k / >200,000
Chronoswiss / 35 / <5000
Damasko / 22 / 1,000-1,500
Dornbluth / 5 / 150
Fortis / 30 / 20,000
Frederique Constant / 100 / 120,000
Genesis / 1 / 80-100
Glashutte Original / 350 / <10,000
H. Moser & Cie / 70 / 1500
IWC / 750 / 75,000
JLC / 1200 / >60,000
Stefan Kudoke / 1 / 30-50
Longines / 600 / 600,000
Maurice Lacroix / 250 / 90,000
Mont Blank / c75 / 75,000
Nomos / c100/ n/k
Omega / n/k / 750,000
Panerai / 250 / 75,000
Patek Philippe / 1500 / 50,000
Rolex / 6,000 / 1,000,000
Sinn / 100 / 12,500
Stowa / 10 / 2500
Tag Heuer / 500 / 750,000
Tissot / 300 / 2.5m
Ulysee Nardin / c300 / >25,000
Vacheron Constantin / 700 / 20,000
Zenith / 200 / 25,000
You may notice that Seiko and Citizen don't appear on the list. The main reason for that is that they so far ahead of any other single brand that it's not remotely even relevant to include them. In 2012, Seiko produced 12 million watches. The other reason is something of the dirty secret in the watch industry: Seiko and Citizen time and again, when allowed to participate in unbiased watch performance (accuracy) competitions against the Swiss and Germans, best the Europeans in the unarguable of ways. No European watch company wants to do anything, not even a small thing, to highlight the Japanese's clear performance superiority.
The thoughts I shared above the bullet points are conclusions I've drawn on my own. I've not ever seen anything specifically stated that there is a deliberate effort to minimize the the extent to which the Japanese obtain any positive acclaim in the public press. Read the following, however, and decide for yourself whether this is so. I know what I think. As William F. Buckley, Jr. said:
Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there, but people must want her, and seek her out.
If you look at the entrants to the two most recent competitions you'll notice that most brands submitted only their most expensive types of watch, tourbillions. One might conclude that insofar as tourbillions topped the winners list that tourbillions are the most accurate watches. However, the watches entered and that won need to be considered not only in terms of which ones won, but also in terms of which types of watches weren't entered in the completition from the same companies.
There's a very good reason that nearly nobody is going to put there $5K watch in a competition that will provide empirical results about performance in comparison to their $100K+ watch. For the typical, well heeled consumer, how close after all do the two need to be for the difference to be irrelevant? What if the non-tourbillion were to win or tie? If I recall correctly, in 2013, the competition's judges only identify the winners, not their scores. Hmmm...
All the best.