As you may know, or not, I have close family that works within the Swiss watch industry and lives there. A cousin works at Tudor currently, and another, younger, just graduated in horological engineering also in Switzerland.

The cousin that works at Tudor, tells me that although it is a successful brand, it isn’t quite having the edge over founding brand Rolex or the also older Omega in terms of sales on a global scale.

The cousin that just graduated…can’t find a job. And neither can his former classmates. Swiss watch brands don’t have the need nor the budget to spend in more workers.

Swiss watches usually are expensive, they’re not as attainable as their Japanese or American or quite literally elsewhere else’s counterparts. The more the price of an item increases, the more likely people are to look for an alternative. Although there’s still good reasons to go swiss in watches, due to this, fewer and fewer people see their brands as a obvious choice. It almost only makes sense if you are either looking for a more special watch, or if you’re simply a watch person, a collector. And the people in these situations…are not the general public. They’re not most people. They’re restricted groups.

As a result it overall is a industry that’s barely worthy of that name still and slowly disappearing with time. And the more exclusive and expensive the swiss brand we talk about, the worse things tend to get. The only exception is Rolex and it’s purely due to brand recgonition but not everyone will be able to afford a Rolex and Rolex also won’t employ just anyone

By contrast in Japan we have a booming watch industry. Realistically, for most people unless they’re into watches, a quartz watch is better and a more common buy than a mechanical watch. It’s more convenient. Often more accurate. It’s not as heavy. It can be charged using light sometimes. And the quartz watch was invented in Japan, by Seiko. And Seiko…is a brand that still has the capacity to outsell most Swiss watch brands. Even in a upper market level, Grand Seiko and Orient Star can give swiss brands a run for their money. Or even lines such as Casio’s Oceanus

You also have more variety outside of Swiss brands without needing to break the bank. The truth is Swiss brands have the best mechanical movements, but they don’t have the best quartz movements usually, and since most people don’t really care that the watch is mechanical and think first about aesthetics: The future isn’t very bright. The closest to a good value brand in Switzerland is Tissot. But even then they’re more expensive than many other non Swiss brands. And Swatch can cost easily more than a Casio but it won’t offer usually more quality than a Casio.

Anyways, if you’ve made it this far into the article, what are your thoughts on this?