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AP-Swatch Collaboration... My opinion
Op-Ed:
Quartz saved the Swiss watch industry ...
Yes, the humble swatch quartz watch that many of us grew up with helped spur a revival of an ailing Swiss watch industry.
Lebanese-born Nicholas Hayek Senior was the CEO of the SWATCH Group and he realized that the Swiss watch industry needed to connect to a younger audience.
To build the habit of collecting... for aspiring collectors to not stop at just one watch. To build sets. A series. A collection.
This passion would then evolve into collecting mechanical watches when these collectors began working and earning more.
His vision was radical.
While often named the "Quartz" crisis, Hayek saw that the real underlying problem was the " Swiss Watch Inefficient Manufacturing" crisis ... what I refer to as SWIM. It was disjointed and supply-chain management was archaic in Switzerland.
Quartz technology didn't cause the crisis, the inability to scale manufacturing did.
So, the Swiss watch industry was sinking and it would need to swim.
Today, we again see a crisis for the Swiss watch industry. And some progressive brands are taking the initiative to take steps to preempt its effects.
For too long, the Swiss watch industry has disintermediated itself from collectors. And we are talking about existing customers here. Authorized Dealers were assigned the task (yes, looked at as a task or burden) of building a relationship with customers.
So what more for the 16 year-old gen Z/Alpha today?
Totally forgotten ... and in 10 years, the potential future customer for the brand?
Many Authorized Dealers today are entirely focused on sales and often less interested in brand protection and building lasting relationships with customers. "Relationship" to many an Authorized Dealer translates to "Buy more and I'll look after you".
Life doesn't work that way. It takes time to build relationships that last and this is what the Audemars Piguet collaboration with Swatch is about.
It's risky but it's necessary and urgent. For this, I salute AP. Perhaps it's telling that AP no longer sells watches via any Authorized Dealers. They have gone direct to the customer.
Today, the biggest risk to the Swiss watch industry is inaction.
Marc Naidu
GP Laureato Fanclub FB Group
(Please credit if sharing)
Image credit Swatch
