Mark Cho, whom I do not know but whom I’ve happened upon in his store in HK on a couple of occasions and was very welcoming and gracious despite my not being anywhere near “Armory styled”, recently published results of his “Ideal Watch Size Survey”. (Mark is a collector, and I guess also a retailer / AD as his clothing stores sell Grand Seiko and if I recall correctly some vintage pieces).
924 responses, all male, to a series of questions were received. Various mailing lists and social media accounts were used to distribute the survey, some watch related some related to his clothing businesses. The audience was, in theory, in the tens of thousands.
What did he find out?
Average wrist size: 6.74 inches
Ideal watch size for primary watch: 37.77mm
Ideal watch size for weekend watch: 39.28mm
(note, this question was phrased as “if you had a second watch”...”i.e. sports watch, for weekends”)
Anyone surprised by the answers? I’m not. It’s consistent with what I would say and with what I generally hear from my collecting / enthusiast friends.
So, this brings me to two other conversations in the last few weeks.
The first with someone from F.P. Journe with whom we again discussed the evolution of the brand in terms of styling and more so sizing. We all know FPJ abandoned the 38mm case a number of years ago. I’ve heard FP say himself that the demand was simply not there for the 38mm, it didn’t make sense therefore to maintain production and this was the “company line” reiterated to me during this conversation. And of course since the 38mm stopped we’ve seen a shift in larger sizes with 42mm being more prevalent and the “sports” watches also experiencing an upsize (from an already large diameter).
The second was with some people from Grand Seiko USA, it was a chat about the recent US special editions “celebrating the iconic 62GS”. So what did they do with that watch? They supersized it of course.
So what do FPJ and Grand Seiko know that Mr Cho’s survey doesn’t tell us? The choices of FPJ based on experience selling smaller case sizes, and Grand Seiko who know a lot about smaller case sizes both seem to suggest the survey got it wrong. The people want large.
Are they right? Does anyone know how much market research, and what specifically, is employed by the brands when thinking about decisions like case sizes?
Was Mr Cho’s survey too small of a sample size? Or did only the “purists” respond therefore skewing the answers?
Would a similar survey here produce the same outcome? I tend to think so.