Horological Meandering

KMII
[Montblanc Moderator]
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That Raven...

Over the coals is one of the signature shots of the forum

In many ways your experience demonstrates an interesting point. Breitling is AFAIK still a family owned company and they are a mono brand operation. As such they probably require a certain volume to succeed and as a result need to follow the volume more than the 'Purist'.

This leads to some great results (in my experience an excellent customer service, which is still fairly priced), some conservative decisions (using reliable ETA movements, which do the job in spite of not being in house or finely decorated, including a date on most watches...) and some level of required trendiness (size, Bentley, introduction of in-house movements, some bolder models, some of the celebrity endorsements).

They do many things correct in this sense to capture their market but can perhaps afford what we'd like less as a result. I suppose designing a manual chrono movement from scratch to be sold in the hundreds rather than tens of thousands at their price level is not the most economical of decisions. Omitting the date likewise...

Thanks for sharing your Breitling experience!