Independents

ei8htohms
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a few comments

Hi All,

I think it's clear that much of this discussion has been confused by some miscommunications and or misunderstandings, but I wanted to add a few comments anyway about the cost of properly servicing watches and what is involved.

It is generally taken for granted that watch companies lose money on service. Some lose more than others of course and some deliver less than others, but the idea that service is performed to support sales is basically universal in my experience. This doesn't mean that an independent service center cannot be profitable, but they will necessarily cut corners where they can or otherwise not be able to deliver the same level of "factory spec" movement or case and bracelet refurbishment either because they can't afford the labor hours, parts costs of elaborate tooling required.

The difficulties in making good sense of the business model for large companies where extensive R&D, tool development, training (internal and external), technical documentation and significant handling/processing overhead exist are probably not obviously applicable to an independent creator's workshop environment, but it is easy to imagine a small artisanal shop just saying, "Let's charge for service what it costs us" and letting the chips fall where they may. This is not to say that a shop's inability or unwillingness to make their service processes efficient enough to make them affordable to some extent will not come back to bite them, but there aren't too many artist-craftsman that frequently suffer the epithet "brilliant businessman", you know?

With regards to the comparison to car servicing, it's a very limited analogy. It would be more accurate if an oil change could not be performed on an automobile without completely removing and dismantling the engine, but even then it's not at all easy to know when a watch needs a routine service and when it needs an overhaul even though most watchmakers can agree on what starts to become a restoration I think. The difference between service and overhaul is not well agreed upon by watchmakers even in the same company in my experience because of the massive labor involved in either with respect to the movement at least (taking it apart and putting it back together takes the lion's share of the time assuming replacement parts are available). Case refinishing or refurbishing issues are at least as nuanced and subject to variability from one shop or company to the next and should definitely not be discounted in such a discussion (if you'll excuse the pun).

At any rate 15K sounds crazy as a generality although perhaps not so much in some specific instances and 6-7K slightly less so.

_john