Independents

Mark in Paris
[Purist]
10488

• Show profile
• Show other posts

Accuracy - Reliability - Servicing

Well, Sham this is a natural question to ask.

I've been holding, discussing and reading a lot about independent brands and this is what I came up to.


Accuracy.

From what I saw in traditional brands and Independents, all reach the same accuracy (more or less). They have now the knowledge, the machines and the material quality that allow quite easily to achieve acceptable accuracy.

Indies usually know quite well their movement and thus reach to set them well too.

Please note that under a certain level I don't think one can really compare watches' regularity under a 2-4 sec/day margin: it depends on the way you wear it, the temperature etc...

When someone says I'm +1 or -1 by day, I don't believe it personally.

So, everyone is sufficently accurate considering it is a mechanical watch.


Reliability.

All brands suggest respecting a servicing period which enables the wearer to usually keep away from problems. Anyway you can usually postpone this 4-5 years period to 7-8 without taking significant risks.

Except a very few exceptions which are not by the way implying the whole collection of the brand, the watches are reliable. It often happens for very unusual displays and I guess the risk is higher and that's what you wish to go for (when you are aware of th eproblem of course, not when you discover it). But, again there are very few example of malfunction.

They use usually well known materials (steel, gold, maillechort) and thus we really know their characterisitcs and life expenctancy.

Even if most of the indies are less than 20 years old, thus we don't have a very long period to study issues, I don't hear more problem fro Indies compared to traditional brands which also have their black sheep.

The question we can ask is how silicon parts or other exotic materials will age? I think that even in that issue, the servicing fees will include replacmeent parts if need.
The question will remain valid if the brand is not there to do the servicing anymore in the future.


Time servicing.

I would say traditional brands=Indies in that mattter.

I would even give a +1 to the indies as they are easily available to talk to and explain what problems we are facing.



I noted you talked about prices comparision between indies and tradies with Pplater. Of course, Indies will usually remain more expensive than a Trady for a same complication. They don't produce the same volume and pay much more attention to crafting, they bring something else (exclusivity, rarity, personalisation etc...).

If the price is an issue, if you are not ready to pay for these Indies characterisitcs then Tradies will be difficult to compete with.

As we already discussed about on the forum, the only issue would be a going concern issue.

Cheers, Mark