Patek Philippe

This is a marvelous article indeed! However, when you stated at the end that there are several similar strategies from other watch brands, I have my doubts that these have the same high principles in mind as Patek Philippe.

I would rather assume that Patek is - like Rolex on another level - an exception in the industry. Its history showed that the company's essence was barely affected by global political and economic crisis alike. Its emphasis on retail partners with family structure can be explained from this history.

But I saw in my town Salzburg that other, also highly reputed watch brands have an entirely different motivation when thinning down their retail network: quick and high profit.

I can remember the time when brands like Jaeger LeCoultre, IWC, Zenith et al were on the edge of bankruptcy and survived exclusively because of the tireless work of some retailers who still believed that the brands had a future. IWC fully depended on the sales in the - tiny - Austrian market once, Jaeger was not much better. And now? After sixty years of partnership the shop's location was not good enough anymore, because it was not located in the town's main shopping road (where, by the way, the majority now are pop-ups because so many traditional shops have closed their doors), but the one parallel to it. However, the newly-opened fancy dealer owned by a Russian corporation was good enough for JLC. Needless to say, after some four or five years, this fancy dealer is history again and JLC, like IWC are nowhere to be represented in and around Salzburg.

Loyalty is a two-lane road and cannot be demanded by the watch brand solely without any obligation to return it towards long-supportive dealers. And the company-owned boutiques are there only to feed the tourists, who - in a vast majority - are not watch-knowledgeable at all. They enter with a paper in hand where the models and reference numbers are written down, ask for the price and the discount. That's it. The retail staff is trained to accomodate this type of customers, that's fully sufficient.

Finally, even in major Europeans cities like Munich, Berlin or Vienna, the local client base of those able - and willing - to purchase more than one high-end luxury timepiece (meaning at prices of 100,000 Euros/Dollars plus) more often than every two or three years is small. As a premium dealership you need to find your customers in a radius much larger than locally. In the 1950s or 60s a "good watch" tended to cost one or maybe two months' net salaries of a whitE collar worker. A Patek maybe four to six times that salary. And today? Let alone the arrogance of the brands to expect a customer to purchase several expensive watches before being allowed to appeal for a popular or specifically complicated piece! So the wish of a family-to-family relation between dealer and customer is a dream, not more. Maybe this exists between a dealer's family and one or two local "Dynasties", but I would assume this is the exception, not the rule.

Despite having used Patek as an example in my last paragraph, I did by no means intend to challenge your excellent article on Patek Philippe's dealer network, but rather your assumption that other watch brands would be in a position to execute similar retail strategies.

Marcus

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