He carried about half a dozen stone-dialed Piagets around from store to store, but at a retail price of about a thousand dollars, it was too much for early 1960's Americans. (Uncomplicated Pateks in those days were about half that.) He put together the funding for a national ad that proclaimed them as the most expensive watch in the world, and tickled the nerve present in many Americans of the need to display status. Sales took off. He parlayed that success into an unsuccessful attempt to purchase Movado (Zenith got their first) and then purchased Concord for his North American Watch Company, in 1971. He succeeded in acquiring Movado in 1982 and now the NAWC is called the Movado Group, Inc., and it owns Ebel as well. Movados, Ebels, and Concords are not the flavor of the month for watch nuts, though I avidly collect them, and it's hard to imagine that the mastermind who established the Museum Watch as the premier middle-class aspirational watch for Americans sold watches as high-end as Piaget.
--Rick