As usual, CW can’t do right for doing wrong.

Give out vouchers and some people are complaining that it cheapens the brand…à La DFS, I seem to have read before.

Remove the vouchers and some people stomp off in high dudgeon at the thought of no longer getting a bargain.

Some people don’t give a fig, realising that the watches still remain excellent value for money.

I will let you guess where I stand.

A needed movement for the brand.
An unwanted movement for the buyers.

I perfectly understand that having vouchers always available is not a good branding strategy but for so many people thinking about buying a CW that knows the final price with the discount, now is a little "mental" problem.
At least, for me.
The prices without vouchers are really good? Yes.
But I know that last month they were 100£ less for the same.
Evenmore, I guess most people buying a CW have read reviews, forums, YT videos, etc. So most of us knew the vouchers.

Anyway... All watches, all brands have increased their prices..

Volfan615 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:45 am Add me as another potential customer that's cooled off on a purchase after learning the $125 codes are no longer available. Just watched a Youtube review today of the C60 Trident 300 and thy specifically mentioned usage of the code. I had the white dial in my cart and have now removed it while I reconsider.

It will take some time before the "no voucher" news spreads amongst the YT and other media communities. Any review posted on YT in December 2022 would be correct in saying that there was a voucher because at that time there was. Now it's 2023 there is no voucher and the YT video is incorrect. Is any YT reviewer going to go back to an old review and fix this? No, no they're not. Way too much effort. It's a shame that viewers of these older reviews get out of date information.
Reviewers mentioning the existence of a voucher with the implication that you should never pay the full price for a CW is part of the problem that removing the vouchers is intended to address. It is inevitable that some brands (or their ADs) will continue to overproduce and dump stock onto sites like Jomashop. Watch brands are in a difficult spot. Overall the market for sub $1k watches is static or shrinking. There is also a lot more competition in that market. There are a lot of ways a brand can decide to deal with this situation they can lower prices, lower quality, etc but why would a brand that wants to grow (Brands are businesses, businesses have to grow and be profitable) make less money in a static or declining market. It's much better to move to a growing market and leave less profitable business to those who can live with lower profits. This is as hard to hear as it is a hard decision for brands to make. We are lucky, very lucky, that CW continues to make such excellent and affordable watches as they do. Long may it continue but, don't be surprised if the sub $1k watches become less common.

Amor Vincit Omnia wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 9:50 am Some people don’t give a fig, realising that the watches still remain excellent value for money.

I’m in that camp.

albionphoto wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:23 pm Overall the market for sub $1k watches is static or shrinking. There is also a lot more competition in that market.

Do you have any data on this? Data for anything but the Swiss exports is tough to find. Just curious.

albionphoto wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:23 pm

Volfan615 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:45 am Add me as another potential customer that's cooled off on a purchase after learning the $125 codes are no longer available. Just watched a Youtube review today of the C60 Trident 300 and thy specifically mentioned usage of the code. I had the white dial in my cart and have now removed it while I reconsider.

It will take some time before the "no voucher" news spreads amongst the YT and other media communities. Any review posted on YT in December 2022 would be correct in saying that there was a voucher because at that time there was. Now it's 2023 there is no voucher and the YT video is incorrect. Is any YT reviewer going to go back to an old review and fix this? No, no they're not. Way too much effort. It's a shame that viewers of these older reviews get out of date information.
Reviewers mentioning the existence of a voucher with the implication that you should never pay the full price for a CW is part of the problem that removing the vouchers is intended to address. It is inevitable that some brands (or their ADs) will continue to overproduce and dump stock onto sites like Jomashop. Watch brands are in a difficult spot. Overall the market for sub $1k watches is static or shrinking. There is also a lot more competition in that market. There are a lot of ways a brand can decide to deal with this situation they can lower prices, lower quality, etc but why would a brand that wants to grow (Brands are businesses, businesses have to grow and be profitable) make less money in a static or declining market. It's much better to move to a growing market and leave less profitable business to those who can live with lower profits. This is as hard to hear as it is a hard decision for brands to make. We are lucky, very lucky, that CW continues to make such excellent and affordable watches as they do. Long may it continue but, don't be surprised if the sub $1k watches become less common.

I think it would only be inflation reducing the number of sub 1000 Swiss watches, whether UK or US prices. There is no shortage of non Swiss watches, so it depends on what buyers are happy to pay.

I don't think most buyers want to pay more, but the number of watches to choose from are getting less. Two or three years ago CW sales often had watches below £500. It's quite rare now.

There might be a buyer bias that some watches are too cheap, and there must be a catch. It comes back to CW deciding on the best way to market their offer. Sell it cheap with permanent discounts might not have been the best strategy for the bottom line. Selling fewer watches at a higher price might produce a better bottom line.

It's noticeable when the Apprentice contestants have a "sales" task the right strategy seems to be to pick the correct premium product. Several thousand BC sales will have added a lot to the bottom line as well as raise the CW profile immensely.

rkovars wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:52 pm

albionphoto wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:23 pm Overall the market for sub $1k watches is static or shrinking. There is also a lot more competition in that market.

Do you have any data on this? Data for anything but the Swiss exports is tough to find. Just curious.

An article on WatchPro today about Chrono24 cutting jobs as secondary market squeeze continues; decent enough for starters.

Guy

Bahnstormer_vRS wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 5:23 pm

rkovars wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:52 pm

albionphoto wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:23 pm Overall the market for sub $1k watches is static or shrinking. There is also a lot more competition in that market.

Do you have any data on this? Data for anything but the Swiss exports is tough to find. Just curious.

An article on WatchPro today about Chrono24 cutting jobs as secondary market squeeze continues; decent enough for starters.

Guy

Thanks Guy but I see this as an apples to oranges. I agree there has been a squeeze on the secondary luxury market but he referenced sub $1k watches. I know the Swiss have basically conceded this market but wonder about the rest of the world. Particularly Japanese exports.

Rather than raise the MSRP of their watches, I believe the better option was discontinuing the sales vouchers. I do agree with those that have posted that Christopher Ward's watches provide excellent value for their level of quality. The way that Christopher Ward has used its transparent pricing of 3x cost has been admirable. I say admirable because the company has continued to do with the highly sought after Bel Canto models, when the ability & temptation to ask & sell for more is clearly present. Like all sales & promotions, the voucher program was something that existed as long as the company felt it was beneficial to their sales & within their right to withdraw when they perceived it was no longer needed. The only caveat that I will add is from the point of view of a US based customer. That $125 discount voucher at times made the difference between triggering the customs duty at the $800 threshold. A watch selling in the $800-$900 range will incur roughly an $80+ customs duty. So, in some cases, the lack of the discount may make a watch $200 more expensive rather than the voucher face value of $125. I never could understand the rationale of those that wished for the discount to go away, except that they must prefer paying full price for their goods. At the end of the day, the question to be asked is whether Christopher Ward watches continue to provide industry leading value? I believe that they do! I have bought several of my CW watches without using a voucher code because they were either on sale or a limited edition for which the voucher did not apply anyway. A case in point would be the Forum Limited Edition for which I with eagerly await its delivery later this Spring. That was the first CW watch in which I have paid for using GB currency, which had much the same effect as a voucher by dropping the price below the $800 threshold. A lot of the voucher angst may be attributed to the "sales mentality" that most of us have. It will take some time for those that knew about it to get past that mental hurdle, I suppose. I believe that Christopher Ward is transitioning as a brand for the long term. Mike France had indicated in a past interview the intention to end the voucher program. I think that it is apparent that CW is making a conscious effort to present a more uniform, identifiable style for all of their watches with the switch to the dual flag logo at 12 & date windows at 6. The Bel Canto release was a game changer for the company & has captured the attention of the watch world. With strong pre-order sales & winning watches like the Bel Canto, Sealander & Dune ranges, the need to discount isn't there like it once was. Change is the one constant in life & this is one of them. What we really need to ask ourselves every time that we make any purchase is whether the value for what we are buying is good & how badly do we want or need that product? If the lack of a voucher causes one to reconsider, then they should be asking themselves those questions.

Delmar

There are some fairly clear declines in the number of new entrants to the sub $1k space. It's a harder space to launch new products into and the established players are much better at what they do than they used to be. Not sure I'd want to compete with a brand like Zelos, for example. Seiko has been trying to leave it behind since the end of the old Seiko 5 range. The competition comes mainly from China these days. The quality of watches from China has, in general, risen. They can act as brands of their own and as private label manufacturers. China has a built-in market size advantage and a considerable cost advantage. It's quite possible that the market for sub $500 dollar watches is still robust enough for some players to want to be there if they can make decent profits. I don't have data for Seiko, Citizen or even Orient and Casio. However a lot of the watches they make in the lower price brackets will be assembled by robots in China. That's not the case for most of the Swiss brands or even the UK brands like CW or Farer. Farer have their watches assembled by Roventa Hennex in Switzerland.

CW has reasonably high costs. They have a base in the UK and in Switzerland. Neither of these companies are the cheapest places to employ people. Sure they get parts from China, who doesn't, but if they want to stay profitable and grow then moving out of a very busy, price conscious segment is a good idea. Why make 1000 watches and earn $1000 when you could make 1,000 watches and earn $2,000?

albionphoto wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 5:55 pm There are some fairly clear declines in the number of new entrants to the sub $1k space. It's a harder space to launch new products into and the established players are much better at what they do than they used to be. Not sure I'd want to compete with a brand like Zelos, for example. Seiko has been trying to leave it behind since the end of the old Seiko 5 range. The competition comes mainly from China these days. The quality of watches from China has, in general, risen. They can act as brands of their own and as private label manufacturers. China has a built-in market size advantage and a considerable cost advantage. It's quite possible that the market for sub $500 dollar watches is still robust enough for some players to want to be there if they can make decent profits. I don't have data for Seiko, Citizen or even Orient and Casio. However a lot of the watches they make in the lower price brackets will be assembled by robots in China. That's not the case for most of the Swiss brands or even the UK brands like CW or Farer. Farer have their watches assembled by Roventa Hennex in Switzerland.

CW has reasonably high costs. They have a base in the UK and in Switzerland. Neither of these companies are the cheapest places to employ people. Sure they get parts from China, who doesn't, but if they want to stay profitable and grow then moving out of a very busy, price conscious segment is a good idea. Why make 1000 watches and earn $1000 when you could make 1,000 watches and earn $2,000?

I get what you are saying and I would agree that competition is fierce at the $1000 price range and that new entrants face an uphill battle. The number of new players at $1000 might be stagnating but I am not sure anyone is looking at the amount of product being moved. There are two sides of the coin. You can sell 1 watch for $2000 or 2 watches for $1000. both work as long as you maintain margins. I would have to think that the margin on the $2000 won't be the same albeit maybe higher.

I think as far as Citizen and Seiko go, I don't think the sub $1k market gets much of a look from the watch press. There are many more Seiko released sub $1k than just the Seiko 5. You just don't see them.

It is interesting to look at the data. I was able to find stats for 2021 out of Japan (2022 is not posted yet). A couple of things jump out. The average selling price is really low. The second thing that comes out is that the exports as far as numbers do appear flat pre-pandemic (I wish that they went farther back - Source = Japan Clock and Watch Association).

Swiss exports for 2021 15.7 mil units(est) $23 billion for an average of $1464
Japanese exports for 2021 52.4 mi units $1.8 billion for an average of $34.35

That is a big delta.

Another interesting thing from the data is that analog quartz from Japan outnumbers digital and mechanical combined. I wouldn't have guessed that. I would have thought it would have been digital by a mile.

Does anyone know if watches assembled in Switzerland are counted in the Swiss export numbers? Or is it only Swiss brands? I would expect the latter but I don't know.

I guess my only point is that there are a lot of unknowns about the $1000 watch market because no one is assembling the data. It would be difficult to do, I think, because there are a lot of private companies at this level that don't need to publish any data.

The Swiss data that is available and the Japanese data presented do seem to show one thing though: The sub-$1k sector isn't growing.
There may well be some companies in Japan, China, Switzerland, India or wherever that are seeing growth but I'd wager they are relatively small. A small one man band has different targets to an SME or multi-national.

I believe I saw that Seiko launched about 500 different watches in 2022. I'm glad I didn't see all of those. I'm sure there a lot of watches that sell in any of the markets in Asia that we never see. I'm sure the same is true of watches from Citizen, Casio, Orient and so on. The markets in Indonesia, India and Thailand must see a lot of things we never see. That's a distraction though.

The question of whether you want to sell a lot of watches at a low price versus a lower number at a high price really depends upon your pricing model. We know what that is for CE. It's a factor of 3. So, for CW if I sell 1,000 watches at $1,000 or 1,000 watches at $2,000 I (as CW) make more money. I accept that my original example was poor, hence revising it here. Ideally, the higher the price, the higher the margin so if you can maintain volume and increase price it's a win. The question for CW is can I grow profits with a lot of my portfolio in the sub-$1k space especially as costs are only going to grow?

I think the answer is already out there. Look at what the in-kind competition is doing. Seiko moved prices up, Oris used the Calibre 400 to move prices up, Farer seem to be increasing prices too. CW may have bought themselves some time with the C1 Bel Canto and I don't believe they'll ever really have no sub-$1k watches in the range but I doubt that they will be the staple of the range in the future.

What I meant was that price increases will gradually take nearly all swiss watches above $1000, so that's probably why the sector is getting smaller. You need to raise the limit occasionally. It's rather like the point at which a watch is classed as affordable, or luxury.

Re quartz watches, I would have thought there were loads more analog quartz than digital. Mall jewellers are full of Seiko and citizen and so many other fashion brands. Digital watches are the niche market, I would have thought.

That only works if you are confident enough that your customer base allows you to sell just as many watches. If you only sell half as many at the higher price you only break even and you have lost customers. It isn't a 0 sum game. Oris might not be the best example either. While they have pushed higher in price they are not discontinuing (or haven't yet) the lower cost models in the same families. They are living side by side at least for the time being. That might even be a better strategy as someone who would never by the $1000 watch but would spend more is now a new customer and you haven't lost the old customer either.

It is inevitable that sub $1k watches won't exist forever as inflation alone will fix that. Using an inflation calculator shows $1k in 2016 is $1220 today.

I guess in the end we are really saying the same thing that CW does need to increase their customer base. They probably need to make more per customer as they go too. How they go about it is the question. I'm not sure abandoning the entry level is the way to go. In a way they did it already by abandoning quartz which is the ultimate entry level play. Although, it begs the question: would a $500 Sealander with a high accuracy quartz be an attractive proposition? Maybe. Omega still offers Aquiterra quartz models (albeit fewer options). Which brings up another question - would re-launching the Seamaster 300M in quartz be popular? Would be a call back to the late 90s and be a nostalgia play.

JAFO wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 7:48 pm What I meant was that price increases will gradually take nearly all swiss watches above $1000, so that's probably why the sector is getting smaller. You need to raise the limit occasionally. It's rather like the point at which a watch is classed as affordable, or luxury.

Re quartz watches, I would have thought there were loads more analog quartz than digital. Mall jewellers are full of Seiko and citizen and so many other fashion brands. Digital watches are the niche market, I would have thought.

While that is true for the US, I don't think that is the norm for the rest of the world. But it makes sense when you look at Citizen for sure. Almost their entire catalog would be analog quartz with a smattering of automatic.