Yesterday’s post was pretty pessimistic.  However, it’s not all doom and gloom.  So here’s some optimism.

• Watches are made better today than they ever have been before.
• The sheer volume and value of the watches sold in the last several years all but ensures that servicing them will be a viable job for many years to come.
• So many fantastic watches have already been made that even if no more were produced, we could all have something nice.
• The internet is still progressing in a direction that will make it fun to collect and talk about watches no matter how screwed up the industry itself gets.
• Huge leaps, especially in sales and distribution but also in production, can still be made that can change everything in a very short period of time.

Ok that’s a few off the top of my head.  What do you guys think?

I mentioned in my post earlier this week that I thought very hard about whether I would want to stay in the watch industry or not.  Ultimately I decided not.  I thought I would share some of my thinking.

First, I love watches.  There are great companies, great pieces, and real magic that has come out of this industry, as you can clearly see from the rest of my blog.  However, there are some real problems with it.  I outlined a few of these in my post, An Industry in Danger.

Overwhelmingly, amongst the collectors I have known for a long time, I feel a sense of fatigue.  They are tired of the price increases, the gimmicks, the marketing campaigns, the retailer games, etc.   There are very few have-to-have or impossible-to-get pieces now, so even if something is wanted, they don’t have to put up with BS to get it.  In an extremely niche industry with a shocking small number of potential customers, the trend of killing off the most enthusiastic and supportive of them is incredibly worrying to me.

Next, creativity seems stagnant.  We have just come out of a golden era of independents.  The jump from the Lange 1 (which was groundbreaking when it came out) to an URWERK 103 or Vianney Halter Antiqua happened very quickly and spawned an incredibly important period.  Felix, Vianney, Max, Francois-Paul, etc will forever be historically significant and there pieces continue to be.  However, that period is over.  The new entrants are not bringing anything significant enough to change the paradigm.  Similar to art, the important artists of a particular movement will always be important.  The next important artists are not the ones who follow, but the ones who break completely new ground.  I fear that present conditions will not allow that to happen.

So are watches dead?  I don’t think so.  Rolex and Patek will be fine for long to come.  Felix and Max and the few other genius creators should be fine if the universe has any sense of true art and they are able, at some point to take control of the sales channel.  But there is no doubt in my mind that the watch industry as we know it is headed very quickly towards a brick wall (and this is not even taking into account the upcoming after-sales-service crisis!).  Are there opportunities to start a great, profitable business there?  Absolutely.  But in the end, I want to be in a sector with a happy, expanding customer base.  I don’t see much hope for the watch industry to get back to that place.  So I will watch from the outside hoping to see positive changes, but concentrate my effort elsewhere.

Hi everyone.  Thanks for all the emails, tweets, facebooks, etc saying how much you enjoy the blog and wish I’d post more.  I apologize for not keeping it up, blogging is hard!  I have a couple posts in the back of my head, so I’ll try to write some stuff soon.  In the meantime, people seem curious as to what I’m up to, so I’ll get that out of the way today.

After leaving MB&F in December, I wanted to take time off to clear my head and figure out what to do next.  First, I thought long and hard about whether I would want to do anything in the watch industry.  I will write up some of these thoughts in a later post, but the bottom line is that it’s not really where I see my future.  I fell into it with the best watch company in the world, and am happy to leave it at that.

That left me with a notebook full of startup ideas that I have compiled through the years.  To be honest, I ignored them all for a few months.  I read a lot.  I played with my son.  I spent time on all the things I know I won’t have time for once I start a new business.

Now I am 90% set on the direction I want to pursue.  I am working out the details and research now.  It is not watch related per se, but I think it will be of interest to many of you. I will update as I have more to share, and hope some of you will be great beta users for me.

Anyway, I hope that answers the questions for now.  Don’t forget about TickTocking.  There’s more to come…

Just because I’m not with MB&F anymore, doesn’t mean I’m not excited about their pieces.  The Razzle Dazzle and Double Trouble are awesome versions of HM4 mocked up like WWII era bombers.  Limited to 8 pieces each, they feature rivets, aged dials, a strap cut from 100 year old ammo bags, and beautiful hand painted miniature pinups.  Unfortunately the release was missed a bit here in the US because it was done on Thanksgiving.  Here are some videos I took of these two pieces.  Also a picture of my HM4 with the strap.  The strap is my favorite part!

Today, Google announced business pages for Google+.  For those of you who haven’t played around with it, G+ is Google’s attempt to socially connect the web.  It has a lot of cool features, but has not fully gained traction yet.

I believe Google is going to succeed with Google+.  They have so many resources and they are completely dedicated to this project.  They know that social signals are an important missing piece of their system.

Today I’ve started the TickTocking Google+ page.  Click the link and add it to your circles quickly.  It will allow us to do all sorts of cool things, the neatest of which is multi-person video hang-outs.  I’ll try to start the first official TickTocking hangout next week, so make sure you get on the page ASAP.

First of all, thank you all for being regular readers of my blog this year.  As I have said before, it has been a really fun project.

I want to apologize that I have not had many posts lately.  This is due to two factors.  One, the watch world slows down considerably in this last couple months.  Obviously retail sales are important, but there isn’t much interesting to talk about from the brands side as everyone is getting ready for their new products and campaigns in January.

And second, my wife is due to have the baby any day now.  I am spending hours every day learning how to breath, shopping for breast pumps, and putting together tiny furniture.  While I am now a wizard with an allen wrench, I don’t think it makes for very interesting blog posts.

So bear with me for a while.  I’ll throw stuff up when I come across things of interest.

All the best,
Steve

Dropping in to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

I have family in town and I’m going to try to pry myself away from my computer as much as I can.  So I will probably not be posting again this week.  Maybe I’ll try to throw up some fun links on Thursday in case you get bored of your family

Here’s an interesting piece on how your Thanksgiving turkey gets made (WARNING: do not read if you want to enjoy your turkey tomorrow)

My Unbranding and Product Placement post was a real fan favorite, so I had to smile when this morning, TMZ reports that the watch that sparked the fight between Charlie Sheen and his “companion” for the night was a Patek 5970.

Aside from the fact that Charlie has better taste in watches than most other things in his life, what do we learn from this?  Is it positive, negative, or neutral for Patek?  To me, this one feels like a case of “any publicity is good publicity”.  As big of an a-hole as Mr. Sheen obviously is, I can’t help but think his choice of a Patek still contributes positively to the brand.

Any thoughts?

“You can’t please all of the people all of the time”

On Tuesday, we released a teaser image of our newest “Performance Art” piece, The JWLRYMACHINE, made in collaboration with Boucheron.

The official release date is Oct 5.  The teaser is a fun way for us to let the most interested MB&F fans have some fun and guess what may be coming.

I must say that I was a bit surprised to see people complaining about it on PuristSPro.  We obviously respect the opinions of the members there, so Max wrote a nice response.

I have to say, I completely agree with Max.  I got super excited when I saw this teaser from URWERK a few days previously.  As a real fan of the brand, it was great to get a little extra info and let my mind run before seeing the piece in January.

Oh well, different strokes for different folks.  I just can’t quite see what there is to complain about.  We are having lots of fun and very proud of our new piece.  It is the fourth new release this year (HM2-SV, Frog, HM4).  Perhaps we make it look easy, but I can assure you that it takes A LOT of work and passion for what we are doing.  I’m glad that those who share our passion have enjoyed all of the new pieces, and hope they too have fun with these early glimpses.