Fratello Talks: What's The Deal With Watch Prices?
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- In today's episode of Fratello Talks, Nacho, RJ, and Lex take a look at and try to make sense of watch prices today. It's often a hot topic of discussion in the comments. In a world where price increases happen two or more times a year, it's a challenge to keep up with where value lies. But is it a mistake to expect bang-for-buck in the world of luxury? Then, the matter of brands' positioning within the world of watches comes into play. As watch enthusiasts, we are aware of the plate tectonics within the watch industry and can feel when something doesn't sit quite right. So, how do we make sense of all of this? That's the question.
Great discussion as always! My gripe with watch prices is that as an upper middle class family man, I’m being priced out of watches that we use to be able to aspire to and save up for. Now they are just unaffordable and unreasonable to any normal person other than the rich that don’t even care about prices. Watch brands aren’t just losing the enthusiasts that care about specs, they’re losing regular people that want a great watch at a reasonable price.
Not only the prices but the availability.
Great video I’m glad to see you’re adding more break away shots of the watches you discuss. It makes a huge difference. One tweak, keep the watch shots on the screen longer
Thanks for the honorable mention guys. Big fan of the series, keep up the fantastic work. Yours truly, The Portuguese Vinegar
Thanks guys, really enjoying your candid conversations and also appreciate that you show the watches you're discussing (on that point, if you can, perhaps keep the photos up for a few more seconds?). 👍🏽
Lovely conversation and perfect flow and pace among you three. You're weekly talks are highly appreciated and a quality "podcast" indeed. :)
I would like to see more watches with macro shots while discussing. Nothing against your faces guys, but I'd rather see some nice watches :)
Hear! hear!
I agree however that adds a lot of production cost!
But what if we shoot it in underwear?! ...kidding, and we hear you. Currently, this is set up as mainly a podcast with a bit of visual support to show some watch stills as context. We will continue to explore how we can feasibly evolve the format. Thanks for the feedback and for watching! 🙏👊
I was literally about to write this comment.
Great discussion. Glad you brought up Sinn; love the U50 but just can’t see the value proposition vs my Tudors.
Was also expecting someone to mention the IWC Ingenieur which I think was the biggest pricing fail of 2023 by far, maybe the last few yrs. What a missed opportunity to bring in new customers.
I feel you missed an opportunity. Talking about niche watches like Piaget’s latest or the Vacheron 222 being expensive is one thing. Similarly comparing the price of current Seamasters to the price of one 10 years ago isn’t what people are annoyed about. It’s the incredible price hikes in just the past 12 months across more mainstream brands like Cartier, JLC, Omega and Rolex even for the same model !! How can JLC or Cartier justify some of their recent price hikes? Is it really inflation? Or is it opportunistic “gouging” because they know sales will fall post the COVID hype and they won’t be able to raise prices then ?
This is the way I meant to take the conversation too (it's what I find more interesting) - perhaps we'll discuss it in the future more specifically!
Agreed, always loved the Reverso and wanted to pull the trigger for a special anniversary. Guess this one should have happened 2 years ago 😂
It's always good to hear the ramblings of the team on subjects. I have to agree though that any reduction on RRP of a 'luxury' watch could be frowned upon but the idea of a discount from Nacho hides that somewhat. A very interesting video guys. Thanks for sharing.
As i have mentioned, quality has definitely improved and we are in a new era of that but there is sort of an exchange; look at the older movements and the newer ones, emphasis has gone into hard ware and less so on movements. The old Omega ETA2892 looks like a Patek calibre from far away and now recently revived by Longines in the master collection releases, it looks cheap and I feel bad saying it. The newer coaxial automatics (chronograph and time only)have a fancy mainplate bolstered to cover up all the components. Even the new calatrava calibre have a single main plate in comparsion to the older calibres that had multiple bridges with englage. We always have certain point where watch making evolves to keep up with external pressures
Great video. Totally correct.
Quality discussion about a sensitive subject and just how much we can spend on something we don’t really need. Endlessly fascinating stuff.
That Seamaster is what got me into luxury watches, my cousin had one. I never got it though, but maybe some day
Great topic and great arguments. Thanks guys!!!
I agree about the Omega innovation side. I personally feel I can justify value for money because I know what's under the hood. But their price creep upwards is frustrating.
Omega wants to move up in price towards high end. But they keep making watches that are thick and large. Does not compute. They are going to have to slim down before I can see them as high end watches.
@@kobbdl the thickness continues to be one of the biggest weaknesses of Omega. (Glashutte Original also suffers from this). Luxury is svelte, not thick and chunky.
@@derrenbrown4792 I agree with you about GO too. That's one of the reasons that I chose a Blancpain calendar instead of a GO.
Fantastic discussion 👌🏽
Enjoyable conversation 👍🏼 the “what is luxury” conversation is what makes “luxury” special to many because it is so personal and ineffable.
It would have been nice to hear you discuss the cost increases the entire world has seen in the past 5 years from a raw material, labor, and logistic stand point. Almost every company in the world saw price increases from their suppliers who saw increases from theirs and so on.
This had a massive impact on pricing to consumers. It’s hard to quantify this but it’s impossible to ignore that it played a huge role in product pricing.
Maybe some brands took advantage of this to increase more than to cover their internal increases.
A 1% to 3% raw material price increase typically triples when it hits the shelf to a consumer. Sometimes more.
Great discussion you guys had going on. It looks like luxury watches are becoming more and more price inelastic. It is not only the group of financial independent consumers paying whatever the price for a premium luxury watch is anymore. It seems that nowadays the group of "less well off" consumers are willing to pay the vastly increased prices for watches in the range of 5K€ - 10K€ like for example a speedmaster of a Explorer II. That just makes me wonder....
Great conversation guys 🤜🤛, and spot on: watches are nowadays more “jewelery “. Guys with a submariner take there watch off with taking a shower 😂
regarding not moving forward, I am happy someone mentioned that, it seems there is this new generation that do not want to get into vintage watches and as such, we are getting replicas, heavy use of faux aged lume, even on cases with pre-aging like with Panerai, I am now at a point that evolutions make me happy, the Nardin Freak, Tag Heuer's latest skeleton versions of their classics, the new Zenith 1/100th, even the new heritage black bay have given me some sense of relief with something refreshing. It needs to keep going in this direction, we need to move on from simple replicas, there is a place for them but with balance
Dang... Nacho can't get a word in edgewise.
I was thinking the same about the Piaget, it’s for people for whom the price is no object.
Morning Coffee and Fratello ❤
Aww 🫶
IMHO for a publication such as Fratello it would be ideal to always make sure that 80% of the conent covers the watches that THEIR readers can afford. This could be based on a survey on spending habits. The remaining 20% could be 'aspirational'. Of course this view doesn't take into consideration the advertisment which probably dictates something very different...
Thanks! It's what we do already basically :-)
@@timoholz That's what's makes you 'anti-Hodinkee' ;)
Thank you for the episode guys
This was fun
@nacho what shirt are ya wearing? looks sharp
Thanks! Picked it up from Esprit - rip-stop nylon in khaki green :)
OMG, Lex and RJ swapped seats!
That Seamaster is delightful, really would love to see more sword hands in general. Like those Sinns you had on the site recently.
yeap, one reason we (people that know the actual market) complain about prices, is because brands keep raising retail pricing into falling market prices…….so far brands don’t care, because the majority of their customers still have no idea……..if or when the majority of consumers actually educate themselves, brands will face enormous problems
Some brands just want no assocition at all with normal and averague humans and that's fine.
Do you think this is companies just deciding to switch markets, ditch ordinary people and just chase the very rich? Or is it actually driven by price rises elsewhere and they're just (or mostly) maintaining their bottom lines? That's what I'd like to know. Because if they can happily just ditch 'ordinary' people that's kind of scary...
Thanks, good discussion again, but could you please stop interrupting each other (especially RJ:) and stop talking over each other, thank you! Keep up the good work!👍
The “problem” is that it is not scripted, so we just sit and talk. Often we don’t know who starts 😊
@@robert-janbroer8936I don't think that is the case here. I mean when somebody is already talking and then someone interrupts him and doesn't let him finish his sentence. This happens many times on Fratello Talks, not so often in other watch podcasts.
@@sakurikala3140 We'll try to think of this next time :-)
These talks just need to be like 10 or 15 minutes.
You guys are awesome but if would be nice if you could learn how not to talk over each other
No personality times 3