What's the best country to shop for watches?

Bullseye1

From your experience what is the best place to shop for watches? From my point of view New York was great. However on a recent stop over at Zurich I would say Switzerland is probably a great place to at least window shop. Where would you recommend to get the best buck for your dollar?

pychofairy

Dubai is pretty good, if only for the tax free prices at the very least.

CarltonBrowne

I'd agree that you can't beat a walk down Bahnhofstraße in Zürich, if only just to lick the windows. The ease of transport from the airport means that it's possible to make the trip even if you only have a few hours layover. Don't forget the watch museum in Beyer's as well.
http://www.tz-uk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=75747&hilit=+beyer
The only draw back is the strength of the Swiss Franc; a killer for anybody from the UK but also still quite strong against the Euro. I remember looking at vintage Omegas in a small shop near Bern station a couple of years ago; with a CHF-STG exchange rate of 2.2 some of the prices looked sort of OK but at 1.6 forget it.

Given the current Euro-STG exchange rate I'd still say that the UK must be well placed as long as you can get the right deal.

MrSparkle

Dubai is pretty good alright, especially for window shopping. The Dubai Mall has a lot of amazing watch shops http://www.thedubaimall.com/en/general/shopcategory?filterTermId=150&type=1 Went into most of them, I regret not going into the Richard Mille one would have been cool to try one of them on. It's worth going to Dubai just to check out the shops in the Dubai Mall.

The Mall of the Emirates only has a few watch shops but has a cool Breitling shop.

The Gold Souk seemed to only have one shop with brands like Tag Heuer etc, the rest had brands like TW Steel(almost bought one as it was about €150 cheaper than here), Seiko(Bought a Velatura Kinetic SRH005P1 for about €400 cheaper than in Weirs), Citizen etc. The Gold Souk is fantastic for haggling in, they dropped the price by about €200 just with a little haggling, then went away to think about it and when I came back they took another €100 of as a "managers special". Lots of annoying guys selling fake watches around the Gold Souk though.

I'm not sure about the prices for the larger brands as I was only window shopping(had bought my first proper watch shortly before I went there so was taking it easy), apparently the prices are slightly cheaper but they only do little if any discounts there. Read that on some other forums so not sure how true it is.




New York is great aswell especially with the exchange rate and supposed discounts that most places do. It's also great for window shopping, checked out the new Breitling flagship store, Tourneau, Kenjo, Moon Lite International and a few smaller jewellers. Again was window shopping so can't say for sure about the prices. One annoying thing was one jewellers was selling all their Tag's at 40% or more discount as they were not going to be an AD anymore. Missed out on getting good deals on Grand Carrera's by about 1 day, all the good models were gone.




Went to Harrod's Watch Room in London, amazing stuff in there like a Concord C1, it's been a few years since I was there it's the only one I can remember right now. As someone on TZ-UK said "felt like an utter pikey in there." so prepare to feel inadequate if you go there. Haven't had a look around Bond Street yet, some crazy expensive boutique watch shops there http://www.marcuswatches.co.uk/collection

Picked up a Breitling here http://www.andrewmichaels.co.uk/ for about €1000 less than Weirs and they do delivery to Ireland so that site is worth checking out. Got a discount of almost £800 of the list price just by asking.



Sorry for the wall of text got a bit carried away! All in all it's much better watch shopping abroad and I always fit in some window shopping time on any holiday I go on. The girlfriend is sick of watch shops at this stage.

emo72

tbh i dont think any country is good for watch shopping. well, if your looking for a bargain that is.

all my watches are bought online, and even when i was in florida last year in the discount stores i couldnt bring myself to purchase one knowing that i could get everything much cheaper online.

i even bought my seamaster from a washington B&M shop and had it shipped over no problem.

also the likes of omega and rolex are thinking of selling their wares in their own boutiques, so they can make sure that no one gets discount. thats bad.

Bullseye1

Is there a reason why manufacturers don't have their own online sales website?

Monty Burnz

Bullseye1 wrote: »

Is there a reason why manufacturers don't have their own online sales website?

I guess they don't want to pee off their primary distribution channel (the jewellers) by undercutting them. And there's no incentive to buy online if the price is the same in a bricks and mortar shop.

bogmanfan

I had a look in the Wonder Room in Selfridge's last month. Richard Mille cabinet must have had a few million euro's worth in it alone. One was £275,000 :eek:

MrSparkle wrote: »

Went to Harrod's Watch Room in London, amazing stuff in there like a Concord C1, it's been a few years since I was there it's the only one I can remember right now. As someone on TZ-UK said "felt like an utter pikey in there." so prepare to feel inadequate if you go there. Haven't had a look around Bond Street yet, some crazy expensive boutique watch shops there http://www.marcuswatches.co.uk/collection

Marcusm

Watches have become part of the luxury goods phenomenon and as such the best range is to be found in Asia, particularly Hong Kong. It's almost impossible to walk down a significant street in Central, Causeway Bay or TST without noticing that at least every 5th shop is a watch shop - this i snot an exaggeration nor a joke. Likewise, prices can be good because there is no VAT or GST. Singapore also has a good selection but it has a GST. Hong KOng has not suffered a recession so there are not many clearance bargains to be had (not that this necessarily applies to may brands). However, most Asians IME like to bargain and haggle.

I lived in HK for a while and up until last year went there at least once a month. Best bargain I ever got was 37% off an IWC Portugese Chronograph, the pre discount price was already substantially less than the UK price - it's a while ago and I'm not sure anyone in Ireland even carried them then. By contrast, Panerai's here rarely attract a discount. it's not a great environment for pre owned watches.