Who owns the big watch brands?

blindsider

This is a question I've mulled over now and then over the last year or so, and I eventually sat down to do a small bit of research.

It seems the answer is quite simple - the big watch brands have been amalgamated into conglomerate ownership, so much so that if, for example you were lucky enough to own:

- An IWC Chrono

- A Purdey shotgun

- A Montblanc Meisterstueck

- A Cartier diamond necklace

- A Dunhill grip-bag (a nice little weekend bag for GBP£1450)


then you'd have made a nice little contribution to a company called Richemont - http://www.richemont.com/our-businesses.html

I also found this article which gives some of the background leading to the scarcity of ETA movements

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/18/watchfair-movements-idUSL6E8CI40H20120118

again, it's littered with brands owned by the same parent company:

"Since Jan. 1, Swatch Group is able to lower deliveries of watch parts to rivals to ensure that it has enough supplies for its own brands such as Breguet, Omega and Longines."

I'm not trying to achieve anything with this post - and it may not justify its own thread, so Mods, please feel free to merge etc. - except to highlight the familial connections between so many brands, and to explain why the likes of Stowa etc are finding it hard to source reliable movements.


Finally, any thoughts on what possible replacements there are out there?

hi5

LVMH are another big one..

http://www.lvmh.com/the-group/lvmh-companies-and-brands

Eoin

I find the whole business about the ETA movements quite interesting, and I wonder what the knock-on effects will be. I'm sure some of the big brands will be able to develop in-house movements (though at what cost to consumers?), but what will the likes of Stowa & Steinhart do?

I'm sure that Seagull movements would be fine on a technical level, but then rather than being a good value Swiss watch, it turns into an expensive Asian one and that could be harder to market.

Wibbs

It's not that long ago when the big names had in house movements, even small makers had them, usually only buying in movements for specialty items like chronos. Surely it would be prudent for those outside the Swatch group to band together co op stylee to now build their own "ETA" movement? Maybe look around at out of patent/copyright movements of the past, modernise them and put them into production?

Anjobe

It was 6 years ago that ETA announced they would be stopping the supply of ebauches outside the Swatch Group, so its kind of surprising that this is still an issue.

There is always Sellita, who are doing pretty much exactly what Wibbs suggested. I believe that ETA used to outsource manufacture to Sellita which is why they have all the tooling to make clones of ETA movements. Most (all?) of the well known ETA movements are well out of patent at this stage.

There are a few respectable watch makers using Sellita movements. Oris have been doing so for a while now and, ironically, Eterna now use Sellita in their Kontikis.

blindsider

Thanks folks - interesting as always!

Googling Sellita movements (Thanks Anjobe!) brought me to this thread on WUS:

http://forums.watchuseek.com/f25/sellita-sw200-vs-eta-2824-thread-358081.html

I haven't read much of it yet, but Sellita does seem to be a viable alternative to ETA.

....read a bit more - Sellita seem to be a real alternative, despite some spurious claims of Chinese ownership.

@Anjobe - this quote from the Reuters article may answer your question re the delay in implementing the decision to throttle back external supply:

The move was approved in Dec. (2011) by Switzerland's Federal Administrative court, pending the outcome of an investigation by competition authorities.

fianlly (for now):

http://forums.watchuseek.com/f2/soprod-sellita-where-they-779150-2.html

Anjobe

Going back to the original question - how many of the big Swiss watch brands are not under corporate ownership?

Not counting small independent watch makers, I can only think of:
Audemars Piguet - still owned by the Audermars and Piguet families
Rolex - still owned by the Wilsdorf Foundation, the trust in which founder Hans Wildorf left all his shares
Patek Phillipe - owned by the Stern family since 1932.

Any others?

Eoin

I think Breitling is privately owned.

peasant

Another potential ETA replacement is the Citizen/Miyota 9000 series.

28800 beats, handwind and second stop ...can already be found in some of the more expensive Junkers/Zeppelin watches which previously had the ETA 2824

Eoin

Sorry for continuing to go off-topic on the ETA movement thing, but Steinhart have taken the plunge and developed their own Swiss-made movement:

Steinhart ST-5:


Spec and more pics here

blindsider

Good spot Eoin - and good for Steinhart. I hope it works well for them.

Stowa are now offering ETA 2824-2 Variants - 'Basis' & 'Top'. The TOP movement is €80 or €130 more (€130 for blued screws) and delivery is February.

The basic ETA 2824 is on a longer lead-time .....June '14.

http://www.stowa.de/Marine+Datum,i1.htm


Looks like Swatch are slowly tightening the screw alright (no pun intended!)

Zagato

Eoin wrote: »

Sorry for continuing to go off-topic on the ETA movement thing, but Steinhart have taken the plunge and developed their own Swiss-made movement:

Can't say I like the crown :P

hi5

Is that still not an ETA 2824 with a different finish?

Eoin

More likely to be a clone I'd have thought, given that availability of ETA movements to non-SWATCH brands will only decline?

Zagato

hi5 wrote: »

Is that still not an ETA 2824 with a different finish

But I thought the trick is about whether they have the tooling and QC to make it as consistent as an ETA. Have Seagull not copied the ETA movements too?

Eoin

Seagull have cloned them, but I think not having the "Swiss Made" stamp works against them.

Anjobe

Eoin wrote: »

Seagull have cloned them, but I think not having the "Swiss Made" stamp works against them.

The Sellita SW200 is a 2824 clone, so the Steinhart movement may well be based on a Sellita SW200 ebauche.