Timex Is Making Watches in America Again • Hacker News Board

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#21

Post by coldtea » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #10

AmVess wrote: post #5

The question is why? It's a $20 movement in a poorly finished case. The most important part of the watch isn't made in the USA. It's a $50 product being sold for $500. Further, it completely misses the point of what made Timex famous to begin with; excellent quality at a low price. This is neither. For $500, they are going up against some vastly superior products. For example, this cannot hold a candle to any similar…

Conspiracy theory: deliberately fail in order to demonstrate that “Made in America” doesn’t work so they’ll get less criticism about manufacturing elsewhere. More realistic: fleece suckers who think “Made in America” make it worth spending $500 for a $50 watch.

Or, you know, taking advantage of some tax breaks and benefits. It's not like factory jobs are for other races and countries, and Americans should just sit back and solely devote themselves to pure ideas and entrepreneurship.

>More realistic: fleece suckers who think “Made in America” make it worth spending $500 for a $50 watch.

Most $500 watches are worth way less, even $50, so nothing special about this (regardless of where they are made).

Besides, getting domestic jobs for people is still worth something. Those laid off factory workers of old aren't gonna "reinvent" themselves anytime soon and get into Silicon Valley, but if they could get a new factory job that's something - and beats homelessness or low-end shitty gigs like Uber.

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#22

Post by galangalalgol » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #4

That’s a nice looking watch. If it had an automatic movement I may seriously consider getting one.

Automatic! Get off my lawn! You youngsters wasting all that weight and thickness because you can't be bothered to wind it yourself.

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#23

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #10

AmVess wrote: post #5

The question is why? It's a $20 movement in a poorly finished case. The most important part of the watch isn't made in the USA. It's a $50 product being sold for $500. Further, it completely misses the point of what made Timex famous to begin with; excellent quality at a low price. This is neither. For $500, they are going up against some vastly superior products. For example, this cannot hold a candle to any similar…

Conspiracy theory: deliberately fail in order to demonstrate that “Made in America” doesn’t work so they’ll get less criticism about manufacturing elsewhere. More realistic: fleece suckers who think “Made in America” make it worth spending $500 for a $50 watch.

[deleted]

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#24

Post by maxxxxx » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #20

maxxxxx wrote: post #4

That’s a nice looking watch. If it had an automatic movement I may seriously consider getting one.

Agree completely. However I’m pretty sure theres a cartel (ETA?) for automatic Swiss movements that Timex doesn’t want to cater to. Which basically leaves this watch in the “overpriced fashion” category. And they probably don’t want an Asian movement cuz that appears cheap (although there’s some good ones out there). I think it’d be awesome to see a USA made movement again in this price point, but I’m not holding my…

I am also not sure if they actually want to promote American craftsmanship or just want to sell cheap stuff while taking advantage of ”made in America”.

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#25

Post by mc32 » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #10

AmVess wrote: post #5

The question is why? It's a $20 movement in a poorly finished case. The most important part of the watch isn't made in the USA. It's a $50 product being sold for $500. Further, it completely misses the point of what made Timex famous to begin with; excellent quality at a low price. This is neither. For $500, they are going up against some vastly superior products. For example, this cannot hold a candle to any similar…

Conspiracy theory: deliberately fail in order to demonstrate that “Made in America” doesn’t work so they’ll get less criticism about manufacturing elsewhere. More realistic: fleece suckers who think “Made in America” make it worth spending $500 for a $50 watch.

Thd majority of consumer products out there exhibit this quality. After certain price point you’re just paying for branding or perception/projecting

Why doesn’t everyone buy Toyotas?

It’s not being a sucker, unless we broaden the term where most all of us are suckers.

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#26

Post by jjoonathan » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

adilmoujahid wrote: post #6

4thaccount wrote: post #2

Interesting article on doing more manufacturing in America. The problem is that this is an extremely expensive and niche product. I want slightly more expensive products made in the USA and I'll pay a premium for it, but nothing astronomical. If I can pay 20% more on coffee and chocolate to make sure the farmers were paid a living wage, we can do similar things in the US. I understand that US wages are much higher an…

Manufacturing output in the US has more than doubled in the last 3 decades, but the number of jobs in the sector has shrunk from 17.5M to 12.4M [1] The main reason for this is automation. I think the right question to ask is how to make the productivity from automation benefit more the workers? [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/25/most-americ...

Are these the funny numbers that use intel's massive profits multiplied by a moore's law value adjustment factor to hide the decline of everything else?

https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-...

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#27

Post by patrickg_zill » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

AmVess wrote: post #5

The question is why? It's a $20 movement in a poorly finished case. The most important part of the watch isn't made in the USA. It's a $50 product being sold for $500. Further, it completely misses the point of what made Timex famous to begin with; excellent quality at a low price. This is neither. For $500, they are going up against some vastly superior products. For example, this cannot hold a candle to any similar…

If it is a $50 product at retail, then you should be able to point to watches that retail at $50 that have the same features.

Please do so... I would put it roughly at ~$150 Costco or $199 retail pricing.

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#28

Post by bluedino » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:32 PM UTC

anthonybsd wrote: post #16

keeganjw wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watches are a weird market in that a $30 one from Walmart keeps better time than pretty much any watch from a luxury brand costing $5000 or more. $500 is way more than the average person will spend on a watch but once you get into the watch world a little bit you start to become numb to prices and all of a sudden $500 seems dirt cheap. I don't think this is targeted to a normal person, but the type of people who alre…

> I don't think this is targeted to a normal person, but the type of people who already own tens of thousands of dollars in watches and will buy this as a novelty with out even blinking. It's a weird and very rich (elitist) market. Yeah, and this "weird and very rich" market pretty much exclusively steers clear of anything that says "Quartz" on it. Hell, even state of the art mechanical movement like Seiko Spring Dri…

We did a tour of Shinola a few years back. They almost bragged about being unprofitable.

>> Despite bringing in $124 million in annual revenue, Shinola is not yet

>> profitable. “We’re bleeding cash,” Panis admitted blithely. “It’s

>> costly to do what we’re doing. Everything is at top-of-the-line

>> quality. We’re cutting no corners.” However, Panis said Shinola has a

>> strategy for reaching profitability within the next few years, if

>> everything goes according to plan.

We had the most confusing ride home.

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#29

Post by bluGill » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:34 PM UTC

Intermernet wrote: post #3

4thaccount wrote: post #2

Interesting article on doing more manufacturing in America. The problem is that this is an extremely expensive and niche product. I want slightly more expensive products made in the USA and I'll pay a premium for it, but nothing astronomical. If I can pay 20% more on coffee and chocolate to make sure the farmers were paid a living wage, we can do similar things in the US. I understand that US wages are much higher an…

Just wondering how the economics of us manufacturing handles global logistics. Can a product made in the USA ship to the rest of the world at a price competitive to those made in China? I honestly don't know the answer to this. If it's "yes", then bring on us production! I ask because I'm in Australia, and we're a wierd case when it comes to global logistics.

Depends very much on the product.

The more a factory produces the more automation pays off: it takes a big up front investment to pay for the machines, but once the machines are working it costs very little to make more.

Shipping has a bunch of other issues. Wars, border issues, weather, [long list skipped] all interrupt shipping, and the farther something needs to go the more likely it is one of these interrupts your shipment. Everything that depends on that is in turn disrupted.

Cars are best assembled near where they are used because when fully there is a lot of empty space (the cabin). The alternator for that car can be made pretty anywhere, it is small and dense and so shipping costs are not high. Most other products have elements of each along the way.

Large companies often have a large department dedicated to mapping out logistics. It is no easy to make sure that all the parts needed to build their widget arrive on time.

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#30

Post by tonyedgecombe » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:34 PM UTC

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #9

4thaccount wrote: post #2

Interesting article on doing more manufacturing in America. The problem is that this is an extremely expensive and niche product. I want slightly more expensive products made in the USA and I'll pay a premium for it, but nothing astronomical. If I can pay 20% more on coffee and chocolate to make sure the farmers were paid a living wage, we can do similar things in the US. I understand that US wages are much higher an…

> Globalism has brought down prices and made many things very cheap and affordable, but at what cost? See this oped by James Rebanks, a sheep farmer from England https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/opinion/an-english-sheep-...

I have a little sympathy for him but not very much. Sheep farming has a terrible impact on the environment, huge areas of land where they graze are barren. It only exists due to subsidy, one of the few benefits of Brexit is we may be able to kill it off completely once out of the CAP.

A lot of the competition in the UK comes from New Zealand lamb where they have a better climate for raising sheep. It doesn't have much to do with industrial farming, it's more about their ability to grow grass year round.