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Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

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Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#61

Post by criddell »

AmVess wrote: post #57
criddell wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> novelty grade movement It's from Ronda and it's a good movement.

It's a $20 retail movement in a $500 watch. It's many steps away from the quality of a similarly priced Seiko product.

The point of this watch is that it's assembled in America with decent labor conditions. I think that's probably why they went with a Swiss movement rather than one from Seiko or Citizen. Perhaps Seiko's environmental and labor practices are part of the reason their watches cost less.

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#62

Post by losvedir »

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…

I'm also willing to pay a premium for American made stuff, but sometimes the price difference is extreme. Right now I'm in the market for a wood pellet smoker, and all the common, Chinese made ones (Traeger, Pit Boss, GMG, Rec Tec, etc) are in the $350-$500 range for the size I'm interested in, while all the American made ones (Yoder, MAK, Blaz'n, Royall, etc) are $1000 plus.

These things are 100-200 lb steel things, so it makes me wonder if this is what those tariffs were about, or if it's the labor, quality, or what.

Your 20% markup is one thing, but 2x or 3x the price is hard to swallow.

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#63

Post by wrigby »

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…

ETA is owned by Swatch group, which owns a ton of watch brands[1], including Hamilton, which I would say competes head-to-head with the most Timex pieces (at least in the $500 price range).

There are other Swiss automatic movement makers though, like Sellita (the SW200 is basically an ETA 2824[2]).

1: https://www.swatchgroup.com/en/brands-companies

2: https://www.christopherward.com/etasellitastory.html

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#64

Post by petre »

coldtea wrote: post #17
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…

> 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. Most watches are like that. In the high end, it's $1000 product being sold for $30000. > Further, it completely misses the point of what made Timex famous to begin with; excellent quality at a low price. They already do well in that market. It's not…

That's quite hillarious, $800 Casio G-Shocks and $500 Timex watches. A Tissot T Touch is priced in that range, why would anyone get a Casio or Timex for the price of a Tissot?

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#65

Post by kylec »

sokoloff wrote: post #46
anthonybsd wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks horribly crafted to me. Look at the close-up of the finishing on the hands here: https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ibkZQA68NpX... . Look at the uneven thickness of the hour hand, the roughness of the finish around the screw, the uneven application of paint on the font. This is shoddy at best. A $50 automatic Seiko has more finesse than that. Don't even get me started on a completely generic fa…

Even the printing on the face looks terrible (top of the E and X in Timex).

Weirdly enough, the E in America has the same bite taken out of the top of it as the E in Timex

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#66

Post by [deleted] »

anthonybsd wrote: post #18
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…

Shinola is stuffing $100 movements into cases that are frankly completely oversized for them and selling them for $1000+. I guess Timex wants in on the action. Don't underestimate the power of marketing hype.

[deleted]

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#67

Post by duxup »

criddell wrote: post #49
duxup wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't watches mostly fashion type products anyway and their value sort of fungible anyhow? I don't doubt there are plenty of really cool watches out there that are "worth" $500.... but generally they seem to be fashion products where even the price seems pretty disconnected with the actual product / utility.

Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them. There are lots of watches worth orders of magnitude more than $500. If you can buy a $10,000 Rolex today and sell it tomorrow for $11,000 it was worth it, right? Plus, nobody is buying a $50,000 Patek because it solves the problem of showing what time it is. It's about appreciation of artistry and craftsmanship and letting other people know that you are the ki…

That's kinda what I'm getting at.

Complaining that the watch isn't "worth" something when it comes to fashion... not sure that jives exactly.

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#68

Post by SamReidHughes »

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…

> Hell, even state of the art mechanical movement like Seiko Spring Drive suffered from being associated with Quartz watches, even despite the fact that it had nothing to do with them.

They have a quartz oscillator controlled by an integrated circuit! Replacing a motor with a generator is neat, but the real trick is that there's no way for mechanical imperfections to affect the rate, making it easier to manufacture.*

* Caveat being that I haven't made them, power reserve is the real game there, and they don't seem to be cutting corners.

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#69

Post by [deleted] »

bouncing wrote: post #55
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…

Questions of cost and "why" apply broadly to the whole category of watches. Up until the late 70s, watches were tools to keep you from being late. Since then, you've been able to get a cheap, reliable watch for next to nothing. Quartz movement, combined with mechanization of production, ensured that. The whole industry had to adapt to making watches themselves sort of an aesthetic statement, not a practical tool to k…

[deleted]

Re: Timex Is Making Watches in America Again

#70

Post by Zigurd »

It's for the hipster/nativist niche. Automatic (probably Swatch). Made in America (in big letters on the face, but the movement is ETA/AXIA/Ronda or other Swiss maker).

I guess premium-ish-but-not-really PBR is next, brewed by some previously "craft" brewer gobbled up by a mutual parent company. Oh man. A little googling reveals the horrifying plausibility of that.

As the watch connoisseurs have pointed out it's not really a moderately priced premium product. It's a cheap product with pumped-up margins so it can get internally green lighted because the margin contribution will be enough to move the needle a bit.

You see a lot of the same in clothing e-commerce: Stuff that's not unique, not especially high quality, and shockingly expensive for what you get because it hit a hip vibe.

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