Horolonomics

One of the most popular Horolonomics posts details the story of a radioactive, strontium-laced Rolex GMT Master. The Navy pilot who owned the watch in question sued Rolex. The watch also traced a surprising path through the hands of the owner's descendants, ending up in the inventory of a watch dealer in Florida. In many ways, my Horolonomics post was "Chapter 2" of the dangerously radioactive GMT Master story. Chapter 1 was authored by Steven Pulvirent, in collaboration with Eric Wind, while Pulvirent was still writing for Hodinkee. With this post, I offer Chapter 3 of the radioactive Rolex saga. This chapter also involves a Navy pilot, one who is much more well known than the Rolex owner in Chapter 2. Along the way, we will learn some interesting facts which shed light on the history of Rolex. Let's begin at the beginning. Moar Archives A few weeks ago I found myself poking around, virtually, in the archives of the Smithsonion National Air and Space Museum. ...

I applaud the effort by watch manufacturers to minimize their contributions to climate change. Globally, we've made some progress towards "bending the curve" of greenhouse gas emissions, which is the good news. This figure from climateactiontracker.org shows that, even under an optimistic scenario, some increase in global temperatures is unavoidable. The bad news is that we clearly need to do a whole lot more to get to a point where we halt the growing cost of environmental degradation. As the graph I've presented here shows, existing policies are not enough to ensure a healthy planet for our children, their children, and all future generations. As Elizabeth Doer's outstanding coverage on Quill and Pad shows, the watch industry is discussing the challenges ahead and developing contributions to the fight against climate change. These include the use of recycled and recovered materials in manufacturing as well as requiring transparency in how raw materials are...

This post will be light on commentary. I'd just like to share that, today, I created a Hans Wilsdorf artificial intelligence bot on Character.ai. Full disclosure: I have no relationship to this startup, I just did this out of curiousity. I imagined that a few people might enjoy a chat with Hansbot. The tech behind this was developed by two Googlers who worked on the company's natural language processing model. To give you some sense of how it works, I'm sharing a few screenshots of my first conversation with Hansbot. You can find my second conversation with Hansbot at the link here . I began by asking Hansbot about his favorite watch (it got cut off in the screenshots). My book on the history of Rolex marketing is now available on Amazon! It debuted as the #1 New Release in its category. You can find it here . You can subscribe to Horolonomics updates here .

Recently, I received an email from Meta, the umbrella organization that owns Facebook, Instagram, Occulus (VR headsets), WhatsApp, and probably a few other platforms I don't know about. The email announced Meta's "2022 Creative Forecast." The publication offers a list of suggestions for how businesses might alter their marketing and conduct novel outreach to buyers. These suggestions were drawn from "100 standout campaigns on Meta technologies from the last year." I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I'm assuming Meta had some kind of metric for the success of an advertising campaign and then reviewed the top 100 that were relatively strong by this metric. Here, I'll share the report's five recommendations, describe them, and then give awards to the best and worst members of the watch industry when it comes to following these "five key creative behaviors." The best example of engaging in a particular "creative behavior...

I've read a variety of reports and commentators suggesting that, unlike the majority of businesses, the watch industry may be immune to economic downturns. The analysis of economic cycles is a specialized field and it is very tricky to assess how particular industries are impacted by fluctuations. Most of the claims I've heard about the business cycle and the watch industry could benefit from more careful inspection, so I'll try to do that here. I decided to use methodology that represents a solid "starting point" when it comes to business cycle analysis. The impact of a recession on any industry is not easily or casually measured, for reasons I will describe below. The TLDR on this is that the modern watch industry is not immune from the business cycle when we use generally accepted notions of what a business cycle represents. However, there are things that do reduce the impact of economic fluctuations on the industry: watch brands have partial immunity. I ...

It is fair to say that collaborations in the watch industry are, at present, less a novel strategy and more a mature tactic that a brand can use to generate excitement and interest in their products. The success of collaborations is driven by diversity. A brand has its unique heritage, design motifs, and comparative advantages. An outsider has their own philosophy of design, track record, and areas of strength. The two come together and the whole is, hopefully, greater than the sum of the parts. This post is about a very early collaboration in the watch industry. The brand in question is Rolex, a manufacturer that does not have a reputation for collaboration in product development (beyond the "collaborations" which were necessary in order to source parts in Rolex's earlier years). The outsider is Lewis Griffith Cresswell Evans Pugh, who went by Griffith Pugh. Their collaboration was unique in that Rolex did not explicitly market the lash up with Pugh. In fact, his role ...

This isn't a post I really wanted to write or share. The reason: it involves a brand I admire and respect. Some readers might decide that what I write here casts a negative light on that brand. At the end of the day, when I see information that just doesn't make sense, I feel obliged to comment on it regardless of whether it might ruffle a few feathers. I just feel a responsibility in that regard when it comes to readers and subscribers. It is important to me that the state of the watch market is truthfully known. As a side note: I'm going to soon post another story about the brand in question that highlights a neat achievement on their part, so please stay tuned. Ok, so here we go. Last week, a story in Bloomberg claimed that watch brand Zenith now has wait lists that are similar to those seen at Rolex and Patek Philippe. To set the stage: buyers have recently waited months or years for certain models from Rolex, Patek, and Audemars Piguet (among others). The Bloomber...