BASELWORLD 2017
watch wish list An industry in consolidation mode is good news for punters, says Richard Brown, as watchmakers focus their attention on (slightly) more affordable collections
Tudor and Breitling become unlikely bedfellows It costs a watchmaker millions of pounds to launch a new movement. Hence why many of the brands that survived the quartz crisis of the 1970s grew reliant on calibres from third-party suppliers, most notably from Swatch Group-subsidiary ETA. When, in 2002, Swatch chief Nicolas Hayek Jr. announced plans to restrict the flow of movements to watch companies outside his own portfolio, brands were forced to invest in becoming more selfreliant. Thus the sector’s prevailing obsession with the term ‘in-house’.
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Industry consensus is that it costs around £13.5 million to procure the industrial machinery needed to mill the requisite parts of a movement. At trade price, a watchmaker will need to shift a lot of units to make that money back. Given that a verticalised watch company will be capable of manufacturing more movements than it can possible use itself, one way of speeding up the ROI is to sell calibres to other brands. Perhaps this explains the initially eyebrow-raising partnership between Tudor and Breitling. Breitling has granted Tudor access to its B01 base calibre, into which Tudor has incorporated its own rotor and regulating system. The resulting movement, the MT5813, allows Tudor to update its Black Bay collection with a COSC-certified chronograph – at a fraction of the price it would have cost the brand to develop a similar watch by itself. Tudor, going the other way, has let Breitling use its three-hand MT5612 movement inside the second-generation Superocean Heritage – essentially an engine upgrade from the previously used ETA 2824. As with the firstedition Superocean Heritage, the second series is available in either 42mm or 46mm, both of which now include a scratch-resistant ceramic bezel. Given that for the past two years the watch industry has been shrinking, expect to see more mutually-beneficial, cost-saving partnerships between brands in the future.
Above: Black Bay Chrono, £3,430, Tudor Left: Superocean Héritage II Chronographe 46, £4,830, Breitling
THE CITY Magazine | luxurylondon.co.uk