Why watches are expensive

Even after purchasing a movement, a company may spend time and resources modifying or decorating the movement. In contrast, a company could make their own in-house movements.

Although this option is oftentimes less expensive, in-house movements still require an extensive amount of resources and manpower. Then when you consider movements that were created and developed specifically for a model, the cost continues to rise. New movements can take years to perfect. The process begins on the computer with an engineer developing the plan, layout, and design.

If a brand is trying to create a first-ever movement instead of a standard movement, this process can take a while. After the design is finalized, the new movement needs to be created. The brand-new parts and pieces are fitted together and tested to see if the watch is accurate and meets the standards of the company.

A nice watch requires hand-finishing rather than machine-finishing. This means hours of highly-skilled professionals adding designs or polishing an individual watch.

When a watch is produced in the millions, the cost to design and manufacture are distributed evenly across all of the watches, increasing the cost of the watch by only pennies.

Watches are like cars: As soon as you drive it off the lot, the value instantly depreciates. However, some watches and watch brands are able to retain their value more than others. There are quite a few steps and people involved in the process of research and development, designing, creating, marketing, distributing, and selling a watch. Because of the Quartz Crisis, brands such as Rolex or Patek Philippe increased their watch prices and used marketing techniques to convince the world that their watches are of the utmost quality.

This tactic worked and still today Rolex and Patek Philippe are two of the top luxury watch companies. Watch collectors want mechanical watches for the heritage, the history, and the luxury.

Not everyone can pay for a mechanical watch; therefore, those that own high-end, luxury watches show their affluence. Brands will use this knowledge and price their watches in the sector that they want to be considered.

So now you know what makes a watch so expensive or at least some of the reasons. Did we miss a reason? Let us know in the comments below!

With proper care, quality watches can last for years or even generations. Brands that the well-to-do choose for themselves are those that have a history of being preferred by the elite, and have names synonymous with lavish lifestyles and hopefully, quality.

It is actually quality and exclusivity that made historic luxury brands what they are today. The idea that people with means have the ability to choose the best and more beautiful. So whatever they choose must be good.

Patek Phillipe has a lot of its reputation today because they have a long history of making excellent watches. Not necessarily because they paid a lot of marketing to make you think celebrities prefer them. Now think of any other much more complex product. The shortcut is marketing and image. We live in a world where most but certainly not all consumers are for the most part unsophisticated about most things. Back when people had to make their own clothes, they knew a lot more about clothes.

They could get something from the Sears catalog and see whether or not it was crap. Today, we live in a society with mostly paper pushers, or people who have highly specialized technical skills. An auto mechanic for example may have a trained eye when it comes or purchasing a good vehicle, but will tend to know nothing about buying good shoes.

We are no longer a society where we are expected to fend for ourselves or make our own things. This is progress, but in the process makes us uneducated in terms of being able to evaluate many of the things we buy. So they try to artificially create the illusion that this exists. If this state does exist, they simply trying to enhance or amplify it. There are those of you who will disagree with my definition of luxury, and point to purely economic definitions, but consider my explanation of the concept as applied in this context.

I recall visiting a high-end watch manufacture in Europe and being shown a few ultra complex timepieces that can take a team of skilled watchmakers a year to make. A year to make just one watch. Imagine how long it takes to delicately hand polish hundreds of parts by hand… under a microscope.

The people doing this range in skill level, but the best of them are highly trained and certified by years of school. In Europe especially, these people are paid pretty well, and hours and hours of their time is valuable. Of course, most watches are assembled much faster, but this situation does exist, and impacts the costs of the best high-end timepieces a great deal. And yet they charge XXXX?!

Watches are expensive to design, manufacture, distribute, and market. These are all costs that are severely burdensome in the watch industry.

In terms of profit dipping, the line from the manufacture to the consumer can be quite long. I will create a very general example that represents how this works. The distributor is in charge of getting the watch to retailers. But first the distributor needs to get the watches out of the country, and into other countries. This gets import and export taxes and duties involved — which vary greatly on the placed involved.

They are often based on the value of the watches. In addition to paying these customs, the distributor also needs to take a cut for profit. The distributor also has to find retailers and hires sales people. Marketing costs are often ideally distributed between brand, distributor, and retailer.

It is for this very reason that selling online — direct to the consumer — is so very attractive for brands. They have been able to maintain a pricing scheme for years, and can charge the exact same price to the consumer and get a lot more profit.

Plus, the experience for the consumer is virtually the same, and they can potentially buy a watch more conveniently. Few people are experts when it comes to the pricing and valuation of timepieces. This applies to many industries. Or you can take the easy path. Just smile and ask him why his watch costs so little. Today's Best Deals. Type keyword s to search. Today's Top Stories. Two Creatives on Their Journeys to Sustainability.

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